Trajectories of risk in early psychosocial development: Children of mothers exposed to intimate partner violence from refugee and non-refugee backgrounds in Australia.

BACKGROUND

The maternal experience of intimate partner violence is associated with a range of emotional and behavioural problems in young children.

OBJECTIVE

To prospectively examine the impact of maternal perinatal intimate partner violence experiences on children's risk trajectories of social-emotional development, including theoretically relevant social, economic, maternal mental health and trauma factors, as well as refugee status.

PARTICIPANTS

870 mother-child dyads in the WATCH mental health cohort study, half from refugee background.

METHOD: Multigroup trajectory modelling of annually collected longitudinal data at 5 timepoints, from when the children were 18-24 months to 60 months of age.

RESULTS

The trajectory modelling revealed 4 distinct trajectories of child social-emotional development: (1) "none or low risk" trajectory (n = 710, 81.6 % of the sample); (2) "declining risk" trajectory (n = 66, 7.6 %); (3) "intermittent risk" trajectory (n = 64, 7.4 %); and (4) "high increasing risk" trajectory (n = 30; 3.4 %). Compared to the group 1 "none or low risk", maternal IPV exposure to physical abuse at baseline was associated with 2.45 times greater odds of children following the "intermittent risk" development trajectory, and 4.90 times greater odds of children following the "high increasing risk" trajectory. Children in trajectory 4 "high increasing risk" were more likely to be male, and mothers were more likely to be born in Australia, have no tertiary education, and experience social and economic difficulties.

CONCLUSIONS

The study contributes significantly to understanding the deleterious impact of IPV on child development over time, including unique evidence that socially relevant and modifiable risk factors are more strongly associated with adverse child development than traditionally emphasised factors such as maternal mental health and child attachment factors.