Battering Behavior - One Phenomenon, Many Explanations (From Child Abuse, P 3-13, 1984, A Carmi and H Zimrin, eds. - See NCJ-100412)

• NCJ Number: 100413
• Author(s): H Zimrin
• Date Published: 1984
• Length: 11 pages
• Sale Source: Springer-Verlag
• Publication Type: Best Practice/State-of-the-Art Review
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This paper identifies causes of child abuse and assesses the effectiveness of treatment methods that target these causes.

Abstract

Child-battering is often a function of negative learned maternal behavior patterns and a lack of appropriate maternal qualities. Treatment in such cases involves teaching the battering parent alternative parenting methods. Modeling is an effective method for changing the behavior of abusing parents who want to change. Some abusing parents believe battering is essential for disciplining their children. Treatment for such parents requires cognitive change through lectures, role playing, discussions, and social pressure as well as behavioral change through modeling. Child-battering is sometimes a function of parents' immature personalities and ungratified dependency needs. Intervention targeting this cause has included professional casework and peer group support. Success reported for such treatment ranges from a maximum of 80 percent to an absence of definitive results. Other child-abuse causal factors identified by researchers are parents' retardation and psychosis as well as child characteristics. These factors require further investigation and corroboration. Appropriate treatment methods for these factors have not been discovered. 38 references and tabular data.