(PS3-81) Adverse Childhood Experiences, Parenting Stress, Regulatory Focus and Their Relation to Parent-child Conflict Tactics

Enhancing the reach and impact of treatments to improve family wellbeing and reduce child maltreatment requires identification and understanding of the interrelations between complex factors that influence parenting behavior. The objective of this study was to understand the relationship between early adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) of mothers, their later parenting stress and regulatory strategies, and their current engagement in harsh parenting. The study was conducted in collaboration with our state’s Children’s Trust, which oversees multiple programs aimed at improving the wellbeing of mothers, children, and families. We intentionally recruited a sample of mothers with children 5 and younger (N=572) with demographic characteristics (i.e., race/ethnicity, marital status, and income) similar to mothers served by the Children’s Trust. These participants completed a survey that included an Adverse Childhood Experiences Questionnaire, which asked about child abuse, growing up with household dysfunction, and experiences of community adversity such as neighborhood violence; the Parenting Stress Index-Short Form, which asked about stress due to the parenting role and parent-child interactions; the Promotion/Prevention Regulatory Focus scale, which assessed tendencies towards promoting positive outcomes and towards preventing negative outcomes; and the Parent-Child Conflict Tactics Scale, a commonly used parent self-report measure of parent-child conflict management strategies, including harsh discipline practices indicative of physical and psychological abuse. A multiple regression analysis was performed examining possible predictors of scores on the Severity Scale of the Conflict Tactics Scale, indicative of higher levels of use of harsh discipline practices. Higher levels of harsh discipline practices were associated with higher scores on the ACEs questionnaire (β=−0.007, P < 0.01), higher levels of prevention regulatory focus (β=−0.037, P < 0.01), and higher levels of parenting stress (β=−0.256, P < 0.001). The presentation will include discussion of implications of the results in terms of intervening with parents exposed to ACEs to reduce stress and improve regulatory strategies, which may help prevent development of harsh parent-child conflict tactics.