Single Parent Families and Child Abuse - The Best Way to Prevent It

Parenting runs along two continuums: abusive and nurturing. One can equate higher incidence of nurturing with less incidence of abuse because the two behaviors are mutually exclusive. In nurturing single parent families, children receive support, have clear boundaries, and live under appropriate expectations. In abusive single parent families, too much may be expected from the children. Empathy for the children is lacking, physical punishment is prominent, and lack of awareness of the children's developmental levels is evident.

It is clear, however, that many single parents who become involved in the child welfare system did not intentionally harm their children; rather their lack of knowledge, skills, or resources led them to harm their children.

The best way to then to prevent child abuse is to help single parents, through effective parent training, to develop their skills and identify resources they need to understand and meet their children's needs and protect them from harm.

Moreover, research has shown that increasing positive parent interactions and emotional communications; and, requiring parents to practice new skills during and away from the training provides for the intended outcome of improving parenting skills and decreasing the children's externalizing behaviors. Furthermore, the long range consequence of child abuse is that children who experience such maltreatment are at greater risk for adverse health effects and risky health behaviors when they reach adulthood.

Some worthwhile goals for an effective parent training program then should include: helping parents to learn ways to discipline their children other than by yelling and hitting, such as redirection (trying to shift a child's attention from something dangerous, such as jumping off a chair to something harmless, such as doing a puzzle.); helping parents learn to teach their children how to control their anger as well as to manage their own angry feelings and stress; helping parents to learn stages of child development and to acquire realistic expectations; making available to parents in-home one on one parent coaching and support groups, and finally, helping parents to learn job hunting and life management strategies. In addition, the program should have a problem-solving focus, provide for active participation, involve the whole family, and target individually identified needs.

Several different types of parent training exist, such as models designed for parents who just want additional information to be sure they are doing the best job they can, and models that address specific needs, such as families experiencing child behavior problems or families in which child maltreatment is a concern. The program described above emphasizes the latter.