Citation

McIntosh JE, Tan ES, Levendosky AA, Holtzworth-Munroe A. Trauma Violence Abuse 2019; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Affiliation

Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/1524838019888560

PMID

31750785

Abstract

Attachment status in early childhood is a key yet modifiable contributor to the development of social-emotional competence. The security and organization of the infant-mother attachment bond is particularly susceptible to stressors in the caregiving environment. While the impacts of normative interparental conflict on infant attachment are increasingly understood, the potentially unique place of intimate partner violence (IPV) in this pathway has been under-researched. This study surveyed all empirical work in this area, including unpublished literature (k = 6, N = 3,394), to examine meta-analytic associations between maternal experiences of IPV and offspring attachment security (ages 1-5 years) measured at least 6 months post-IPV exposure. Mothers' reports of IPV from pregnancy onward were inversely associated with offspring attachment security, r = -.23, CI [-0.42, -0.04], p =.02. Sample risk characteristics (e.g., clinical vs. community) moderated this association; child's age at attachment measurement and method of assessing child attachment (e.g., observational, representational, parent report) also moderated at a trend level. Implications for early screening, intervention, and future research are discussed.

Language: en

Keywords

attachment; family; infant; longitudinal; violence