New study suggests intergenerational effect of witnessing intimate partner violence in childhood

Witnessing intimate-partner violence as a child may have an intergenerational effect, a new article in journal Stress suggests.

A set of four researchers at the E.P. Bradley Hospital and The Miriam Hospital, both affiliates of Brown University, looked at the effects of a mother witnessing domestic violence as a child and prenatal environments on their newborn babies. One month after birth, babies born to mothers who had seen intimate-partner violence had higher baseline levels of stress hormone, cortisol.

When a person faces a stressor, their cortisol levels rise, but the babies had poorer responses compared to those with mothers that did not witness IPV, according to the study.

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