Intergenerational transmission of adverse and positive childhood experiences and associations with child well-being

Background

Parental adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) contribute to offspring adversity and poor health outcomes, but little is known about whether and to what extent parental positive childhood experiences (PCEs) influence offspring positive experiences and well-being.

Objective

To investigate the association between parent and child ACEs and PCEs and their impact on child well-being and psychopathology.

Participants and setting

A national sample of n = 1016 US parents of 1–5-year-olds completed online surveys in September 2019.

Methods

Mediation analysis in a path modeling framework was used with stratified probability weights for generalizability to the US population.

Results

Each additional parent PCE equated to 0.32 (95 % CI: 0.20, 0.45) increase in child PCEs and each additional parent ACE equated to 0.18 (95 % CI: 0.06, 0.31) increase in child PCEs and 0.13 (95 % CI: 0.08, 0.18) increase in child ACEs. In turn, an increase in 1 child PCE was associated with 0.10–0.16 SD increase in well-being and 0.06–0.10 decrease in psychopathology, and each additional child ACE equated to 0.10–0.18 SD increase in psychopathology.

Conclusions

Results support the intergenerational transmission of PCEs and ACEs, advancing understanding of the role that parent PCEs play in promoting child PCEs and fostering child well-being. Findings underscore the importance of extending clinical surveillance of ACEs to include PCEs in pediatric and adult healthcare settings. Dual-generation programs that address the negative consequences of parental ACEs may be able to increase their impact by adding a parallel emphasis on PCEs and providing parents with tools to foster PCEs in their children.