Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2-28-2025
Abstract
This retrospective cohort study examined prosocial skills development in child welfare-involved children, how intimate partner violence (IPV) exposure explained heterogeneity in children's trajectories of prosocial skill development, and the degree to which protective factors across children's ecologies promoted prosocial skill development. Data were from 1,678 children from the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-being I, collected between 1999 and 2007. Cohort-sequential growth mixture models were estimated to identify patterns of prosocial skill development between the ages of 3 to 10 years. Four diverse pathways were identified, including two groups that started high (high subtle-decreasing; high decreasing-to-increasing) and two groups that started low (low stable; low increasing-to-decreasing). Children with prior history of child welfare involvement, preschool-age IPV exposure, school-age IPV exposure, or family income below the federal poverty level had higher odds of being in the high decreasing-to-increasing group compared with the high subtle-decreasing group. Children with a mother with greater than high school education or higher maternal responsiveness had higher odds of being in the low increasing-to-decreasing group compared with the low stable group. The importance of maternal responsiveness in fostering prosocial skill development underlines the need for further assessment and intervention. Recommendations for clinical assessment and parenting programs are provided.
Keywords
child maltreatment, intimate partner violence, longitudinal, prosocial skill development
Language
English
Publication Title
Development and Psychopathology
Grant
R03HD078416-01A1
Rights
© The Author(s), 2024. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY-NC-ND/4.0/), which permits non-commercial copying and redistribution of the material in any medium or format, provided the original work is not changed in any way and is properly cited.
Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Holmes MR, Bender AE, Yoon S, et al. Examination of protective factors that promote prosocial skill development among children exposed to intimate partner violence. Development and Psychopathology. 2025;37(1):490-503. doi:10.1017/S0954579424000087
Manuscript Version
Final Publisher Version