Profiles of Self-reported Parenting Competence and Stress Among Women With/Without Histories of Childhood Sexual Abuse

Abstract

One aspect of women’s interpersonal functioning that may be affected by child sexual abuse (CSA) is parenting. The purpose of our study was to examine parenting profiles among women (N = 264) with/without histories of CSA. We performed a latent profile analysis (LPA) to establish profile membership based on women’s self-reported measures of parenting competence and stress. The best fitting model consisted of a three-class solution representing profiles of low competence/high stress (Class 1: 20.83 %), average competence and stress (Class 2: 59.85 %) and high competence/low stress (Class 3: 19.32 %). We also performed a multinomial logistic regression utilizing the estimates generated from the LPA to examine additional correlates of class membership. Our results revealed that women with a history of CSA were represented in all three classes; yet, there was no significant difference in women with histories of CSA across the three classes and CSA was not associated with class membership. We found that daily living hassles, women’s sense of personal mastery, acceptability of their child and having a partner were associated with class membership. Membership in Class 1 (low competence/high stress) was predicted by higher scores on daily hassles and lower scores on acceptability of child, compared to Class 2. There were three variables that predicted membership in Class 3, compared to Class 2: personal mastery, acceptability of child and having a partner. None of the other variables were significantly associated with class membership, including a history of CSA. Our findings indicate that regardless of CSA history, all women have strengths and capabilities which should be enhanced in order to promote parenting competence.