Distinguishing Between Poor/Dysfunctional Parenting and Child Emotional Maltreatment - Risk Factors for Child Emotional Maltreatment

Risk Factors for Child Emotional Maltreatment

Specific risk factors for child emotional maltreatment are difficult to isolate from those associated with child physical abuse and neglect, partly due to the issue of definitional clarity addressed herein. Therefore, an overview of parent, child, and situational risk factors associated with physical abuse and neglect is provided below, with parallels drawn to emotional maltreatment. Child maltreatment is rarely caused by a single risk factor and, even though risk signs and indicators may be present, it is still very difficult to predict who may become emotionally abusive or neglectful and who will not.

Most forms of child maltreatment are interactional events that are multi-determined. That is, such acts occur in the context of parent-child interactions and are influenced by many factors, as opposed to acts stemming from a psychological disorder independent of childrearing. Thus, it is necessary to consider how various risk factors interact in ways that may distinguish poor parenting from maltreatment. For example, physical abuse as well as emotional maltreatment, occur most often in the context of social and economic family deprivation, which can transform predisposed, high-risk parents into abusive or neglectful ones. The greater degree of stress in the social environment of the parent increases the probability that physical or verbal abuse or violence will surface as an attempt to gain control or cope with irritating, stressful events. In the case of physical or emotional neglect, stress may be so great that parents withdraw from their child care responsibilities.

For some parents, childrearing is a difficult and aversive event that can escalate unpredictably into a sudden abusive incident, or more gradually turn into avoidance and neglect. Lacking experience in childrearing and development and faced with unmanageable stress, at-risk parents might overreact to a child's action or misbehaviour. Studies indicate that their own childhoods were often full of difficult, sometimes very traumatic, episodes of family violence, alcoholism, and harsh family circumstances related to frequent moves, unemployment, and poverty (Wolfe, 1999). As adults, they find daily living stressful and irritating, and they prefer to avoid potential sources of support because it takes additional energy to maintain social relationships. Chronic physical ailments and a pervasive mood of discontentment are common complaints, both of which are understandable in light of their circumstances and limited coping resources.

Parent Characteristics

Physically and emotionally maltreating parents tend to deliver a lot of threats or angry commands to their children that exceed the demands of the situation, rather than positive forms of guidance and praise (Azar & Wolfe, 2006). Because of hostile information-processing biases (i.e., presuming others' intentions are unfriendly and threatening), maltreating parents may misperceive or mislabel typical child behaviour in ways that lead to inappropriate responses and increased aggression. Further, they are often unfamiliar with what is developmentally appropriate for a child at a given age, and thus place undue demands on the child.

Some abusive parents apply the same faulty reasoning to themselves as well, which results in lowered self-efficacy (e.g., "I'm not a good mother; other mothers can get their children to do these things") and greater interpersonal dependency (Bornstein, 2005). Unrealistic expectations and negative intent attributions can lead to greater punishment for child misbehaviour and less reliance on explanation and positive teaching methods. Children are seen as deserving of harsh punishment, threats, and criticism, and such actions are rationalized as a way to maintain control.

In a recent Canadian study, physically and emotionally abusive fathers reported significantly more stress directly related to parenting, compared to non-abusive fathers, with approximately 80% scoring in the elevated level on a measure assessing overall parenting-related distress (Francis & Wolfe, 2008). This finding indicates a poorer sense of parenting competence, role restriction, conflict with the other parent, depression, and lack of social support. Abusive fathers, similar to abusive mothers, tend to view their children more negatively, see themselves as mistreated or rejected by the child, and perceive the child as not meeting their expectations. Francis and Wolfe (2008) also found that abusive fathers reported higher scores than non-abusive fathers on a scale assessing outward expression of anger, which reflect the frequent aggressive expression of anger through verbal aggression or physical aggression toward other people and/or objects. More than half of the abusive fathers reported levels of the outward expression of anger that were above that of 75% of their same-sex age-related peers. Thus, the general experience of anger by abusive fathers is more likely to be associated with aggressive behaviour, similar to findings with child abusive mothers (Wolfe, 1999) and partner-abusing men (Norlander & Eckhardt, 2005).

Child, Family, and Situational Influences

Children's behaviour or developmental limitations may unintentionally increase the potential for physical or emotional maltreatment, if accompanied by the other critical parental factors noted previously. For example, children with disabilities such as mental retardation or physical impairments were three times more likely to be abused than were their non-disabled peers, based on a large population-based sample (Sullivan & Knutson, 2000). Physical and emotional maltreatment occurs most often during difficult to manage, but not uncommon, episodes of child behaviour such as disobedience, fighting and arguing, accidents, and dangerous behaviour, which may produce anger and tension in predisposed adults.

Family circumstances such as conflict and intimate partner violence also have a causal connection to child maltreatment. In about half of the families in which adult partners are violent toward one another, one or both parents have also been violent toward a child at some point during the previous year (Edleson, 1999). Domestic conflicts and violence most often arise during disagreements over childrearing, discipline, and each partner's responsibilities in child care (Edleson, Mbilinyi, Beeman, & Hagemeister, 2003). Children may be caught in the crossfire between angry adults, or in some cases, they might instigate a conflict between caregivers by misbehaving or demanding attention. In either case, an escalating cycle of family turmoil and violence begins, whereby children's behavioural and emotional reactions to the violence create additional stress on the intimate partner relationship, further aggravating an already volatile situation.

Finally, child emotional maltreatment most often occurs in the context of multiproblem homes and neighborhoods, where poverty, social isolation, and wide acceptance of harsh forms of discipline and control exert a major influence on children's development.^{Footnote 1} Maltreating families often lack significant social connections to others in their extended families, neighborhoods, and communities, as well as to social assistance agencies, which further restricts their access to healthier childrearing models and supports. Social isolation from positive support systems is commonly associated with other stressful living conditions, such as a lack of adequate daycare, peer groups or close friends, and adequate housing. These factors play an indirect, yet significant, role in the early formation and healthy establishment of a positive versus abusive parent-child relationship. As a result, various forms of maltreatment are difficult to detect, and community agents who could promote healthy parent-child relationships are less likely to be influential.

Cultural, Socialization and Situational Considerations

Childrearing practices are influenced by numerous cultural and situational factors that determine the level of conflict or cooperation in the emerging parent-child relationship. One such factor is the child's attribution for or interpretation of the parental misdeed, which can influence how he or she reacts to or is affected by such behaviour. For example, the child who believes the parent's criticism is intended to make him/her into a better person may fare better than the child who attributes this to less benevolent motives. Similarly, some parental actions could be harmful if they occurred frequently, even though they may be innocuous if they occur rarely.

Child emotional maltreatment, therefore, is often viewed not as an isolated phenomenon or a psychological impairment of the parent, but rather as the product of socialization practices that sanction the (limited) use of harsh, power-assertive and psychologically controlling techniques with family members. This socialization process is largely responsible for establishing the norms of acceptable or tolerable childrearing methods in a given community or region.

Child maltreatment is closely linked to structural aspects of the neighborhood and community. Rates of officially reported child maltreatment vary in relation to four determinants of community social organization: economic and family resources, residential instability, household and age structure, and geographic proximity of neighborhoods to concentrated poverty (Coulton, Crampton, Irwin, Spilsbury, & Korbin, 2007). These important dimensions of neighborhood context reflect the degree of breakdown of community social control and organization, which in turn relate to reports of physical and emotional child abuse.

Impact on Child Development

Stressful events in the family affect each child in different and unique ways. However, certain situations trigger more intense stress reactions and consequences than others. Child maltreatment, whether sexual, physical, or emotional, is among the worst and most intrusive forms of stress. It impinges directly on the child's daily life, may be ongoing and unpredictable, and is often the result of actions or inactions of people the child is supposed to trust and depend on. Nonetheless, even traumatic events like abuse, neglect, and family violence do not affect each child in a predictable, characteristic fashion. Rather, their impact depends on the child's makeup and available supports.

Child emotional maltreatment represents an interaction between aversive parental behaviours and the special vulnerabilities and strengths of a given child (Garbarino et al., 1997). The developmental level and competencies of the child act as specific vulnerability or protective factors. Thus, to describe the harm or potential harm to the child stemming from emotional maltreatment we need to consider how such acts affect developmental processes (and vice versa). From this perspective, maltreatment is harmful or potentially harmful to the child's immediate and future well-being not only because of real or potential injury, but because of what it often represents in terms of interfering with the child's ongoing social, cognitive, and behavioural development (Wekerle, Miller, Wolfe, & Spindel, 2006).

Emotional maltreatment can inter fere with ongoing development in pervasive and damaging ways. In effect, children from physically or emotionally maltreating families expe rience more than just violence, fear, or rejection; they typically have grown up in a family context that fails to provide appropriate developmental opportunities and stimulation, and one that is inconsistent and disorganized. While recognizing that the experiences of each child victim differ in important ways from those of other victims, there are some consistent patterns that describe important, common features of their childrearing environments.

One of the earliest and most significant effects of CEM on development stems from disruptions in the important process of early childhood attachment, which interferes with a young child's ability to seek comfort and regulate his or her own physiological and emotional processes. Without consistent stimulation, comfort, and routine to aid in the formation of secure attachments, maltreated infants and toddlers have considerable difficulty establishing a reciprocal, consistent pattern of interaction with their caregivers. Instead, they may show a pattern of relatedness described as insecure-disorganized attachment, characterized by a mixture of approach and avoidance, helplessness, apprehension, and a general disorientation (Barnett, Ganiban, & Cicchetti, 1999). In contrast, children who develop a positive, secure style of relating (due to other positive family influences or personal strengths, for example) are more resilient to caregiving environments marked by poor or emotionally abusive parenting (Alink et al., 2009).

Emotion regulation is a key concept in understanding how maltreatment, as well as poor or dysfunctional parenting, may affect children's developmental outcomes. Emotion regulation refers to the ability to modulate or control the intensity and expression of feelings and impulses, especially intense ones, in an adaptive manner (Maughan & Cicchetti, 2002). Not surprisingly, the early development of emotion regulation skills is highly influenced by the quality of the parent-child relationship. Because maltreated children live in a world of emotional turmoil and extremes, it is very difficult for them to understand, label, and regulate their internal states. Expressions of affect, such as crying or signals of distress, may trigger disapproval, avoidance, or abuse from caregivers, so maltreated youngsters have a greater tendency to inhibit their emotional expression and regulation and remain more fearful and hypervigilant (Klorman, Cicchetti, Thatcher, & Ison, 2003). Similarly, they show increased attention to anger- and threat-related signals, such as facial expressions, and less attention to other emotional expressions (Pollak & Tolley-Schell, 2003).

Maltreated children may also lack core positive beliefs about themselves and their world, because their negative experiences in relationships are carried forward to new situations. They may develop negative representational models of themselves and others based on a sense of inner "badness," self-blame, shame, or rage, which further impair their ability to regulate their affective responses (Feiring, Taska, & Lewis, 2002). The child's developing sense of personal self-efficacy can be undermined by physical and emotional abuse as well as by physical and emotional neglect, as such maltreatment devalues the child as a person. Feelings of betrayal can also challenge an individual's sense of self, because a person on whom the individual was dependent violated that trust and confidence.

As they grow older and are faced with new situations involving peers and other adults, poor emotional regulation becomes even more problematic. Their adaptational strategies, such as hypervigilance and fear, evolve to become highly responsive to threatening or dangerous situations. Like their own parents before them, maltreated children may be distracted by aggressive stimuli and misread the intentions of their peers and teachers as being more hostile than they actually are (Dodge et al., 1994). Given their propensity to attribute hostile intent to others and their lack of empathy and social skills, it is not surprising that abused and neglected children are rejected by their peers and have severe and wide-ranging problems in school and interpersonal adjustment (Wolfe, 1999). In brief, the impact of child physical and emotional maltreatment on areas of development and psychological adjustment is often described as being relationship-specific, because many of these outcomes are linked to early relationship experiences that set the stage for similar patterns in subsequent relationships. Early relationships shape what the child knows how to do and what he or she understands. Thus, if the child has known hostile, punitive relationships with significant adults, this is what he or she comes to expect or rely on (Rohner, 2004).