Physical Child Abuse and Adolescent Violent Delinquency: The Mediating and Moderating Roles of Personal Relationships

• NCJ Number: 219698
• Journal: Child Maltreatment Volume: 12 Issue: 3 Dated: August 2007 Pages: 208-219
• Author(s): Suzanne Salzinger; Margaret Rosario; Richard S. Feldman
• Date Published: August 2007
• Length: 12 pages
• Grant Number(s): MH48917 01-08
• Sponsoring Agency: National Institute of Mental Health
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This study examined adolescent relationships with parents and peers for their mediating and moderating roles in the effects of preadolescent physical abuse on adolescent violent behavior.

Abstract

The study findings show that personal relationships with parents and peers do play a significant and complex role in explaining the effect of early child abuse on later violent delinquency. The roles are different for family and peer relationships. Attachment to parents and abusive relationships with parents in adolescence were each found to mediate between child abuse and later violent delinquent behavior. Attachment to parents reduced the risk for violent delinquency. In contrast, peer relationships moderated, not mediated, the effect of abuse on later delinquency. A high level of abusive behavior with best friends increased the risk of violent delinquency more for abused than for nonabused adolescents. Managing to establish normative nondelinquent peer networks provided more of a protective effect against adolescent violence for previously abused adolescents than for nonabused adolescents. These findings indicate that parenting programs with proven effectiveness should be used as soon as families are identified as abusive, and they should be continued until both parenting and child behaviors are altered. The preadolescent sample consisted of 100 physically abused urban school children (65 boys and 35 girls), ages 9-12 in grades four to six, along with 100 nonabused classmates case matched for gender, age, race, and socioeconomic status. The followup study assessed the outcomes in middle to late adolescence of the preadolescent physically abused and nonabused children. For this followup, 153 of the original 200 families (78 abused and 75 nonabused) were located. Violent adolescent delinquency was assessed with the subset of violence items from the Self Report of Delinquency. 3 tables, 1 figure, and 47 references