Associations between childhood victimization, parent-child closeness, and adulthood well-being outcomes: A network...

It remains unclear how childhood experiences, particularly dual exposure to child abuse and interparental violence, as well as positive childhood experiences, affect well-being in adulthood.

This study aims to build the network structure of different forms of childhood victimization, parent-child closeness, and adulthood well-being outcomes, with a focus on the core childhood factor that is strongly linked to adulthood well-being and the potential sequential relationship between the variables.

The retrospective study included 1528 participants between 18 and 65 in the community setting of Shenzhen, China.

Network analysis was used to identify the relationships between childhood experiences and well-being outcomes in adulthood. The network structure was constructed using R packages qgraph and bootnet. The directed acyclic graph (DAG) was used to explore the most probable direction of the proposed causal relationship.

The network structure shows the indirect interactions between childhood victimization and adulthood well-being via parent-child closeness. Particularly, parent-child closeness is linked to childhood psychological aggression directly and also through neglect and exposure to father-to-mother violence. DAG further indicates the potential sequential relationship between childhood experiences and adulthood well-being, in which psychological aggression plays a pivotal role.

The findings emphasize the significance of preventing childhood victimization, which can improve community health. There is a need for universal interventions to improve the awareness of psychological abuse and integrated services for poly-victims of childhood abuse and interparental violence. Programs aimed at reducing the impacts of child victimization should include efforts to strengthen parent-child relationships.