Behavioral Observations of Parenting in Battered Women

Levendosky, Alytia A.
Graham-Bermann, Sandra A.

¹Department of Psychology, University of Michigan

²Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Alytia A. Levendosky, Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, 129 Psychology Research Building, East Lansing, Michigan 48824. Electronic mail may be sent to [email protected].

This study was funded by a Rackham Dissertation Grant from the University of Michigan to Alytia A. Levendosky. We wish to thank the following colleagues for their helpful comments and suggestions: Robert Caldwell, Michael Lambert, and Joel Nigg. We thank the following students who assisted in data collection for this project: Michelle Byrd, Julie Crews, Maureen Feldman, Stacey Gallagher, Shoma Ghose, Angie Kirchner, Shannon Lynch, Iran Naqvi, Santhi Periasamy, and Kristin Piehl. Finally, we thank the coders on this study: Andrea Scheppele, Michael Semel, Elaine Shpungin, and Lorelei Simpson.

Received Date: December 9, 1997; Revised Date: November 8, 1999; Accepted Date: November 8, 1999

Journal of Family Psychology 14(1):p 80-94, March 2000.

The current study assessed observational data of parenting in 95 battered women and their school-aged children's behavioral adjustment and analyzed them within an ecological framework. Results indicated that maternal experience of psychological and physical abuse predicts maternal warmth, but not maternal authority–control, over and above ontogenic and exosystemic factors. In addition, maternal experience of psychological abuse and maternal authority–control predicted children's observed behavior, over and above child characteristics. An ecological framework for understanding the effects of domestic violence on parenting was supported.