Child abuse & neglect
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Child abuse & neglect · May 2014
Comparative StudyParental spanking of 1-year-old children and subsequent child protective services involvement.
The majority of U. S. parents spank their children, often beginning when their children are very young. We examined families (N=2,788) who participated in a longitudinal community-based study of new births in urban areas. ⋯ When compared to non-spanked children, there was a 33% greater probability of subsequent CPS involvement for children who were spanked at age 1. Given the undesirable consequences of spanking children and a lack of empirical evidence to suggest positive effects of physical punishment, professionals who work with families should counsel parents not to spank infants and toddlers. For optimal benefits, efforts to educate parents regarding alternative forms of discipline should begin during the child's first year of life.
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Child abuse & neglect · May 2014
Randomized Controlled TrialThe impact of childhood abuse on inpatient substance users: specific links with risky sex, aggression, and emotion dysregulation.
Adults with substance use disorders (SUDs) report a high prevalence of childhood abuse. Research in the general population suggests specific types of abuse lead to particular negative outcomes; it is not known whether this pattern holds for adults with SUDs. We hypothesized that specific types of abuse would be associated with particular behavioral and emotional outcomes among substance users. ⋯ The emotional abuse subscale uniquely predicted the DERS total score, AIM score, and DTS score. Among substance users, different types of abuse are uniquely associated with specific negative effects. Assessment of specific abuse types among substance users may be informative in treatment planning and relapse prevention.
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Child abuse & neglect · May 2014
Reactions to children's transgressions in at-risk caregivers: does mitigating information, type of transgression, or caregiver directive matter?
This study examined whether caregivers who exhibit high risk for child physical abuse differ from low-risk caregivers in reactions to transgressing children. Caregivers read vignettes describing child transgressions. These vignettes varied in: (a) the type of transgression described (moral, conventional, personal), (b) presentation of transgression-mitigating information (present, absent), and (c) whether a directive to avoid the transgression was in the vignette (yes, no). ⋯ Moreover, when transgressions disobeyed a directive, among low-risk caregivers, mitigating information reduced the expectation that responses to transgressions would include inductive disciplinary strategies, but it did not do so among at-risk caregivers. In certain circumstances, compared to low-risk caregivers, at-risk caregivers expect to be relatively unaffected by transgression-mitigating information. These results suggest that interventions that increase an at-risk caregiver's ability to properly assess and integrate mitigating information may play a role in reducing the caregiver's risk of child physical abuse.
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Child abuse & neglect · Jan 2014
Does war contribute to family violence against children? Findings from a two-generational multi-informant study in Northern Uganda.
After 20 years of civil war in Northern Uganda, the continuity of violence within the family constitutes a major challenge to children's healthy development in the post-conflict era. Previous exposure to trauma and ongoing psychopathology in guardians potentially contribute to parental perpetration against children and dysfunctional interactions in the child's family ecology that increase children's risk of maltreatment. In order to investigate distal and proximal risk factors of child victimization, we first aimed to identify factors leading to more self-reported perpetration in guardians. ⋯ Regarding children's self-report of victimization in the family, proximal factors including violence between adults in the household and male guardians' PTSD symptom severity level predicted higher levels of maltreatment. Distal variables such as female guardians' history of childhood victimization and female guardians' exposure to traumatic war events also increased children's report of maltreatment. The current findings suggest that in the context of organized violence, an intergenerational cycle of violence persists that is exacerbated by female guardians' re-victimization experiences and male guardians' psychopathological symptoms.
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The aim of this study is to investigate epidemiological characteristics of the victims and the offenders in children homicide cases and to propose preventive measures. We retrospectively investigated homicides and deaths by neglect involving children aged 15 or less, which have been autopsied in the Department of Pathology and Legal Medicine of the Raymond Poincaré Hospital, Garches, France, during the 18-year period from 1991 to 2008. Cases included were analyzed for victims' age and gender, victim-assailant's relation, death cause and scenery, and offender's motivation. ⋯ Familicide cases where children and spouses are killed were perpetrated only by fathers. The leading cause of death was blunt trauma (especially head trauma). In the neonaticide group, half of the victims died from passive neglect whereas gunshots were predominant in the children groups.