An examination of relationship between childhood traumas and parental abuse awareness

In this thesis, the relationships between parents' childhood trauma history, parents' emotion regulation skills, conflict resolution methods in their own relationships, and parents' awareness of abuse and neglect were examined. A total of 494 parents living in Turkey with children aged between 3-6 years participated in this study. As a result of outlier analysis, 45 participants were excluded from the dataset to ensure the integrity of the analysis results. Following this process, analyses were conducted with 449 participants. Among these participants, 398 (88.6%) were female and 51 (11.4%) were male. To collect data for the study, the following instruments were utilized: Demographic Information Form, Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, Conflict Resolution Styles Scale in Romantic Relationships, Difficulty in Emotion Regulation Scale - Short Form, and Parent-Child Abuse and Neglect Awareness Scale. Data analyses were performed using SPSS 25 and AMOS 26 software packages. The model, which included childhood trauma, emotion regulation difficulty, conflict resolution, and abuse and neglect awareness, was tested using structural equation modeling. Structural equation modeling was conducted using the AMOS 26 (Analysis of Moment Structures) program. Due to the unacceptable skewness and kurtosis values even after removing outliers from the sexual abuse dimension, this dimension was not included in the analyses. Similarly, the physical abuse dimension was not included in the analyses due to its alpha coefficient being well below the acceptable value of .70. Therefore, model analyses were conducted with emotional abuse, emotional neglect, and physical neglect variables. According to the results, the prevalence rate of emotional abuse among participants was 32.5%, emotional neglect was 38.08%, and physical neglect was 46.32%. When looking at the levels of awareness of child abuse and neglect, it was found that 10.2% of the participants had moderate awareness, 71.9% had high awareness, and 17.8% had very high awareness. Analysis results indicated that emotional abuse, emotional neglect, and physical neglect positively predicted emotion regulation difficulty. Emotional abuse positively predicted negative conflict resolution, while no significant relationship was found with positive conflict resolution. Emotional neglect positively predicted negative conflict resolution and negatively predicted positive conflict resolution. Regarding physical neglect, no significant relationship was found with negative conflict resolution, but it negatively predicted positive conflict resolution. There was no relationship between emotional abuse, emotional neglect, and awareness of abuse and neglect. Physical neglect negatively predicted awareness of abuse and neglect. Positive conflict resolution positively predicted awareness of abuse and neglect. There was no relationship between emotion regulation difficulty and negative conflict resolution with awareness of abuse and neglect. In terms of indirect relationships, emotion regulation difficulty was found to mediate the relationship between emotional abuse, emotional neglect, and physical neglect with negative conflict resolution. Additionally, positive conflict resolution was found to mediate the relationship between emotional neglect and awareness of abuse and neglect.