Do Abused Parents Become Child Abusers?
Multiple interacting factors shape the intergenerational cycle of maltreatment.
Posted May 23, 2026 | Reviewed by Margaret Foley
This is the first post in a series.
Whenever I (Frank W. Putnam) present research on the intergenerational transmission of risk for the maltreatment of offspring, I start by emphasizing that the majority of parents who were abused or neglected as children do not become abusive parents.
Given the topics of my presentations and podcasts, it is likely that a substantial percentage of the audience will have a childhood maltreatment history or know someone close to them who does. Many parents who were abused as children worry that they may become abusers themselves. In general, those parents who worry about this possibility are highly unlikely to become child abusers, because one of the best ways to break the family cycle of violence is to acknowledge and deal with this personal history.
The recognition and emotional processing of such powerful personal experiences do not necessarily require a therapist (although one can be very helpful). One study found, for example, that telling a good friend, spouse, or significant other was associated with demographically high-risk maltreated mothers not having their children abused either by themselves or by abusive partners (Egeland & Susman-Stillman, 1996).
Some Parents With a Maltreatment History Do Become Child Abusers
Nonetheless, many studies find that a parental history of childhood maltreatment is the single strongest risk factor for child maltreatment of one’s offspring. For example, in a well-controlled, prospective study, the children of abused parents had a 6- to 12-fold increased risk of being abused compared to children of parents without abuse histories (Ertem et al., 2000). This intergenerational risk effect is strongest for physical abuse but exists for all major types of maltreatment.
Parental risk factors operate both directly (i.e., the parent is the abuser) and indirectly (e.g., the parent lacks vigilance, creates an unsafe environment, fails to protect, or associates with abusive partners). For maltreated parents, the overall parent(s)-to-child intergenerational transmission rate for some form of maltreatment is estimated to be about 30 percent, which means that approximately 70 percent of parents with childhood maltreatment histories do not maltreat their children. However, a 30 percent rate of intergenerational transmission of maltreatment is about six times higher than the spontaneous child maltreatment rate for non-abused parents (Kaufman & Zigler, 1987).
Factors That Further Increase Risk for Intergenerational Maltreatment
A number of other factors in combination with a history of childhood maltreatment further amplify this intergenerational transmission effect, notably maternal depression and harsh and abusive parenting , by up to fourfold (Zuravin & Greif, 1989; Banyard et al., 2003). When a parental history of childhood maltreatment is combined with substance abuse , the risk for maltreatment of offspring increases dramatically. For example, in one study of abused mothers, maternal alcohol abuse increased the risk of sexual abuse of offspring from 3.6-fold to 23.7-fold (McCloskey & Bailey, 2000).
Other parental and family factors synergistically increasing intergenerational risk for offspring maltreatment include domestic violence , poverty, young maternal age, social isolation , presence of a stepfather or live-in boyfriend, poor marital quality, and large family size, in roughly that order. Ongoing domestic violence, for example, has been found to increase risk for the physical abuse of offspring by 2.6 to 4.4 times.
In our four-decades-long study of sexually abused girls, aged 6 to 15 at enrollment, followed into middle age, we found that the abused girls’ level of dissociation, both at enrollment and much later as young adults (mean age 25 years), proved to be the best predictor of which sexually abused girls exhibited harsh or punitive parenting as mothers (Putnam, 2026). In many cases, the mothers were not the abuser of their child, but they failed to protect their child from perpetrators through lack of vigilance, often further diminished by substance abuse, dissociation, and depression.
Patterns of Intergenerational Maltreatment
Most cases of child maltreatment involve multiple types of maltreatment, which is also the most common form (roughly 40 percent) of maltreatment found in their offspring. If a parent reports experiencing only a single type of maltreatment (for example, only sexual abuse), their abused offspring are still statistically most likely to experience multiple abuse types rather than just the parentally reported single maltreatment type.
In the cases of a single parental maltreatment subtype, authorities frequently divide the offspring’s maltreatment into homotypic and heterotypic patterns. In homotypic cases, parents exposed to a single subtype (e.g., childhood sexual abuse) have children abused in the same way. In heterotypic cases, a single parental maltreatment subtype can be associated with different subtype(s) in offspring (e.g., parental sexual abuse associated with neglect and/or physical abuse in offspring).
Does Intergenerational Transmission Risk Vary by Maltreatment Subtype?
An important question for efforts to prevent the intergenerational transmission of maltreatment is whether the basic maltreatment subtypes (sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse , and neglect) share the same intergenerational transmission mechanism(s) or each subtype requires its own prevention program.
The cumulative evidence is that the major forms of child maltreatment share three primary risk factors for intergenerational transmission of maltreatment: 1) a parental history of maltreatment; 2) parental substance abuse; and 3) domestic violence. Effective prevention and intervention strategies must address all three (and sometimes additional risk factors such as socioeconomic stressors) to reduce the incidence of the major forms of child maltreatment.
Opportunities to Interrupt the Family Cycle of Violence
The intergenerational transmission of child maltreatment is certainly not inevitable. Rather, it is influenced by a complex combination of risk factors. Understanding these risk factors and their interactions is crucial for developing effective prevention and intervention strategies while promoting positive childhood experiences and resilience to break the pernicious generational cycle of maltreatment and family violence. If we understand how these major risk factors interact to increase the risk of family violence and abuse across generations, we will have specific prevention targets to interrupt the family cycle of violence.
Banyard, V. (1997). The impact of childhood sexual abuse and family functioning on four dimensions of women's later parenting. Child Abuse & Neglect, 21 , 1095-1107.
Egeland, B., & Susman-Stillman, A. (1996). Dissociation as a mediator of child abuse across generations. Child Abuse & Neglect, 20 , 1123-1132.
Ertem, I., Leventhal, J., & Dobbs, S. (2000). Intergenerational continuity of child physical abuse: How good is the evidence? The Lancet, 356 , 814-819.
Kaufman, J., & Zigler, E. (1987). Do abused children become abusive parents? American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 57 (2), 186-192.
McCloskey, L. A., & Bailey, J. A. (2000). The intergenerational transmission of risk for child sexual abuse. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 15 , 1019-1035.
Putnam, F.W. (2026). Old Before Their Time: A Scientific Life Investigating How Maltreatment Harms Children and the Adults They Become. Routledge.
Zuravin, S., & Greif, G. L. (1989). Normative and child-maltreating AFDC mothers. Social Casework, 70 (2), 76-84.
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Judith Lewis Herman, M.D., is a semi-retired professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Frank W. Putnam, M.D. , is a professor of clinical psychiatry at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine.
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