Maternal support and caregiver-child symptom concordance among sexually abused children.

Abstract

Caregivers and children often diverge in their reports of children's trauma-related symptoms, and this discordance has been linked with children's behavioral difficulties and poorer treatment outcomes. Knowledge regarding what factors may be related to discordance is limited, and maternal support in relation to trauma-related symptom agreement has yet to be investigated. The aim of the present study was to examine the associations between discordance and both maternal emotional support and blame/doubt in caregivers' and children's reports of trauma-related symptoms in sexually abused children. Participants were treatment-seeking, sexually abused children (N=122) aged 8-12 years (M=9.45 years, SD=1.09; 70.5% female, 57.4% White) and their nonoffending caregivers. Low intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) indicated the presence of significant discordance across symptom types, with caregivers reporting higher levels of trauma-related difficulties, ICCs=-.21-.22. Older children were more likely to disclose higher levels of anger and sexual concerns than younger children, βs=.18-.33. Children's gender, race, and relationship to their caregiver were not related to symptom discordance. Further, maternal emotional support and blame/doubt were not associated with caregiver-child concordance for any examined difficulties. Assessment of both caregivers' and children's perceptions of trauma-related symptoms is vital given the likelihood of discordance in child and caregiver reports of symptom levels. Although maternal emotional support and blame/doubt may not be linked to concordance with regard to trauma-related difficulties, child age should further be considered as a potentially important factor in understanding caregiver-child symptom concordance.