Maternal childhood emotional abuse and prosocial behavior in Chinese preschoolers: Roles of parenting and children's social information processing.

BACKGROUND

Although maternal history of childhood emotional abuse (CEA) has been found to increase offspring's vulnerability to psychopathological symptoms, its intergenerational association with adaptive behaviors remains poorly understood.

OBJECTIVE

Using a multi-informant longitudinal design, this study examined the intergenerational association between maternal CEA and prosocial behavior in preschool children, and further assessed the sequential mediating roles of mothers' use of psychological aggression and children's social information processing (SIP).

PARTICIPANTS AND

SETTING

Participants included 309 typically developing preschoolers (152 boys; Mage = 4.25 years, SD = 0.76) and their mothers, recruited from mainland China.

METHODS

Data were collected at two time points. At baseline (T1), mothers retrospectively reported on their childhood emotional abuse and neglect, as well as their use of psychological aggression toward the child. At T2 (five months later), children's prosocial behavior was assessed via peer nominations, and their SIP was evaluated using structured, vignette-based interviews.

RESULTS

Maternal CEA at T1 negatively predicted preschoolers' prosocial behavior at T2 (β = -0.11, 95% CI [-0.21, -0.01]), after controlling for maternal emotional neglect, child gender and age. Furthermore, maternal psychological aggression at T1 and child SIP (specifically, encoding and positive response generation) at T2 completely mediated this association.

CONCLUSIONS

Findings indicate that maternal history of CEA undermines children's prosocial development through cascading effects on parenting practices and children's social cognition. Interventions aimed at reducing psychological aggression in parenting and enhancing children's SIP skills may help promote prosocial outcomes among children whose mothers have a history of CEA.