Child abuse, parental responses to child behavior

Includes bibliographical references (pages 43-46)There is agreement among investigators that child abuse is an abnormal, child rearing pattern. Many studies have shown that child abusive parents react to child behavior with unrealistic expectations in addition to using inconsistent and inadequate control attempts when responding to deviant child behavior. This study was a further attempt to isolate the important variables that contribute to a physically abusive interactional pattern. In this paper, the range of knowledge that abusing parents have of appropriate child rearing and child rearing techniques was studied. It was hypothesized that abusing parents would use fewer appropriate strategies than coping parents and therefore have less effective means of terminating undesirable behavior or of accelerating good behavior. It was further hypothesized that the overall quality of their responses would fall within a limited class of management responses.\ud Twelve abusive and twelve nonabusive parents volunteered to view a videotape on parent-child interactions. Ss in both groups were randomly assigned to one of two orders of presentation generating a total of four groups. Parents were assessed on their emotional reactions, their knowledge of management strategies and their intensity of reactions. (See more in text