Models of Traumatic Experiences and Children's Psychological Adjustment: The Roles of Perceived Parenting and the Children's Own Resources and Activity

The relations between traumatic events, perceived parenting styles, children's resources, political activity, and psychological adjustment were examined among 108 Palestinian boys and girls of 11-12 years of age. The results showed that exposure to traumatic events increased psychological adjustment problems directly and via 2 mediating paths. First, the more traumatic events children had experienced, the more negative parenting they experienced. And, the poorer they perceived parenting, the more they suffered from high neuroticism and low self-esteem. Second, the more traumatic events children had experienced, the more political activity they showed, and the more active they were, the more they suffered from psychological adjustment problems. Good perceived parenting protected children's psychological adjustment by making them less vulnerable in two ways. First, traumatic events decreased their intellectual, creative, and cognitive resources, and a lack of resources predicted many psychological adjustment problems in a model excluding perceived parenting. Second, political activity increased psychological adjustment problems in the same model, but not in the model including good parenting.