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Parental attitudes in child maltreatment

Publication . Camilo, Cláudia; Garrido, M. V.; Calheros, M. M.

An information-processing approach to maladaptive parenting suggests that high-risk and maltreating parents are likely to hold inaccurate and biased preexisting cognitive schemata about child development and child rearing. Importantly, these schemas, which may include values, beliefs, expectations, and attitudes, are known to influence the way parents perceive and subsequently act toward their children. However, the few studies specifically addressing parental attitudes only considered global maltreatment, not distinguishing abuse from neglect. Moreover, few have considered dual-process models of cognition, relying mostly on the explicit level of parental attitudes that can be prone to various biases. Based on the Social Information Processing (SIP) model of child abuse and neglect, this study examines the association of parents preexisting cognitive schemata, namely explicit and implicit parental attitudes, and child abuse and neglect. A convenience sample of 201 mothers (half with at least one child referred to child protection services) completed a measure of explicit parental attitudes and a speed-accuracy task related to parenting. Abuse and neglect were measured with self-report and professionals-report instruments. Overall, the results support the hypothesis that maladaptive parenting is related with more biased preexisting cognitive schemas, namely attitudes related to parenting, but only for neglect and particularly when reported by professionals. Moreover, the results observed with both the explicit and implicit measures of attitudes were convergent, with mothers presenting more inadequate explicit attitudes also exhibiting an overall lower performance in the implicit attitudes task. This study is likely to contribute to the SIP framework of child abuse and neglect, particularly for the elucidation of the sociocognitive factors underlying maladaptive parenting, while also providing relevant cues for prevention and intervention programs.

2021Journal article

Open access

Is it the child's fault? Maternal attributions in child abuse and neglect

Publication . Camilo, Cláudia; Garrido, M. V.; Calheros, M. M.

Among the parental cognitions explaining maladaptive parenting, attributions about a child’s misbehavior seem important. However, there is little research on neglectful parents, and the different patterns of parental attributions associated with child abuse and child neglect are still underexplained. The current study examines parental attributions associated with child abuse and child neglect. Method: Mothers (N = 218) were asked to evaluate vignettes describing child transgressions, half of which were followed by situational information. Child abuse and child neglect were evaluated through mothers’ and professionals’ reports. Results: Preliminary results indicated that the child’s age and maternal socioeconomic status were significantly correlated with attributions and child abuse and neglect scores and thus were controlled in the models. The results from hierarchical regressions indicated that dispositional attributions were associated with higher abuse scores (reported by mothers), even in the presence of situational information. Likewise, dispositional attributions were associated with higher neglect scores (reported by professionals), but the effect was no longer significant in the presence of situational information. Conclusions: These findings contribute to the current socio-cognitive approaches to child maltreatment and provide relevant input for understanding the different attributional mechanisms underlying child abuse and neglect.

2023Journal article

Open access