Impact of childhood sexual abuse on resilience and sense of parental competence

This study aims (i) to better understand the effect of childhood sexual abuse on parenting and (ii) to study how co-occurrence of several types of abuse in addition to sexual abuse can affect resilience and the sense of parental competence.
The sample consists of 1904 French-speaking mothers aged 20 to 79 years old recruited through advertisements on social media. They completed four online questionnaires: a sociodemographic questionnaire, the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire Short-Form, the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale and the Parenting Sense of Competence scale.
The statistical results shows that resilience and sense of parental competence are lower when other types of childhood maltreatment accompany sexual abuse. Therefore, the impact of childhood sexual abuse on the resilience and the sense of parental competence is indirect and mediated by other forms of childhood maltreatment (physical abuse, emotional abuse, physical neglect and emotional neglect). Furthermore, resilience emerges as an important protective factor that reinforces the sense of parental competence.
These results suggest that factors influencing the sense of parental competence are not explained by the sexual abuse itself, but must also take into account the family context during childhood and the individual's ability to withstand adversity and bounce back from difficulties.