Discordant patterns and adulthood consequences of childhood maltreatment and foster care placement

Abstract Child maltreatment and foster care placement are common, unequally distributed, and consequential for life-course outcomes. Yet, little is known about how foster care placements vary across children who experience different types and frequencies of maltreatment, and about the adulthood consequences of experiencing specific combinations of maltreatment and foster care placement. In this article, we use Add Health data to (1) identify heterogeneous patterns of child maltreatment and foster care placement, using straightforward descriptive methods, (2) demonstrate why more statistically complex methods may better describe these patterns and the demographic profiles associated with them, and (3) document associations between child maltreatment, foster care placement, and adulthood health and educational outcomes. Taken together, our results reveal joint patterns of child maltreatment and foster care placement that cannot be detected with simple descriptive statistics, highlight that these patterns are heavily raced and classed, and demonstrate that exposure to such patterns during childhood is associated with specific vulnerabilities later in life.