| This study investigated the intergenerational transmission of trauma between Vietnamese refugee mothers and their second- generation daughters through effects of maladaptive parenting. Twenty refugee mothers and their daughters and 14 immigrant mothers and their daughters were recruited from a local church and a high school (N = 68). The mother's measures included Harvard Trauma Questionnaire (HTQ) and Hopkin's Symptom Checklist-25 (HSCL-25). The daughter's measures were Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI), Relationship with Parents Scale (RPS), and Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI). Results indicated that refugee mothers had higher trauma exposure, higher trauma symptoms, higher depression, and anxiety symptoms relative to the immigrant mothers. However, results from the between-group and the within-group analyses showed no statistically significant relationships between the mothers' symptoms and their parenting. Similarly, there were no significant relationships between the mothers' symptoms and the daughters' symptoms. Therefore, support was not found for the study's main hypothesis regarding intergenerational transmission of trauma. It was clear that the representativeness of the participant sample, the truthfulness of participants' reporting, the participants' familiarity with research surveys, and the lack of assessment of the daughters' trauma exposure posed considerable issues that might have affected this study's outcomes. |
