Abstract
Child neglect is a significant social problem with severe consequences for individuals and society. This study explores how intergenerational transmission of grandparental child neglect affects grandchildren's mental health in adulthood. We utilize a three-generational dataset from the Tromsø Study and estimate a linear probability model to find the distinct roles of both maternal and paternal grandparents. We test the additive risk hypothesis for continuous, intergenerational effects of child neglect in both the maternal and paternal lineages. Furthermore, we use structural equation modeling to test how sequential exposures to neglect across generations ultimately bear on adult mental health outcomes. Our results confirm the additive risk hypothesis but only for maternal grandparents: our findings show that only maternal parents' neglectful parenting is associated with an increased probability of depression in their grandchildren, conditional on whether their parents neglected them. These results contribute to research on intergenerational transmission by the finding that additive risks of child maltreatment flow down generations mainly through maternal lineages.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 101712 |
| Pages (from-to) | 1-11 |
| Number of pages | 11 |
| Journal | SSM - Population Health |
| Volume | 28 |
| Early online date | 24 Sept 2024 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Dec 2024 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2024 The Author(s)
Funding
We extend our deepest gratitude to Dorte Gyrd Hansen and Jonas Minet Kinge, who served on the PhD committee of the corresponding author, for their invaluable guidance and insights throughout this research. We are also thankful to Sondre Aasen Nilsen for his detailed comments on the psychological aspects of our study. Special recognition goes to Ender Demir, Berna Tuncay Alpanda, and Ana C. Q. Gutierrez for their constructive feedback on the initial versions of our manuscript. Our appreciation further extends to the participants from the 44th Annual Meeting of the Norwegian Association of Economists in Stavanger, Norway, and attendees of seminars held by the Social Inequality in Health Research Group and the Department of Community Medicine at UiT the Arctic University of Norway for their insightful contributions to earlier drafts of this paper. Lastly, we gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the Research Council of Norway (Grant no. 324963) for the project \u201CAdverse Childhood Experiences - Families, Resilience and Children's Outcomes,\u201D which has partially financed this research, thereby enhancing our understanding of the intergenerational impacts of child neglect on mental health.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Norwegian Association of Economists in Stavanger | |
| Department of Community Medicine at UiT the Arctic University of Norway | |
| Norges forskningsråd | 324963 |
Keywords
- Adverse childhood experiences
- Child neglect
- Childhood trauma
- Depression
- Grandparental influence
- Mental health