The purpose of this study was to investigate how different types of child maltreatment, independently and collectively, impact a wide range of risk behaviors that fall into three domains: sexual risk behaviors, delinquency, and suicidality. Cumulative classification and Expanded Hierarchical Type (EHT) classification approaches were used to categorize various types of maltreatment. Data were derived from Wave III of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). Our sample consisted of White, Black, Hispanic, and Asian females ages 18 to 27 (n = 7,576). Experiencing different kinds of maltreatment during childhood led to an extensive range of risk behaviors within the three identified domains. Women experiencing sexual abuse plus other maltreatment types had the poorest outcomes in all three domains. These findings illustrate that it may no longer be appropriate to assume that all types of maltreatment are equivalent in their potential contribution to negative developmental sequelae.

Despite overrepresentation of fathers as perpetrators in cases of severe physical child abuse and neglect, the role they play in shaping risk for physical child abuse and neglect is not yet well understood. This article reviews the possible father pathways that may contribute to physical child abuse and neglect risk and their existing empirical support. The present empirical base implicates a set of sociodemographic factors in physical maltreatment risk, including fathers' absence, age, employment status, and income they provide to the family. As well, paternal psychosocial factors implicated in physical child maltreatment risk include fathers' abuse of substances, their own childhood experiences of maltreatment, the nature of fathers' relationships with mothers, and the direct care they provide to the child. However, the empirical base presently suffers from significant methodological limitations, preventing more definitive identification of risk factors or causal processes. Given this, the present article offers questions and recommendations for future research and prevention.

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This study set out to examine father-related factors predicting maternal physical child abuse risk in a national birth cohort of 1,480 families. In-home and phone interviews were conducted with mothers when index children were 3 years old. Predictor variables included the mother–father relationship status; father demographic, economic, and psychosocial variables; and key background factors. Outcome variables included both observed and self-reported proxies of maternal physical child abuse risk. At the bivariate level, mothers married to fathers were at lower risk for most indicators of maternal physical child abuse. However, after accounting for specific fathering factors and controlling for background variables, multivariate analyses indicated that marriage washed out as a protective factor, and on two of three indicators was linked with greater maternal physical abuse risk. Regarding fathering factors linked with risk, fathers’ higher educational attainment and their positive involvement with their children most discernibly predicted lower maternal physical child abuse risk. Fathers’ economic factors played no observable role in mothers’ risk for physical child maltreatment. Such multivariate findings suggest that marriage per se does not appear to be a protective factor for maternal physical child abuse and rather it may serve as a proxy for other father-related protective factors.