Testing the Spillover Effect of Intimate Partner Violence Victimization on Emotionally Abusive and Harsh Parenting Practices: The Application of Propensity Score Matching.

This article examines the association between recent intimate partner violence (IPV) victimization and negative parenting practices—specifically emotionally abusive and harsh parenting—among community-based mothers of young children in Poland. Using a quasi-experimental design with propensity score matching (PSM) to control for 11 confounding variables (including financial distress, self-esteem, childhood violence history, mental distress, social support, and COVID-19-related stressors), the study found that although IPV-positive mothers initially reported higher levels of abusive parenting, these differences became statistically nonsignificant after matching. These results challenge the spillover hypothesis that IPV victimization directly leads to increased negative parenting when confounding factors are accounted for. The study highlights the importance of rigorous methodology in IPV research and calls for further investigation into IPV's impact on parenting across diverse populations.