Transition to adulthood of child sexual abuse victims

•CSA has an impact on a broad array of adult roles.•CSA affects the quality of adult roles more than the attainment of these roles.•Effect sizes for CSA were modest.•Most consistent findings of CSA on physical intimate partner violence in adulthood

There is extensive evidence that childhood sexual abuse (CSA) can have deleterious consequences for adult psychological and physical functioning. The extent to which CSA hampers victims in the fulfillment of adult roles such as marriage, employment, and parenting is less clear. In this review, we investigate the effects of CSA on adult roles in the domains education, employment, offending, relationships, and parenting. We reviewed the literature published since 1990. We find that CSA appears to be associated with the quality of adult roles more than the transition to these roles per se. The article ends with a discussion on the results and recommendations for future research.