Typology for parents of abused children

This paper reports an effort to classify the parents of abused children with some existing and some new empirically/clinically consistent typologies, which are derived from the parents' psychopathological personality profiles. Such a classification scheme is informative and helpful for both treatment planning and permanency planning for abusive parents and abused children, whether or not the children have been separated from their parents. Several previously reported typologies for abusive parents are reviewed and then elaborated in light of the additional data and insights gained from an ongoing study of 50 abusive parents who were separated from their children due to severe child abuse. Such typological analyses based upon principal personality characteristics and dynamics promise to help in formulating both secondary and even primary child abuse prevention procedures and programs. The parent typologies which represent the more favorable prognoses, as determined by their therapist's estimate of their response to ongoing treatment, are those classified as rigid-compulsive, or experiencing identity/role crisis, or displaced abuse/violence. Parents whose child abusive behavior is a function of extremely maladaptive resolutions of major life issues fall into the hostile-aggressive, passive-dependent, and severe mental illness typologies, where the prognoses are considerably more guarded. The relatively high incidence of hostile-aggressive fathers coupled with passive-dependent mothers as abusive parents to children in a residential program for severely abused children also helps explain some of the children's psychopathology.