Citation

Davidson LL, Gruver RS. Pediatrics 2020; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020, American Academy of Pediatrics)

DOI

10.1542/peds.2020-0823

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

In an important and well-crafted study appearing in this month's issue of Pediatrics, Jeong et al1 investigate the impact of intimate partner violence (IPV) and of maternal and paternal intellectual and social stimulation on early child development in 11 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The study includes data on >18 000 children drawn from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), which are nationally representative household surveys that collect health and population data in >90 countries.2 The DHS include a core survey used in all countries and optional modules on a range of topics that each country may select. This remarkable study using routinely collected data was made possible by the simultaneous inclusion of both the Early Child Development Index (ECDI) module and the domestic violence module in the DHS in these 11 forward-thinking countries.

In their study, Jeong et al1 provide important national and regional estimates on the contribution of IPV to a low ECDI in children in LMICs. They make use of questions on the nature of parental interactions with the child, allowing a nuanced study of whether differences in paternal or maternal stimulation partially account for the impact of IPV; although ultimately, parental stimulation explained only a small proportion of the relationship between IPV and child development. This article complements the sparse published research on the impact of IPV on child development in LMICs. Previously, Durand et al3 leveraged Brazilian data from a multicountry study of domestic violence by the World Health Organization4 to demonstrate that physical and sexual IPV was associated with child behavior difficulties and school problems. Chander et al5 documented that the impact of IPV on preschool-aged child behavior in the South African Asenze cohort remained after adjusting for caregiver mental health and binge drinking. IPV has been included as a component in measures of the cumulative effect of adverse childhood experiences in LMICs, but these studies assess the cumulative effect of multiple stressors and cannot isolate the effects of IPV...

Language: en