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Parenting Among Women Sexually Abused in Childhood

Published by National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect | U.S. Department of Health & Human Services | Catalog Last Checked: July 31, 2026 at 09:02 PM | Dataset Last Updated: September 05, 2025
The objective of the present study was to examine the direct and indirect impacts of childhood sexual abuse on maternal attitudes, perceptions, and behavior. The study's participants were a subset of 357 primiparous women interviewed at 28 to 32 weeks' gestation between the fall of 1990 and early 1992. At the time of the initial interview, almost 35% of the women reported sexual abuse before age 18. In 1995 and 1996, 265 women, 74% of the original sample, were re-interviewed when their children were between two and fours years old. In this sample 40% of the respondents had been identified as sexually abused in the first study. In the follow-up interview, variables measuring parenting outcomes included: child-rearing competence, satisfaction, and efficacy; parenting stress; discipline practices; and family functioning. Variables measuring possible mediating factors between a history of sexual abuse and parenting practices included: education, occupation, income, family structure; current physical and mental health parameters, particularly depressive symptomatology; perceived current stresses unrelated to parenting; current family violence or sexual victimization; and parental sense of mastery. The data file distributed for this study contains 265 cases and 556 variables. Investigators: Benedict, Mary

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