Psychosocial correlates of child abuse potential in multiply disadvantagedadolescent mothers

Objective: This study had two aims: First to examine psychosocial correlate s of child maltreatment risk, and second to assess the validity of the CAP Inventory (Milner, 1986) with multiply disadvantaged teenage mothers. Method: Participants were 75 adolescent mothers who were wards of the Illin ois child protection system. Mothers (aged 14-18) and infants participated in home-based psychosocial assessment of personal and parenting functioning . Group comparisons examined differences for mothers with elevated versus n ormal versus invalid CAP scores due to faking good. Results: Findings indicated that abuse risk groups differed on emotional di stress, social support satisfaction, reading achievement, and years of educ ation, but not on parenting beliefs or quality of child stimulation. Differ ences favored the normal over the elevated risk group in all significant co mparisons, whereas mothers with elevated faking good differed from normals only in lower reading achievement. Multiple regression analysis highlighted emotional distress, support dissatisfaction, and low achievement as signif icant predictors of greater abuse risk. Conclusions: Despite sharing multiple disadvantages, adolescent wards are a heterogeneous group who show different levels of psychosocial functioning corresponding to levels of child maltreatment risk. The findings provide su pport for the concurrent validity and clinical applicability of the CAP Inv entory with disadvantaged teenage mothers. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd.