Session: Parental Trauma, Post Traumatic Stress, Parenting Practices, and Child Risk for Internalizing Behavior (Society for Prevention Research 24th Annual Meeting)

This symposium session aims to present a series of novel studies investigating the association of parent trauma and traumatic stress, parenting practices, and child internalizing symptoms. The symposium promotes this year’s conference themes of enhancing physical, social, and economic environments to improve health equity.  Post-traumatic stress symptomatology is associated with significant health risks in parents and children, and to reduced access to health services. The symposium deliberately integrates basic translational science and applied research from research programs in this area, with two basic studies informing a third applied one. All three studies highlight the role of parental trauma and post-traumatic stress as key risk factors that interact with parenting skills to increase the risk of child internalizing symptomatology.

The first paper, “Parental Post-Traumatic Stress and Overreactive Parenting as Risk Factors for Toddler Internalizing Behavior,” follows a community sample of parents and toddlers to investigate the influence of parental trauma and post-traumatic stress symptoms on toddlers’ internalizing behavior, testing the moderating influence of overreative parenting styles. The study finds that both paternal and maternal trauma histories, as well as maternal post-traumatic stress, at age one predicts child internalizing behavior at age two. There is also evidence for a moderating influence of overreactive parenting styles for mother’s trauma and stress in particular.

The second paper, “Parent’s Interpersonal Traumatic Stress, Parenting Practices and their Offspring’s Risk for Trauma Symptoms” extends the investigation of parent traumatic stress and offspring behavior to an older sample of school age children. The authors draw from a multi-generational prospective longitudinal study of a large community sample of young adults and their school aged offspring, investigating the association of interpersonal trauma (intimate partner violence), parent trauma symptoms, and offspring trauma symptoms. The authors find evidence that parent’s traumatic stress experience increases the risk for child traumatic stress symptoms measured an average of 6 years later. The findings further highlight the moderating role of both positive and negative parenting practices on this association.

The third paper, “Parent Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms as a Moderator of Intervention Effects on Child Internalizing Symptoms through Parenting Practices in a Randomized Controlled Trial for Military Families” describes a study of families who participated in a randomized controlled trial of a parenting preventive intervention for military families. Hypothesizing that parental traumatic stress may lead to reductions in the effectiveness of interventions for children, the study investigates whether parental traumatic stress symptoms may moderate the influence of intervention effects on children’s internalizing behaviors.

At the conclusion of the presentations, the discussant will summarize and key findings and moderate a discussion between the presenters and the symposium attendees. The integration of basic longitudinal and applied approaches will be of interest to the SPR Annual Meeting participants.