Couple violence and the development of emotional difficulties in offspring over time : results from a high risk sample

Couple violence is one important aspect of family dysfunction that has been repeatedly identified in the intergenerational transfer of risk for mental health and behavioral problems. The present study examined the associations between parent's history of childhood aggression, subsequent couple violence in adulthood, and offspring's childhood depression and internalizing problems, using a prospective design across a 30-year period. Data was collected through the Concordia Longitudinal Risk Project (Schwartzman et al., 1986), an ongoing initiative that began 1976 with the recruitment and screening of over 4000 inner-city Canadian children on behavioral dimensions, including aggression. The current sub-sample included 94 participants from the original sample and their currently school-aged children. Data was collected at three time points: when the children were in early childhood, middle childhood, and pre-adolescence stages of development. Results indicated that childhood aggression in one generation might be indirectly linked to self-reported childhood depression in the next generation through couple violence. In addition, hierarchical linear modeling revealed that mother-reported child internalizing problems were stable over time, and that children whose mothers were themselves depressed and in a violent partnership were reported to experience more internalizing problems at all time points than other children. The discussion focused on the validity of parent reports of children's feelings of depression, as well as the related issue of single-rater bias. The effect of maternal psychopathology on child psychopathology was discussed, as were the implications of the stability of children's internalizing problems across this broad developmental span