Parenting and Child Physical Abuse PDF

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Parenting and Child Physical Abuse...

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Parenting and Child Physical Abuse Monday 5th December

Parenting and Child Physical Abuse (CPA) Learning outcomes • • • • •

Show understanding of the key dimensions and styles of parenting, and of their developmental significance Discuss physical punishment, and its connection with parenting styles, physical abuse, and child outcome Demonstrate understanding of the issues of definition, recognition, reporting & recording of CPA Show knowledge of research findings indicating the likely causes of CPA Critically evaluate theories regarding the aetiology of CPA

Parenting and Child Physical Abuse (CPA): Lecture outline • • • • •

Dimensions and styles of parenting Parenting styles and child outcomes Physical punishment and child outcomes Defining and measuring CPA Aetiology of CPA: – Parent factors – Child factors – Multidimensional / ecological model

Parenting dimensions Baumrind, 1967, 1980; 2010; Maccoby & Martin, 1983 All 4 combinations possible: some parents are strict and cold, others are undemanding and warm, etc.

Demandingness /control

Parenting styles Baumrind, 1967, 2010; Maccoby & Martin, 1983

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Authoritarian – Controlling, coercive, strict discipline – Low warmth and communication Permissive – Warm, overindulgent – Lack of discipline and control Authoritative – Controlling, reasonable demands – Warm and communicative Uninvolved – Neglecting, detached, indifferent – Few rules and demands

Child outcomes of the parenting styles Baumrind, 1967, 1977, 2010; Steinberg et al., 1994, 2006 Emotionality / responsiveness

From Bee & Boyd, 2010, p. 348

Parenting pyramid Webster-Stratton, 1998

However, … •

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Generally low effect sizes – Parenting styles don’t have much effect on children – Siblings have the same parents, but are very different (e.g., Deater-Deckard & Petrill, 2004; Feinberg & Hetherington, 2001) Correlations, not causes – Perhaps children influence parenting Likely to be transactional (bi-directional) – Parents influence children – And children influence parents – See Ayoub et al., 2018

Physical punishment Gershoff, 2002; Gershoff & Grogan-Kaylor, 2016 • •

Meta-analyses of 88 and 75 studies (N=160,000) Physical punishment predicts: – Immediate compliance – Physical abuse (child as victim and abuser) – Low moral internalization – Increased aggression (as child and adult), delinquency, antisocial behaviour – Poor mental health

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“… there is no evidence that spanking does any good for children and all evidence points to the risk of it doing harm” (2016, p.465) See also Ferguson, 2013; Heilman et al., 2015; Lee et al., 2013

Child maltreatment Abuse: – Physical (CPA) – Sexual (CSA) – Emotional • Neglect: – Physical – Psychological – Comorbidity: 90% McGee et al. (1993) •

Defining CPA Number, severity or duration of events? Actions or consequences? Intentional or unintentional? ‘Hitting, shaking, throwing, poisoning, burning or scalding, drowning, suffocating, or otherwise causing physical harm to a child’ - Department of Health, 2001 • ‘The non-accidental infliction of bodily injury to a child – from a bruise, to hospitalization, to death’ - Barnett, 1993 • • • •

Measuring CPA • •

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Detection / reporting problems Recording bias – Hampton & Newberger, 1985; Krase, 2015 – SES, ethnicity, employment and type of abuse all distinguished reported from unreported cases Methods: – Official records – Clinical samples – Surveys

Extent of CPA •

Children hurt by a caregiver, since birth – UK: 3.4% (Radford et al., 2011) – US: 9.1% (Finkelhor et al., 2009) – Child homicides, England (Bentley et al., 2016)

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– 2014/15: 5.6 per million (= 62 children) – 2005/6: 7.4 per million See Pritchard & Williams (2010) for an international comparison 1974 - 2006

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Finkelhor et al., 2010, from Giardino et al., 2012

Parental predictors of CPA (e.g. Belsky, 1993; Cicchetti & Toth, 2016; Stith et al., 2009; Wolfe, 2005) Alcohol or drug problems – E.g., Eiden et al., 2007; Emery & Laumann-Billings, 1998 • Youth • Poverty, unemployment, poor housing • Poor understanding of children, e.g., – Unrealistic expectations – Misattributions of intentionality of misbehaviour – E.g., Bugental & Happaney, 2004; Haskett et al., 2003 • Poor social support – E.g. Black et al., 2001; Wolfner & Gelles, 1993 • Gender E.g., Creighton, 2002; Nobes & Smith, 2000 •

Parental predictors of CPA (con.) • •

History of abuse: intergenerational transmission – e.g., Ozturk Ertem et al., 2000; Thornberry et al., 2012 Authoritarian parenting

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– Gershoff, 2002; 2016 Intolerance – Frodi & Lamb, 1980; Wolfe, 2005 Stress – Whipple & Webster-Stratton, 1991 Stepparents – Daly & Wilson, 1996, 2008

Child homicides by stepfathers •

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Daly & Wilson, 1994; 2008 – British stepfathers > 100x more likely than genetic fathers to fatally beat young children – ‘Cinderella effect’: stepfathers not genetically invested – ‘… stepparenthood is the strongest risk factor for child abuse ever identified’ (Pinker, 1997) Nobes et al., 2018 – Replicated Daly & Wilson’s study – Stepfathers much younger than genetic fathers • Confounding variable: Fathers who kill tend to be young – ‘Stepfathers’ often didn’t live with victims • Misclassified: Many weren’t stepfathers – < 5 years: stepchildren might be at slightly greater risk – > 5 years: no greater risk

Child predictors of CPA (e.g. Belsky, 1993; Cicchetti & Toth, 2016; Sidebotham et al., 2003; Wolfe, 2005) • • • • • •

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Age: infancy (?) Gender: no association (?) Prematurity / low birth weight Unintended pregnancy Poor health Behaviour / temperament: – aggressive, unresponsive, hyperactive, irritable – Child factors are significant, but many other factors are involved Maltreatment of these children depends on parents’ characteristics

Multidimensional model of abuse (Belsky, 1984; 1993; Cicchetti & Toth, 2016) Model combines: • Parents’ personal resources – E.g., mental health, history, understanding of child • Social support

– E.g., family and friends, job and finances • Child characteristics – E.g., temperament, ease of control, hyperactivity Model includes: • Destabilising factors – E.g., social stressors, poor relationships • Compensatory factors – E.g., buffer relationships, positive models

Belsky’s (1993) developmental-ecological analysis Maltreatment is a transactional byproduct of processes taking place between parent and child in a family and community context”

Summary

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Parenting styles – Authoritative predicts good child outcomes – Authoritarian, permissive and uninvolved predict poor child outcomes – Important to be warm, communicative, consistent, and firm – Physical punishment – Frequent and harsh physical punishment predicts abuse and aggression – Abuse is usually punishment ‘gone too far’

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Physical abuse – Problems with definition and recording – No distinctive parent profile (‘abusive personality’) – Evidence of slight child effects – Some evidence for intergenerational transmission – Step parenthood might be an important factor

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Multifactorial model required to explain abuse: – Parents’ personal resources – Combined with destabilising factors, e.g., social stressors, poor relationships – And compensatory factors, e.g.,” buffer relationships, positive models...