Page 1 of 13 HD 497 Lecture 4 – Family Connection Slide 1 [Slide title] HD 300 Child Abuse & Neglect [Slide content] Unit 4 The Family Connection [Audio] No audio Slide 2 [Slide title] Overview of Family & Abuse [Slide content] - Majority of abuse occurs within the family - Home the most dangerous place for a child - Most parents do NOT abuse their children - No qualifications needed to be a parent - Three factors put families at risk for abuse:  Parental characteristics  Child characteristics  The family ecosystem [Audio] First, the majority of abuse occurs within the family. It is not surprising because that is where young children spend most of their time and in fact, some research shows that home is the most dangerous place for a child. One thing to consider, most parents do not abuse their children, most parents do love their children and try to do their best for them. It is sometimes difficult taking a class like this not to look back and criticize your own parents, but we should try not to do that. Our parents, like most parents, probably tried to do their best and if they didn’t, it doesn’t do too much good to dwell on it now; you cannot go back and change things. On the other hand, there are no qualifications needed to be a parent. Training is required for almost every profession. The person who cuts your hair or cleans your teeth needs a license, yet for what could be reasonably be considered the most important task of all, no training is required. Three factors put families at risk for abuse: parental characteristics, child characteristics and the family ecosystem and we are going to discuss all three of these factors.Page 2 of 13 Slide 3 [Slide title] Parental Characteristics [Slide content] - History of abuse in the parent’s family - Marital relationship in trouble - Low self-esteem - Unrealistic expectations of the child - Nonchalance about the injury - Parent not knowledgeable about normal child development [Audio] First, parental characteristics. Was there a history of abuse in the parent’s family? If there was, remember as we mentioned earlier, we learn to become parents from our parents and if there is a history of abuse, often it is played out when the child grows up and has their own family. If the marital relationship in trouble? We will talk about domestic violence and how it is related to child abuse, but if things are not going well with the marriage, sometimes that spills over onto the children. Low self-esteem in the parents. Just as we said that all abused children have low self-esteem, all abusive parents have low self-esteem as well, even if it doesn’t appear to be that way. Unrealistic expectations of the child – expecting a two year old child to be potty trained for example or expecting a four year old child to be able to read. Those things can be taught in parenting classes, but often parents have no idea developmentally what children can do and can’t do. Nonchalance about the injury. The parents can do something to the child and will tell the authorities or even tell the child, “Oh, that didn’t hurt!” “Oh, I barely tapped even!” “What you are crying about, it isn’t that bad!” and then to go back to the first issue that we were talking about, parents may not be knowledgeable about their child development and that feeds into the unrealistic expectations for a child. Slide 4 [Slide title] Parental Characteristics [Slide content] - Drug and/or alcohol use - Temperament of the parent - Biological factors  Low IQ  Depression or other mental illness  Hormonal imbalancePage 3 of 13  Physical illness - Very young or immature parent - Punitive or neglectful parenting practice [Audio] Other parental characteristics include drug or alcohol use, temperament of the parent, biological factors. Remember we talked about the Bio-Social Theory. Low IQ in a parent can especially lead the parent to neglect the child and not have any idea how to care for a child. Depression or other mental illness – there is a large body of research on maternal depression, on the negative impact it has on children in the home. Hormonal imbalance, we know that some mothers who kill their children can plead that they had postpartum depression, PMS also causes a person to be more temperamental then usual or physical illness. Very young and immature parents are at higher risk for abusing their children. In fact, there is research that shows that the older a parent becomes the more mature they become and the less likely they are to abuse their children. This is on average. That doesn’t mean every individual who gets older will be less abusive. Punitive and neglectful parenting practice – this could have been learned in the home, but parents can also just adopt it as being their own parenting style. Slide 5 [Slide title] Parenting Style – Baumrind Authoritative Parenting [Slide content] - Parenting styled based on interaction of “support” and “control” - Authoritative  High support/moderate control  Directive, warm, reinforcement rather than punishment, explanations [Audio] Let’s just talk more about parenting style. Diana Baumrind did some research and she developed a model that show a parenting style that was based on interactional and parental support and parental control and she was able to put parents into one of four categories and we will look at that after we describe each of these parenting styles. The first style that Baumrind described was authoritative. Authoritative parents then are high in support, they are supportive of their children and they use moderate control. These parents are directive and warm, they use reinforcement rather than punishment and they use explanations. Authoritative parenting is more democratic in nature compared to the other styles of parenting. So, although the parent still maintains the upper hand in making decisions, children have the opportunity to express their feelings. The authoritative parent takes the time necessary to listen to the child and to provide explanations when discipline is called for.Page 4 of 13 Of the four parenting styles described by Baumrind, authoritative parenting has been found to be the most beneficial to children. Slide 6 [Slide title] Authoritative Parenting Child Outcomes [Slide content] - Child outcomes  Higher self-esteem 