The role of the mother-child relationship in the development of psychosocial problems in sexually abused children: Implicit and explicit measures

Objectives: Parental support is a strong predictor for child adjustment after child sexual abuse (CSA). However, most studies examined the parents’ perspective on the parent-child relationship. The few existing studies using... [ view full abstract ]

Objectives: Parental support is a strong predictor for child adjustment after child sexual abuse (CSA). However, most studies examined the parents’ perspective on the parent-child relationship. The few existing studies using the child’s perspective suggest that abused children’s conscious reactions may differ from their unconscious reactions toward their parents. The aim of this study was to examine the mother-child relationship quality, using both implicit and explicit measures, in a sample of abused and non-abused children, and to relate this to psychosocial problems.

Method: In a cross-sectional study, 23 mothers of sexually abused and 49 mothers of non-abused children (7 to 16 years) completed the Child Behavior Checklist to measure internalizing and externalizing behavior problems in their children. Their children completed the Security Scale as an explicit measure of the quality of the mother-child relationship. Also, an Implicit Association Test (IAT) was designed as an implicit measure of the quality of the mother-child relationship.
Results: Mothers of abused children perceived significantly more internalizing and externalizing problems than mothers of non-abused children (p’s < .001). There were no differences between abused and non-abused children in self-reported attachment security (p = .10) or IAT scores (p = .31). Self-reported attachment security and IAT scores were unrelated (r = .06; p = .62). A hierarchical regression analysis showed that self-reported attachment security predicted internalizing (p = .003) and externalizing problems (p = .001). In contrast to our hypothesis, IAT scores did not predict psychosocial problems (p’s > .05). There were no significant interaction-effects.
Conclusions: These findings suggest that mother-child relationship quality, both self-reported and implicitly measured, may not be impaired in sexually abused children. Also, self-reported mother-child relationship quality may be equally important for adjustment in both abused and non-abused children. However, more research is needed to examine implicit measures of mother-child relationship.