Abstract
The strong link between mothers' history of childhood victimization and children's risk of experiencing maltreatment is not well understood. Two hundred and twenty mother-child dyads from poor, high-crime urban neighborhoods, 58% of which included children who had been maltreated, were studied. In univariate logistic regression analyses, maternal childhood history of victimization was associated with increased child risk of maltreatment. However, this relationship disappeared in multivariate logistic regression analyses, after controlling for mothers' current marital status, victimization as an adult, and depressive symptoms, which all continued to predict maltreatment risk of children. Factors in mothers' current situations appear to partially explain the link between their experiences of childhood victimization and their children's risk of maltreatment.