The Cascading Effects of Prenatal Intimate Partner Violence on Child Aggression: A Cross-Lagged Analysis through Postnatal Intimate Partner Violence, Economic Hardship, and Maternal Depressive Symptoms

Background: Prenatal exposure to intimate partner violence (IPV) has been increasingly linked to developmental outcomes in children, yet existing evidence remains limited in that most studies assess outcomes at a single time point, with few accounting for the temporal dynamics among co-occurring risk factors, such as continued violence and economic instability, that may transmit prenatal IPV effects across childhood. The ecobiodevelopmental (EBD) theory posits that early adversities such as prenatal IPV may become biologically embedded through dysregulated stress-regulatory systems, with co-occurring environmental risk factors compounding over time to amplify children’s behavioral difficulties. Informed by EBD, this study examined the associations of prenatal IPV exposure with children’s aggressive behavior across ages 3, 5, and 9 by simultaneously modeling the temporal ordering, reciprocal associations, and indirect pathways among postnatal IPV, economic hardship, and maternal depressive symptoms.

Methods: Participants included 3,243 mother–child dyads (52.1% boys) from the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study. Prenatal IPV exposure was operationalized as a composite score (0–3) based on maternal reports of past-month physical and emotional victimization at childbirth, and retrospective recall of prenatal physical IPV at the 1-year follow-up. Postnatal IPV exposure (Conflict Tactics Scale), maternal depressive symptoms (Composite International Diagnostic Interview-Short Form), economic hardship (Survey of Income and Program Participation-based Index), and children's aggressive behavior (Child Behavior Checklist) were assessed at child ages 3, 5, and 9. Cross-lagged panel modeling was estimated using maximum likelihood in Mplus v.7, specifying autoregressive, cross-lagged, and indirect paths from prenatal IPV to aggressive behavior across waves, through postnatal IPV exposure, economic hardship, and maternal depressive symptoms. Models adjusted for child sex, maternal race/ethnicity, age, education, and household income.

Results: The model fit the data well (CFI=.994; TLI=.965; RMSEA=.021 [90%CI=.014-.027]; SRMR=.012). Prenatal IPV exposure was associated with children's aggressive behavior at ages 3 (β=.126, p<.001), 5 (β=.035, p=.039), and 9 (β=.036, p=.031); approximately two-thirds of the total effect (β=.109, p<.001) was transmitted indirectly through economic hardship, maternal depressive symptoms, and postnatal IPV exposure (β=.073, p<.001). Specifically, economic hardship (β=.044, p=.012) and maternal depressive symptoms (β=.043, p=.014) at age 5 were each uniquely associated with aggressive behavior at age 9, beyond the strong autoregressive stability of aggression across waves. Economic hardship and maternal depressive symptoms were also reciprocally associated with one another over time, generating cascading pathways from prenatal IPV to later aggression; however, pathways routed from economic hardship and maternal depressive symptoms through postnatal IPV exposure were not significant.

Conclusions and Implications: Findings support that prenatal IPV exposure contributes to children's aggressive behavior primarily through accumulating economic hardship and elevated maternal depressive symptoms, beyond IPV-specific pathways alone. The directional specificity of pathways, with IPV driving subsequent economic hardship and depressive symptoms but not vice versa, suggests that IPV may function as an antecedent that sets cascading family stress processes into motion, warranting future validation. Comprehensive perinatal interventions addressing not only IPV but also social determinants of health, including economic stability and community support resources, are needed to disrupt cascading risk and promote children's positive development.