Background

An expansive literature on community violence exposure has almost exclusively focused on its effects on children, yet little is known about the effects of exposure to community violence on parents. Similarly, a wealth of research has investigated the impact of intimate partner violence, but not community violence, on mothers.

Objective

This longitudinal study investigates how mothers’ exposure to community violence is associated with maternal well-being and young adolescents’ internalizing and externalizing behaviors, after controlling for maternal exposure to intimate partner violence and children’s exposure to violence.

Methods

With a multiethnic sample of 779 mothers and children, we conducted structural equation modeling using secondary data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods.

Results

Findings revealed that, after controlling for maternal exposure to intimate partner violence and child victimization and witnessing violence, mothers’ exposure to community violence was concurrently linked to higher levels of maternal depressive symptoms. In turn, maternal depressive symptoms were longitudinally associated with higher levels of internalizing and externalizing behaviors during preadolescence. Results also indicated a statistically significant indirect relation between mothers’ witnessing of community violence and young adolescents’ internalizing and externalizing behaviors through maternal depressive symptoms.

Conclusions

Our findings underscore the need to adopt a broader family systems approach in examining the effects of community violence exposure and highlight the potential benefits of reducing both children’s and mothers’ exposure to community violence to improve mothers’ psychological well-being and adolescent outcomes.

中文翻译：

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检查母亲对社区暴力的暴露：它如何影响青少年？

背景

大量关于社区暴力暴露的文献几乎完全专注于其对儿童的影响，但对社区暴力暴露对父母的影响知之甚少。同样，大量研究调查了亲密伴侣暴力而非社区暴力对母亲的影响。

客观的

这项纵向研究调查了在控制了母亲遭受亲密伴侣暴力和儿童遭受暴力之后，母亲遭受社区暴力与母亲幸福和青少年内化和外化行为之间的关系。

方法

我们以 779 名母亲和儿童的多种族样本为基础，使用芝加哥社区人类发展项目的二手数据进行了结构方程建模。

结果

调查结果显示，在控制了母亲遭受亲密伴侣暴力和儿童受害以及目睹暴力之后，母亲暴露于社区暴力同时与更高水平的孕产妇抑郁症状有关。反过来，母亲的抑郁症状与青春期前较高水平的内化和外化行为纵向相关。结果还表明，母亲目睹社区暴力与青少年通过母亲抑郁症状的内化和外化行为之间存在统计学上显着的间接关系。

结论

我们的研究结果强调需要采用更广泛的家庭系统方法来检查社区暴力暴露的影响，并强调减少儿童和母亲暴露于社区暴力的潜在好处，以改善母亲的心理健康和青少年结果。