Partner Cooperation, Conflict, Maternal Mental Health, and Parenting Behaviors in Rural Kenya: Towards a Two-Generational Understanding of Gender Transformation Benefits

Increasing partner cooperation is an established approach to reducing intimate partner violence. This strategy, known in the literature as “gender transformation,” benefits mental and physical health of women and men. Less is known about the potential for gender transformation strategies to improve the nurturing context for children. We hypothesize that increasing partner cooperation, a common benefit of community-based empowerment programs, would decrease child maltreatment through reducing intimate partner conflict and improving maternal mental health. This study utilizes cohort data from women (n = 400) participating in a combined group-based microfinance program to assess potential mechanisms by which partner cooperation at T1 (June 2018) predicts less children maltreatment at T2 (June 2019). As hypothesized, partner cooperation predicts less subsequent child maltreatment—frequency of neglect, corporal punishment, physical assault, and psychological abuse in the past month. This association is mediated completely by subsequent more partner cooperation and less intimate partner conflict, maternal loneliness, and depression. Implications of this study include potential for combining multiple development areas—women’s empowerment, intimate partner cooperation, mental health, and child nurturing contexts. Future study should assess these pathways in a cluster-based randomized trial, and explore how findings may inform policy and practice where these domains are less integrated.