ABSTRACT
Parenting can be difficult when parents are dealing with their own childhood issues such as childhood sexual abuse. Cohen (1995) stated that a possible long-term consequence of child sexual abuse is its effect on the survivor’s future ideas about parenting, as well as her functioning in this role. “Parenting is a challenging process made complicated by the interaction of individual characteristics and perceptions of parents with the behavior and development of the child” (Crnic & Booth, 1991, p. 1042). This study built on previous research in the area of parenting efficacy of women who were sexually abused in childhood by attempting to improve the regression model found in the original study entitled, Parenting among women sexually abused in childhood conducted by Benedict (1998) by adding child temperament to the model. In order to fulfill the purpose of the study, the secondary dataset consisting of 265 women sexually abused and not sexually abused in childhood from a prenatal clinic at The Johns Hopkins Hospital were examine using a two-stage least squares regression. The theoretical framework that guided this study is attachment theory, because it helped to explain the connections between parenting attachment and behaviors and their offspring’s attachment and behaviors. The findings were that payment source, hassles, current violence, and child temperament were all statistically significant to parenting efficacy. In conclusion, there is a relationship between how mothers’ view their children’s temperament and their view of their parenting efficacy.
