Intergenerational Associations between Parents' and Children's Adverse Childhood Experience Scores.

Narayan Sastry,Neal Halfon,Paul J Chung,Adam Schickedanz,José J Escarce

doi:10.3390/children8090747

Abstract

Background: Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are stressful childhood events associated with behavioral, mental, and physical illness. Parent experiences of adversity may indicate a child’s adversity risk, but little evidence exists on intergenerational links between parents’ and children’s ACEs. This study examines these intergenerational ACE associations, as well as parent factors that mediate them. Methods: The Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) 2013 Main Interview and the linked PSID Childhood Retrospective Circumstances Study collected parent and child ACE information. Parent scores on the Aggravation in Parenting Scale, Parent Disagreement Scale, and the Kessler-6 Scale of Emotional Distress were linked through the PSID 1997, 2002, and 2014 PSID Childhood Development Supplements. Multivariate linear and multinomial logistic regression models estimated adjusted associations between parent and child ACE scores. Results: Among 2205 parent-child dyads, children of parents with four or more ACEs had 3.25-fold (23.1% [95% CI 15.9–30.4] versus 7.1% [4.4–9.8], p-value 0.001) higher risk of experiencing four or more ACEs themselves, compared to children of parents without ACEs. Parent aggravation, disagreement, and emotional distress were partial mediators. Conclusions: Parents with higher ACE scores are far more likely to have children with higher ACEs. Addressing parenting stress, aggravation, and discord may interrupt intergenerational adversity cycles.

Highlights

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are stressful and potentially traumatic events, including abuse, neglect, and exposure to household dysfunction, that occur any time before age eighteen
In addition to conferring health risk upon individuals who experience adversity that ACEs measure, there is evidence to suggest that the experience of adversity in childhood can result in a higher likelihood of perpetuating cycles of adversity for one’s children when in a parenting role
We examine the association between parents’ ACE scores and their adult children’s ACE scores in a national sample of families, as well as potential mediators of these associations including parental mental health, parenting aggravation, and parent disagreement

Summary

Introduction

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are stressful and potentially traumatic events, including abuse, neglect, and exposure to household dysfunction, that occur any time before age eighteen. Certain ACEs may be associated with parenting practices across generations, the potential for child abuse and neglect of parents’ own children [3], and those children’s mental health and substance abuse [4]. ACEs, the aggregation of different types of adverse childhood experiences into the ACE score provides a more comprehensive tool to assess risk for cross-generational transmission of adversity from parents to children. There is rationale for considering the full ACE score, not just individual ACEs, when measuring the sum of adversity an individual’s experiences because various types of adversity are thought to impact health hazards through overlapping risk pathways, such as the final common pathways of the endocrine stress response and increased allostatic load [5,6]. Results: Among 2205 parent-child dyads, children of parents with four or more ACEs had 3.25-fold

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