The Association between Childhood Maltreatment, Self-Esteem, and Attachment in Adult Women Based on Data Analysis

This study used the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, and Experiences in Close Relationships Inventory to analyze the associations among childhood maltreatment, self-esteem, and adult attachment in four hundred eighty-seven single adult women. IBM SPSS was used to examine correlation analysis and variance analysis; EXCEL was used to draw line figures for variance analysis; and SPSS AMOS was employed to do latent variable structural equation modeling. The results showed that self-esteem was significantly and negatively associated with childhood physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, physical neglect, and emotional neglect. Moreover, attachment avoidance and attachment anxiety were significantly and positively associated with all five types of maltreatment. Analysis of variance results indicated that childhood physical neglect had the most minor effect on self-esteem, attachment avoidance, and attachment anxiety at the moderate to severe maltreatment levels. Physical abuse had the most effect on both self-esteem and attachment avoidance, whereas sexual abuse had the most effect on attachment anxiety at the severe level. The structural equation model results suggested that both emotional neglect and physical abuse negatively predicted self-esteem and positively predicted attachment avoidance and attachment anxiety. Moreover, self-esteem partially mediated the association between emotional neglect and attachment avoidance, and also partially mediated the association between physical abuse and attachment anxiety. Therefore, we concluded that five types of childhood maltreatment had adverse effects on self-esteem and adult attachment. Self-esteem played a partial mediating role in the associations between emotional neglect and attachment avoidance, and between physical abuse and attachment anxiety, respectively.