Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Experience of intimate partner violence, like child history of abuse, has been linked with physical child abuse. In addition, such abused women are more likely to report depression. Two forms of intimate partner violence are examined: physical and verbal/psychological. Depressed mothers are more likely to abuse their own children. This paper incorporates the above ideas into a model that tests the extent to which depression does or does not mediate the partner abuse-child abuse relationship. Control variables include history of child abuse (having been hit as a teen and having witnessed interparental abuse) plus several demographic variables. The respondents are selected from the Second National Family Violence Survey, a representative sample composed of 1,263 mothers who were currently partnered (within the last 12 months). Both logistic regression and ordinary least squares techniques were used in the analyses. Results show that the direct effect of intimate partner violence on physical child abuse disappears when depression is included in the analysis. In other words, depression fully mediates the effect of both physical and verbal/psychological intimate partner violence on physical child abuse. This is not the case for the abuse history variables, which are only partly mediated by depression.