Child maltreatment and adult health in a national sample: Heterogeneous relational contexts, divergent effects?

These findings highlight a common and seemingly paradoxical pattern among MIDUS participants: the co-presence of harsh parental behavior and positive recollections of parental relationships during childhood. Moreover, these surprising patterns of retrospective interpretation predict very different experiences of adult health - health problems are most pronounced among maltreatment in cases where the respondent had a generally negative relationship with one or more of his or her parents.