Reactions to Children's Transgressions in At-Risk Caregivers: Does Mitigating Information, Type of Transgression, or Caregiver Directive Matter?

• NCJ Number: 247197
• Journal: Child Abuse and Neglect Volume: 38 Issue: 5 Dated: May 2014 Pages: 917-927
• Author(s): Lauren M. Irwin; John J. Skowronski; Julie L. Crouch; Joel S. Milner; Bettina Zengel
• Date Published: May 2014
• Length: 11 pages
• Sponsoring Agency: Center for the Study of Family Violence and Sexual Assault
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Research (Applied/Empirical); Report (Study/Research); Report (Grant Sponsored)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

Sixty-four caregivers (70.3 percent female) participated in a study that examined whether caregivers at high risk for child physical abuse differed from low-risk caregivers in reactions to misbehaving children as described in vignettes.

Abstract

This study tested the social information processing (SIP) model of child physical abuse (CPA), which suggests that physically abusive caregivers and caregivers at risk of CPA process information in ways that increase the likelihood of child-directed aggression. This will be evidenced in the unwillingness of high-risk caregivers to reduce punishment severity due to mitigating situational factors that may lessen the harm or malicious intent of a child's misconduct. The current study found only modest support for the prediction of the SIP model that high-risk caregivers would be unresponsive to the presence of mitigating information when a child's misconduct involved disobeying caregiver directives. On the other hand, when moral transgressions were involved (e.g., cruelty, dishonesty, greed, hostility), high-risk caretakers were less likely to moderate their reactions (anger, irritation, and shame) to the child's misconduct when mitigating factors were presented in the vignette. The high-risk caregivers were more likely to select the punitive response of power assertion by yelling at, slapping, or spanking the child. At-risk caregivers were also more likely than low-risk caregivers to believe that children in the vignettes were intentionally attempting to be annoying or to inflict physical or emotional harm on another person). The vignettes varied in the type of misconduct, the presence of mitigating information, and whether a specific parental directive was involved. Various punitive disciplinary options were selected by the parent for each vignette. Overall, the results suggest that interventions that increase an at-risk caregiver's ability to assess and integrate mitigating information may assist in reducing the caregiver's risk for child physical abuse. 1 table, 45 references, and appended vignettes