Addressing a few of your points:

"According to this, if you have physical neglect and verbal abuse, then if you add emotional neglect then things get better."

If we presume active harm is worse than passive harm, then adding the passive harm of emotional neglect (absence of interaction) would reduce (displace) some of the verbal abuse, which seems to me like it might produce a better outcome. Being belittled a few times every day is bad; being belittled all day long is worse. Like the employee who screws up everything he works on, but at least he's slow.

"If you have verbal abuse and emotional neglect, then if you add in physical neglect then things also get better."

Same general principle. Physical neglect can mean less interaction. When most interaction is harmful, a reduction of that interaction can reduce harm.

"For instance, compare physical neglect and verbal abuse with those two and sexual abuse added in." ... "The -.28 means it's MORE likely you'll get a good job? This just makes no sense."

Of course it could just be a burp in the data, but these results could also come from sexual abuse being slightly more likely to involve an adult outside the immediate family who cares about the child, who might have connections that make getting a job more likely, or something along those lines derived from having more connections outside the family.

Of course, this data is confusing, as should only be expected considering that they did not recognize a difference between consensual and nonconsensual sexual relationships, deeming them all "abusive". It is certainly something that merits more attention in order to clarify causes.

But there is no reason to think these results are terribly unlikely.




Baldur