Citation

de la Sablonnière, Fortin A. Can. J. Behav. Sci. 2010; 42(4): 212-221.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010, Canadian Psychological Association, Publisher Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1037/a0017071

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Mothers' health and quality of mother-child relationship are often held as factors that predict the adaptation of children exposed to domestic violence, but the connection between these factors has not been analysed yet. This study verifies if mothers' health has a mediator or a moderator effect on the connection between domestic violence and mother-child relationship. The study was conducted with 111 abused women and their children aged 6 to 12 years. An indicator of physical health and a score of psychological distress were used to measure mothers' health. The mother-child relationship was evaluated from both the mother's and the child's perspective. The results show that the 2 indicators of mother's health have no mediator effect, but have a moderator effect when the mother-child relationship was evaluated by children themselves. The discussion underlines the importance of mother's health as a protective factor for mother-child relationship and the incidence of this result for intervention. The interest of having multiple informants is also underlined.