Adults physically abused as children not more likely to physically abuse their children

https://www.nichd.nih.gov/newsroom/releases/042115-podcast-child-abuse

 Barrett Whitener: Contrary to conventional wisdom, adults who were physically abused as children were no more likely to abuse their own children than were other adults their age. That’s the conclusion of researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health. Their study, which was published in the journal Science, relied on public records to identify children who had been physically abused back in the 1960s and ‘70s. In one of the longest-running studies of its kind, the researchers followed up several times, not only with the original abused children, now in their late 40s and early 50s, but also with their children. The adult children of the originally physically-abused parents were no more likely to have been physically abused than others their age. However, the children of the abused parents were more likely to have been neglected and to have been sexually abused.