Exploring Mechanisms Linking Maternal Childhood Adversity to Adolescent Psychopathology: The Role of Early Childhood Deprivation and Threat

Project Summary This developmental R21 study proposes a secondary data analysis addressing specific questions regarding the mediating pathways by which childhood maltreatment (CM) experienced by mothers may place their children at greater risk for externalizing and internalizing symptoms in adolescence. Using innovative models from developmental neuroscience, this study explores novel frameworks for understanding associations between maternal CM and offspring psychopathology. The subsample is drawn from the ongoing Family Life Project (FLP) and is comprised of mothers who reported that they did or did not experience CM at or before the age of 14 (N=1122). There is growing interest in the long-term consequences of CM and its association with the socioemotional adjustment of survivors and their children. Prior research links CM history across numerous domains of adult interpersonal functioning, including elevated depression, intimate partner violence (IPV), and problems in the parental role. Children of mothers with trauma histories are reported to have significant adjustment difficulties when compared to children of women without self-reported CM. Despite the strength of evidence linking maternal CM history and offspring psychopathology, there is heterogeneity in outcomes for survivors of trauma and their children. Our goal is to identify the underlying mechanisms by which maternal CM may be related to psychopathology among offspring in adolescence. We propose a dimensional model of adversity focused on examining how different types of risk factors may be differentially related to the development of children whose mothers report CM. Using novel methods to achieve a precise and systematic identification of the processes that account for the heterogeneity of outcomes among offspring of women with CM histories, will not only open new avenues for research identifying factors that may protect or interrupt potential links between maternal CM and offspring psychopathology, but also provide more clear road maps for future intervention development. A major area of innovation includes the use of a rich longitudinal dataset that has a comprehensive array of biological, neurocognitive, behavioral, caregiving, and ecological measures from age 6-months – age 16, allowing us perhaps for the first time, to examine the intergenerational effects of CM. To our knowledge this is the first study of its kind to test complex longitudinal relations among early adversity, deprivation, fear learning, stress physiology, hypervigilance, and key outcomes in a racially and economically diverse sample. The high prevalence rates for CM in the United States, suggests a significant number of children are living in homes with mothers reporting trauma histories making this an important direction for further inquiry.