Parenting Practices and Child Maltreatment Essay ⋆ Criminal Justice Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Parenting practices are central to understanding child maltreatment and to intervening to improve the care and safety of children. Child maltreatment is inherently affected by parenting practices, either as a behavior of commission of violence (physical abuse and sexual abuse) or omission of proper care (child neglect). Child maltreatment occurs when parenting practices are distorted or destructive. Most child maltreatment intervention programs focus on improving parenting practices.

Parenting practices are influenced by many factors, including social support, economic resources, community social resources, and attachment history and capacity. Positive parenting is associated with long-term positive child outcomes. These outcomes include cognitive ability and school success, emotional stability and self-control, ability to manage emotions, and interpersonal skills including the capacity for appropriate attachments.

This essay summarizes research on parenting behaviors associated with child maltreatment and violence. It describes positive parenting practices and provides a review of parenting skills and programs that have been shown to reduce violence in families.

Parenting Behaviors Associated With Child Maltreatment

Child maltreatment is associated with particular patterns of parenting behavior and family interaction. Abusive and neglectful families interact differently from nonmaltreating families. They verbally interact less than typical nonmaltreating families. They have a higher proportion of negative, coercive, or conflictual verbal interactions. They have a lower proportion of positive family interactions.

Wahler, Patterson, and others have developed a conceptualization of the cycle of coercion that can lead to violence in families. The cycle begins with the low frequency and negative interaction patterns defined above. When the parent attempts to direct or control the child’s behavior and the child does not comply, the parent experiences anger at the child’s noncompliance and interprets it as a personal power threat. The parent responds alternatively with inaction and a sense of defeat or with accompanying anger and increasingly aggressive threats and actions, sometimes violent. The child, in turn, escalates defiance and noncompliance over time as this cycle repeats itself. Repetitions of this cycle lead to hostility between parent and child, can escalate to violence, and serve as a powerful tool to teach the child violent behavior patterns and aggression as a solution to human conflict. Families prone to the cycle of coercion are socially isolated, with few positive or constructive social relationships with neighbors or family members.

Other research supports an ecological view of parenting practices. Parenting practices are influenced by social factors such as cultural practices, economic resources or deprivation, and neighborhoods with limited social capital, that is, limited opportunities for enrichment and prosocial activities and high levels of stress due to crime and violence. Child factors include challenges such as special emotional, cognitive, or physical health conditions or behavior problems due to earlier exposure to violent and coercive parenting practices. Parental factors include isolation, marital conflict and violence, mental illness, and lack of social support. With the proper ecological supports, parents can learn prosocial, constructive, and nurturing parenting practices.

Positive Parenting Model

Baumrind’s model of parenting style has been widely influential and describes parenting practices as associated with positive child outcomes from infancy through adolescence. Baumrind argues (a) that parental environmental influences as well as the child’s genetic endowment are critical determinants of well socialized and -adapted children, (b) that parental discipline as well as attachment are necessary to produce well adapted and socialized offspring, and (c) that parenting styles can be successfully described on a twodimensional, four-quadrant model of parenting. The Baumrind model describes two key parenting practices: support and demandingness. Support or nurturance includes parenting practices that produce strong parent–child attachment. These practices include empathy and sensitivity toward the child and consistent, supportive attention to the child. Demandingness includes effective limit setting and behavior controls for children at age-appropriate levels. Parental demands, when coexisting with strong support for the child, provide an environment for the child that encourages adaptation and socialization. Criticism of this model centers on whether demandingness is a positive or negative parental behavior and more recently, on the relevance of the model for families of diverse cultures.

The dimensions of support and demand lead to a four-quadrant typology of parenting styles. The styles are identified as authoritative (high support and highly demanding), permissive (high support and low demands), laissez faire (low support and low demands), and authoritarian (low support and high demands). Authoritative parenting has been shown to produce the best child adaptation outcomes in different aged children. The laissez faire style is typical for neglectful families who fail to provide adequate nurturance or supervision for children. Authoritarian parents may become violent if they do not possess self-control and age-appropriate child discipline skills.

Parenting Education and Support Programs

There are many effective parenting education programs that focus on parental warmth and nurturance and child-age appropriate demandingness skills. Programs that focus on warmth include Bavolek’s Nurturing Program, and Cicchetti’s Child–Parent Psychotherapy. Programs that balance nurturing and discipline skills include Common Sense Parenting and The Incredible Years.

Key elements of these programs include the following: (a) group intervention that increases social supports, (b) parent skills training, (c) modeling appropriate parenting practices, (d) role-playing, (e) empathy and warmth-building skills, and (f) weekly homework assignments that include positive experiences in addition to constructive discipline practices. Interventions for maltreating or violent families are typically preceded by family assessment and succeeded by a follow-up program. Content typically includes training on empathy, tuning in to the child, and creating positive parent–child interaction.

Programs also focus on clear and specific communication, choosing and implementing consequences, giving effective praise, staying calm, and corrective teaching and problem solving.

Child maltreatment laws require children to be removed from their families when violence or neglect poses imminent harm to the child. Parenting education can be implemented during child and family separation and can be used in supervised visitation settings. They can be powerful tools for reuniting families and keeping children safe and well cared for.

Bibliography:

Baumrind, D. (1996). The discipline controversy revisited. Family Relations, 45, 405–411.
Bavolek, S. (2010). Nurturing parenting programs. Retrieved May 30, 2017, from http://www.nurturingparenting.com/images/cmsfiles/nrepp_final_review_revised_10_12_10.pdf
Patterson, G. R. (1982). Coercive family process. Eugene, OR: Castalia.
Toth, S. L., Maughan, A., Manly, J. O., Spagnola, M., & Cicchetti, D. (2002). The relative efficacy of two interventions in altering maltreated preschool children’s representational models: Implications for attachment theory. Development and Psychopathology, 14, 877–908.
The Incredible Years: http://www.incredibleyears.com/

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