Behavior and Development

This article is a longitudinal investigation of the relationships between maternal vic-timization, maternal functioning, and children’s behavior and development. Partici-pants include 203 mother-child dyads from a low-income population recruited from pediatric primary care clinics. Data are collected when children are 4 and 8 years of age. Child outcomes are evaluated using maternal, teacher, and child self-report and objective measures of cognitive and academic functioning. Maternal victimization history is associated with maternal depressive symptoms, low levels of maternal social support, child internalizing and externalizing behavior problems, and low lev-els of child socialization. Child behavior problems identified at age 4 are enduring and persist to age 8. The effects of maternal victimization history on both internaliz-ing behavior problems and socialization are mediated by maternal depressive symp-toms. The effects of maternal depressive symptoms on externalizing behavior prob-lems, socialization, and anger are mediated by maternal social support. Clinical implications of findings are discussed