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This study evaluated how adverse childhood experiences (ACE) and emerging adults’ perceptions of their mothers’ disorganized caregiving behaviors relate to dissociative symptoms in emerging adulthood. Undergraduate students (N = 162, M(SD)age = 19.01(1.49) years, 68.52 percent female) reported on their ACE, childhood experiences of disorganized caregiving (1) helplessness i.e. abdication of the caregiving role, 2) fear within the mother-child dyad, and 3) child as a caregiver i.e. role-reversed behaviors), and current dissociative symptoms. Results showed that although ACE were not significantly related to emerging adults’ dissociative symptoms, they were significantly and positively related to the mother helpless and mother-child frightened elements of perceived disorganized caregiving. Further, emerging adults who reported greater perceptions of maternal helplessness and mother-child frightened behaviors in childhood reported greater dissociative symptoms. Importantly, ACE had cross-sectional, indirect effects on dissociative symptoms through these two aspects of disorganized caregiving. Only the pathway through the mother-child frightened dimension yielded a unique indirect effect. Child caregiving was not significantly related to the main study variables and did not explain the relation between ACE and dissociative symptoms. Findings highlight that offsprings’ perceptions of mothers’ helpless and frightened caregiving behaviors may be important in the development of dissociative symptoms in emerging adulthood.
Public Relevance
The current study highlights how emerging adults’ perceptions of their caregivers’ abilities to care for them in childhood may be related to adverse experiences in childhood and current dissociative experiences.
Key Findings
Emerging adults who reported greater childhood adversity also reported greater maternal helplessness and mother-child frightened behaviors (aspects of perceived disorganized caregiving). Further, both these aspects of perceived disorganized caregiving were positively associated with emerging adults’ dissociative symptoms and independently accounted for indirect effects of childhood adversity on dissociative symptoms. Finally, the mother-child frightened dimension uniquely explained the relation between childhood adversity and dissociative symptoms when accounting for pathways through the other perceived disorganized caregiving dimensions.