Mothers' abusive childhood predicts child abuse

✍ Scribed by Jaana Haapasalo; Terhi Aaltonen

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 199 KB
• Volume: 8
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0952-9136
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-0852(199907/08)8:4<231::aid-car547>3.0.co;2-c

✦ Synopsis

To examine the intergenerational transmission of abuse, the study compared 25 mothers whose child had been under the supervision of the child protection services (CPS) with 25 mothers who had had no contact with the CPS. The groups were compared with respect to their own self-reported childhood abuse, their abuse of their own child and punitiveness. The data were gathered using interviews and ®les. There were no signi®cant dierences between the groups in self-reported childhood physical abuse, but the CPS mothers had experienced more childhood psychological abuse, especially rejection, accusations, terrorizing and corrupting. The groups did not dier in the self-reported physical or psychological abuse in¯icted upon one's own child. In the total sample of 50 mothers, hierarchical regression analyses showed, however, that the mothers' childhood abuse experiences predicted their abuse of their own child. Punitiveness was best predicted by maternal childhood psychological abuse. The results thus provide evidence for the cycle of abuse model.