Incest survivors: the relation of their perceptions of their parents and their own parenting attitudes

The present study examined the child-rearing attitudes of incest and nonincest child sexual abuse survivors and their perceptions of their own parents' behavior. From a sample of women with a history of child sexual abuse, 40 women with children completed questionnaires designed to assess their own and their parents' child-rearing behavior in terms of the dimensions of parental acceptance and control. The data indicated that women from incestuous backgrounds had more negative perceptions of their fathers and mothers in terms of acceptance and control than women abused by men who were not related to them. Moreover, incest victims who perceived their mothers negatively endorsed autonomy promotion in their own attitudes toward child rearing. The findings are discussed in terms of (1) the lack of positive parenting models when relations with both parents are experienced as negative, (2) incest survivors' conflicts about their own early maturity, and (3) the relation of these findings to the tendency for intergenerational repetition of father-daughter incest.     

Inappropriate child rearing practices as perceived by Jewish immmigrant parents from the former Soviet Union.

OBJECTIVES: First to explore what Jewish immigrant parents from the Former Soviet Union consider to be appropriate and inappropriate child rearing practices, and second what are their help seeking preferences in situations of children at risk. METHOD: Interviews with 273 immigrant parents were conducted in Israel. A semi-structured questionnaire included seven vignettes which related to three areas of parental behaviors: Lack of provision of child's needs, corporal punishment and psychological punishment. In addition, open-ended questions were included about the participants' personal beliefs regarding the use of physical punishment towards children. RESULTS: Suggest a concrete and practical approach towards child rearing practices, support for the utilization of certain types of corporal and psychological punishment, consideration of the gender of the child might be a factor in the approach towards corporal punishment. a perception of children as self sufficient at a fairly young age and a tendency not to cooperate with outsiders in situations of children at risk. CONCLUSIONS: Even though Jewish immigrants from the Former Soviet Union might be in a new country for several years, their background may still have a significant role in their child rearing practices and help seeking patterns. Awareness of their perceptions could provide information which is significant for the accurate assessment of situations of abuse and neglect among the immigrants and for defining appropriate treatment objectives and means for achieving change.     

Consistency and Change in Maternal Child-Rearing Practices and Values: A Longitudinal Study

Although developmental psychologists frequently assume that parents change their child-rearing practices as their children develop, there is little research on this topic and virtually none involving parents of adolescents and a longitudinal, repeated-measures design. We examined changes in mothers' reported practices over time in regard to independence and control, expression of positive and negative affect, and disciplinary practices using items from the Child-Rearing Practices Report (CRPR). The CRPR was administered to the same mothers 5 times over an 8-year time period (from when their children were aged 7 or 8 years until they were 15-16 years old). A substantial degree of stability in behaviors and values was noted, even over the 8-year period. In addition, some practices increased or decreased with age, with most of the changes being consistent with prior theorizing and research, as well as commonsense notions related to child rearing.     

Child‐Rearing Practices Associated with Aggression in Youth with and without ADHD: An Exploratory Study

Although parental behaviour and attitudes have been assessed for their contribution to disordered child behaviour, little research has examined child‐rearing practices. Child‐rearing practices may be more amenable to change than attitudes, while being more inclusive than specific behaviour. This study assessed child‐rearing practices and attitudes of parents of youth with hyperactivity. Twenty‐seven children, aged 7 to 11, were placed in either a hyperactive, hyperactive‐aggressive, or comparison group based on behavioural ratings. A home visit was made for the purposes of administering questionnaires to parents and observing a peer play interaction. Overall, we found that mothers of youth with hyperactivity were using more consequences (time outs, reasoning, and taking away privileges) than comparisons; whereas fathers reported greater incidence of allowing free‐reign in their child‐rearing than comparison fathers. Additionally, mothers of normal comparison youth were more overprotective than mothers of youth with co‐occurring hyperactivity and aggression.     

A Comparison of Child-rearing Practices among Chinese, Immigrant Chinese, and Caucasian-American Parents

This study investigated the differences and similarities in child-rearing practices among Chinese, immigrant Chinese, and Caucasian-American parents. The subjects of this study were the mothers and fathers of 138 children enrolled in kindergarten, first grade, and second grade in Taiwan and the United States. The child-rearing variables under study were: parental control, encouragement of independence, expression of affection, and emphasis on achievement. MANOVA yielded significant group effects on the parental variables. It was found that Chinese and immigrant Chinese parents tended to rate higher on parental control, encouragement of independence, and emphasis on achievement than Caucasian-American parents. The adaptability of the immigrant Chinese to the conditions of life and social structures of the United States, while maintaining traditional patterns of socialization, is discussed.     

Social support and child maltreatment: a review of the evidence

Parents who maltreat their children have long been thought to lack support from informal and social networks. Recent writers have taken the position that this relationship is a proven, causal one, with social isolation seen as a necessary antecedent condition for the occurrence of child abuse. Concurrently, initial enthusiasm for social support as a powerful explanatory variable in other areas of psychological and health research is giving way to cautious reevaluation of the evidence. The present review was undertaken to bring into sharper focus what is now known regarding the relationship between child maltreatment and parental isolation from informal helping networks. Existing research is fraught with both conceptual and methodological problems. There is, at present, little research evidence that lack of social support plays a significant role in the etiology of physical abuse. Stronger evidence exists that neglectful parents are socially isolated, but the data are consistent with the hypothesis that this is one manifestation of the character problems of these parents. Future research must give closer attention to clearly defining social support and using reliable and valid instruments to measure it, while exploring multivariate models of child maltreatment.     

Reducing risk for children in changing cultural contexts: recommendations for intervention and training

OBJECTIVES: This paper proposes guidelines to both parents and professionals for the prevention and reduction of risk associated with cultural differences, conflicts and misinterpretations. These guidelines are based on a conceptual framework derived from the multicultural reality of Israeli society and are supported by a growing corpus of studies on cross-cultural child development, immigration and minority families. METHOD: The paper is based on a conceptual model followed by practical implications for training and intervention. RESULTS: Central to this paper is the concept of the "adaptive adult" which serves as a guiding metaphor for the organization of socialization goals, child-rearing ideologies, perceptions and values of socializing agents in a given culture or group. Childcare practices are defined as adaptive strategies, that is, means for socializing children to become "successful adults." The paper describes different types of "adaptive adult" metaphor (e.g., past and future oriented), and discusses images held by groups who have experienced either a duality of private and public culture or changes in their cultural contexts. The paper further explores and exemplifies the potential contributions of the proposed framework for a five step intervention plan with parents and for training of professionals in multicultural contexts. CONCLUSIONS: Children of families in changing cultural contexts are often considered to be at risk for maltreatment. This is because such families may experience sociocultural and socioeconomic change and a loss of their former support networks. Parental acculturation stress and related dysfunction might also affect children. The risk increases when children are exposed to systems with conflicting socialization goals and with contradictory definitions of desirable child-care or supervision frameworks. Conflicts and clashes between parents and socializing agents have been found to have long-term detrimental effects on children and families. Cultural differences may also result in misinterpretation of parental behaviors and misdiagnosis of abuse and neglect. Such conflicts and misinterpretations can be avoided if both parents and social agents learn to understand and to respect their cultural differences, so that together, they can devise ways to bridge them.     

Child prostitution as filial duty? The morality of child-rearing in a slum community in Thailand

It has been claimed that there are universal goals of child-rearing, such as survival of the child or the promotion of their capacity to contribute to economic and social reproduction. Yet in certain circumstances parents appear to pursue child-rearing practices that actively harm children, threaten their survival and inhibit their ability to grow up to be effective adult members of their communities. This article will discuss these issues in the case of one group of child prostitutes in Thailand and their families at a particular point in time. Although the work they did was physically dangerous and difficult, both parents and children claimed that their families were loving and functional and that selling sex was a way to keep the family together. Morality was seen in terms of reciprocity rather than sexual transgression and this article will explore the morality of child-rearing in this context and the relationships between family members.     

Parenting in the Context of the Child: Genetic and Social Processes

The focus on the role of parenting in child development has a long-standing history. When measures of parenting precede changes in child development, researchers typically infer a causal role of parenting practices and attitudes on child development. However, this research is usually conducted with parents raising their own biological offspring. Such research designs cannot account for the effects of genes that are common to parents and children, nor for genetically influenced traits in children that influence how they are parented and how parenting affects them. The aim of this monograph is to provide a clearer view of parenting by synthesizing findings from the Early Growth and Development Study (EGDS). EGDS is a longitudinal study of adopted children, their birth parents, and their rearing parents studied across infancy and childhood. Families (N = 561) were recruited in the United States through adoption agencies between 2000 and 2010. Data collection began when adoptees were 9 months old (males = 57.2%; White 54.5%, Black 13.2%, Hispanic/Latinx 13.4%, Multiracial 17.8%, other 1.1%). The median child age at adoption placement was 2 days (M = 5.58, SD = 11.32). Adoptive parents were predominantly in their 30s, White, and coming from upper-middle- or upper-class backgrounds with high educational attainment (a mode at 4-year college or graduate degree). Most adoptive parents were heterosexual couples, and were married at the beginning of the project. The birth parent sample was more racially and ethnically diverse, but the majority (70%) were White. At the beginning of the study, most birth mothers and fathers were in their 20s, with a mode of educational attainment at high school degree, and few of them were married. We have been following these family members over time, assessing their genetic influences, prenatal environment, rearing environment, and child development. Controlling for effects of genes common to parents and children, we confirmed some previously reported associations between parenting, parent psychopathology, and marital adjustment in relation to child problematic and prosocial behavior. We also observed effects of childrenʼs heritable characteristics, characteristics thought to be transmitted from parent to child by genetic means, on their parents and how those effects contributed to subsequent child development. For example, we found that genetically influenced child impulsivity and social withdrawal both elicited harsh parenting, whereas a genetically influenced sunny disposition elicited parental warmth. We found numerous instances of children's genetically influenced characteristics that enhanced positive parental influences on child development or that protected them from harsh parenting. Integrating our findings, we propose a new, genetically informed process model of parenting. We posit that parents implicitly or explicitly detect genetically influenced liabilities and assets in their children. We also suggest future research into factors such as marital adjustment, that favor parents responding with appropriate protection or enhancement. Our findings illustrate a productive use of genetic information in prevention research: helping parents respond effectively to a profile of child strengths and challenges rather than using genetic information simply to identify some children unresponsive to current preventive interventions.     

Special support and neighbourhood school allocation in Finland: a study on parental school choice

Although freedom of parental school choice has expanded to the Finnish education system, the government has maintained the principle of neighbourhood school allocation. Moreover, the Finnish education system has recently undergone a reform of its special needs education; all pupils are entitled to receive support in three categories of general, intensified or special. The focus of this article is to examine parental positions on school choices in relation to the parents’ social class and their children’s support needs in basic education. The results of the study are based on a quantitative questionnaire, which collected responses from 208 participants drawn primarily from four different municipalities in Finland. The study found that the category of a child’s support, rather than the socio-economic class of the parents, determined the child’s school allocations. Furthermore, the more support the parents felt their children needed, the more importance they placed on special education practices and less on the neighbourhood school allocation. In addition, the parents’ opinions were found to differ based on social class, rather than category of support. In conclusion, we argue that the social segregation of students with special educational needs can be avoided, if the principle of neighbourhood school allocation is preserved.     

Efficacy of the Incredible Years group parent program with families in Head Start who self-reported a history of child maltreatment

Objective

A prevention form of the Incredible Years (IY) parenting program was offered to parents who had children enrolled in Head Start, regardless of whether they reported having a history of child maltreatment. This study compared whether parenting practices and child behavioral outcomes differed in families who self reported a history of child maltreatment relative to families who did not.

Methods

A site-randomized controlled trial of the IY parenting program was conducted in 64 classrooms in seven Head Start centers in Seattle, Washington. Families of 481 children took part in the study, with 335 in the IY condition and 146 in the control condition. Parenting practices and child behavior were measured by blinded raters through in-home observations and self-report questionnaires prior to the start of the IY program, in the spring after the IY program had concluded, and 12–18 months after study enrollment when children were in kindergarten. Analyses examine the impact of the IY program on parenting practices and children's behavior, exploring whether the program had differential impacts for parents with and without a self-reported history of child maltreatment.

Results

The IY program resulted in improvements along many parenting dimensions and on characteristics of observed child behavior. Program impacts were similar for parents who did and did not report a history of child maltreatment. However, parents with a reported history of prior maltreatment had greater initial room for improvement in areas such as harsh/critical parenting, nurturing/supportive parenting, and discipline competence than parents without such a history.

Conclusions

The IY parenting program has positive impacts for parents who self-reported a history of child maltreatment. While similar benefits were observed for both groups of parents in this study, results support delivering evidence-based parenting programs of longer duration and higher intensity than often used by agencies serving parents in contact with child welfare.

Practice

Agencies serving parents referred for child maltreatment should carefully examine the characteristics of the parenting programs they deliver. Use of a parenting program that has a sound base of empirical support, such as IY, and sufficient intensity and duration, is likely to make substantial changes in parents’ child-rearing practices.     

Treating twins as individuals: Maternal educative practices

For twins’ parents, the process of building up each child’s individuality is more complex than for singleton’s parents. The dyadic interaction becomes a triadic situation and the mother has to face the problem of distinguishing one twin from the other without comparing them. The analysis of mother’s twin care patterns provides highly relevant information on the processes promoting twins’ individualization and maternal adjustment to the triadic situation. An empirical study illustrates this point of view. It surveys forty parents of twins on their attitudes towards twin rearing and observes parental behaviour in the home to assess consistency between statements of actual practices. Observation and correspondence analysis show that: I) Some types of child care are more conductive to implementing differentiation strategies than others (dress and choice of toys in contrast to bedtime and meals); 2) mothers of twins who are explicit about child rearing practices are generally coherent about putting them into practice; mothers with less explicit views are less inclined to try to individualize their twins; 3) SES and degree of physical resemblance between twins both affect the type of differentiation strategies.     

Measuring the components of parents' potential for child abuse and neglect

The purpose of the study was to develop a battery of tests with which to identify parents who have potential for abuse and/or neglect of children. The samples were composed of abusive men and women parents or parent figures matched with controls.The variables, parents' background, personality, child rearing attitudes, social networks and parent-child interactions, were tested by interview questionnaire, videotaped behavioral observation, and physiologic response.Both bivariate and multivariate data analysis were utilized including zero order correlations, factor analysis, path analysis, and discriminant analysis.The tests sharpley differentiated between groups on background, empathy, antecedents to early attachment, ways of handling irritating child behaviors, child rearing attitudes, parent-child communication, reference persons, and physiologic response. Abusive parents maintained higher heart rates, had less heart rate variability, higher electrodermal magnitude response and lower recovery times.     

The dark side of social support: Understanding the role of social support,drinking behaviors and alcohol outlets for child physical abuse

The purpose of this study is to examine how parental drinking behavior, drinking locations, alcohol outlet density, and types of social support (tangible, emotional, and social companionship) may place children at greater risk for physical abuse. Data on use of physical abuse, drinking behaviors, types of social support, social networks, and demographic information were collected via telephone interviews with 3,023 parent respondents in 50 cities in California. Data on alcohol outlet density were obtained by the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. Multilevel Poisson models were used to analyze data for the drinking levels in the entire sample and dose-response drinking models for drinkers. Social companionship support was related to more frequent use of physical abuse. Having a higher percentage of social companionship support network living within the neighborhood was related to more frequent physical abuse in the full sample. This relationship was moderated by on-premise alcohol outlet density. With regards to drinking behaviors, drinking behaviors from ex-drinkers to frequent heavy drinkers used physically abusive parenting practices more often than lifetime abstainers. The dose-response models show that each additional drinking event at a bar or home/party was related to more frequent use of physical abuse. Practitioners working with parents who abuse their children should be aware that not all social support is beneficial. Findings build evidence that child maltreatment is influenced by the interaction between individual and ecological factors.     

Will my child ever go to a university? The link between school segregation practices and Norwegian parents’ expectations for their physically disabled child

How parents perceive their children's educational prospects can reveal a great deal about how their children will progress in the educational system. The paper examines the consequences of variations in inclusive education practices by investigating determinants of parents’ educational expectations for their child. All parents included in the study had children with physical disabilities in primary school (mainly cerebral palsy and spina bifida). The empirical material includes results from a survey (Net sample = 491), in combination with information merged from a range of official registers. The results showed that the more the child is segregated from ordinary classroom education, the lower parental expectations are for their children's educational attainments. Other factors also significantly influencing parents’ educational expectations include how parents’ view their child's school performance, as well as various measures of the severity of the child's physical disability. However, these secondary factors could not account for the empirically strong association between segregation practices and parental expectations. Parental expectations were also significantly related to parental income and education. The findings indicate that the expectations of parents with higher income and education are less affected by school segregation practices.     

Parental beliefs about child development and parental inferences about actions during child-rearing episodes

The way parents’ beliefs on child development support the elaboration of practical inferences during everyday child-rearing episodes was examined. We contrasted two models based respectively on the classical and the connectionist view of schema approaches. According to the classical view, parents activate preformed packages of beliefs in order to produce inferences whereas under the connectionist view, they activate the network of interconnected episodic traces that better fits the information provided by the situation. In the former case, the quality of the inferences depends on the activation of the proper schema whereas in the latter case it depends on the structure of the information given. Two experiments were designed in which parents holding a particular global belief about child development (either constructivism or environmentalism), were presented with a target couple with similar or different views with respect to them. In Experiment 1, constructivist parents bearing in mind the couple’s belief had to judge a set of words describing the couple’s image as parents, their educational goals as well as a number of sentences describing the couple’s child-rearing practices during hypothetical episodes. In Experiment 2, environmentalist parents had to judge the couple’s practices and the amount of information presented about the couple’s ideas as well as its plausibility were manipulated. The results indicate that the accuracy and speed in the production of inferences depends on the information presented in the task. When the information is embedded in episodes and a full, plausible and distinctive account of the couple’s belief are provided, then the production of inferences is performed faster and with more accuracy. The results are discussed in terms of the classical and connectionist views of schema approaches.     

Parents’ perceptions of their child’s resilience and competencies

This study examined parental views of their child’s educability through the parents’ perceptions of their child’s resilience. The purposes of the study were: (1) to examine psychometric properties of the rating scale created to measure parental views of their child’s educational and psychological resilience, (2) to explore whether the parents’ views of the child’s resilience were related to their notions of the child’s competencies and (3) to examine how parents’ perceptions of their child’s resilience were related to the parent’s social position and the child’s gender. Data were collected by questionnaire from the parents of fifth-grade children (N=391). The parental rating scale consisted of three dimensions of resilience, all with satisfactory reliability. Parents’ views of their child’s resilience were related to their perceptions of child’s abilities and school success, suggesting that the parental rating scale had concurrent validity. The results also indicated that parents’ views of their child’s resilience were related to their gender and education and to the child’s gender. Furthermore, parents’ views of their child’s educational resilience, based on parents’ trust in their child’s internal capacities, were related to the parental definition of their child’s cognitive-verbal competencies, in particular.     

Parental Expectations of Early Childhood Services for Preschool Children: The case of policy change in Greece

This study aimed to investigate parental expectations of early childhood education and care services for young children. A total of 582 parents participated in the research and answered a range of questions relating to their expectations of the social and educational role of early childhood education services in Greece. The findings of the research confirmed that the administrative division between the types of preschool establishments are related with parental expectations for care provision (p < 0.001) and support for their needs (p < 0.05) during their absence from home to work. Also there was strong evidence that parents had high expectations for their collaboration with teachers of early childhood education about (a) solving their personal problems with their child at home (p < 0.001) (b) ensuring the best care provision for their child (p< 0.001) in the early childhood setting and (c) keeping their child happy at the preschool institution with fun activities when they have to go to work (p <0.001).     

Parenting in the context of historical childhood trauma: An interpretive meta-synthesis

BackgroundParents with childhood trauma histories are more likely to experience difficulties with child-rearing. The literature often pathologizes the parenting behaviours of parents with abuse histories, meaning strengths sometimes are neglectedObjectiveThis article presents a meta-synthesis of qualitative studies into the parenting experiences of survivors of childhood abuse. This analysis was undertaken to develop awareness of the experiences of this population, with the hope findings would be of use to policy-makers and professionals supporting parents and their children.MethodFollowing a systematic search and process of quality appraisal, 11 papers were subjected to an interpretive meta-synthesis, utilising a meta-ethnographic method.ResultsThree themes were generated. Forming a Parental Identity Through the Lens of Trauma related to how parents and authors of the primary studies tended to interpret all parenting experiences, especially challenges, in terms of the effects of childhood abuse. Protecting Against Cycles of Abuse related to many parents fearing they would be unable to protect children from harm. The Need for Safe Support was concerned with how parents often felt they needed support but experienced this as unsafe.ConclusionsResults pointed to how ambivalence towards professional input should typically be regarded as understandable in the context of lived-experience of abused parents. Professionals should seek to avoid pathologizing parental difficulties and support parents by normalising and making sense of difficult emotional reactions in order to support engagement and promote containing parent-child interactions. Trauma-informed approaches to therapy could usefully be employed by services and agencies working with parents to support children.