Parenting Attitudes Among Maltreated Youth: Implications for Prevention Strategies

Background

Research suggests that youth who parent are underprepared for this role. Youth who were maltreated may experience particular difficulty due to how they were parented. This is concerning, as a growing body of research indicates that some youth pursue pregnancy and parenting due to perceived benefit to themselves. One such benefit is an emotional connection with a baby. It is therefore important to assess these youth’s parenting attitudes, as they will affect the future parent-child relationship.

We hypothesized that youth who report experiencing maltreatment have poorer parenting attitudes, even after accounting for known youth parenting risk factors and their own parents’ parenting attitudes.

Method

 

487 18-year-olds from the Longitudinal Studies of Child Abuse and Neglect were studied. All youth were recruited into the study at age 4, either due to lifetime risk of maltreatment or known child welfare system involvement.

Parenting attitudes (empathy toward child, appropriate developmental expectations, and rejection of corporal punishment) were measured using the Adult Adolescent Parent Inventory (AAPI). The attitudes of the youth’s caregivers were collected when the youth were 4 years old and from the youth themselves at age 18. Scores were standardized; higher scores indicate positive attitudes.

Youth were interviewed about experiences of physical and sexual abuse, including perceived deservedness; how many homes and caregivers they remembered; closeness to current mother figures; whether they had children already; and if they wanted to have a child in the next year.  The Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children was used to  assess alcohol misuse, depression, and PTSD. These variables were examined descriptively, then entered into a hierarchical regression model to examine predictors of youths’ parenting attitudes.

Results

For each of the parenting attitudes, the caregivers’ attitudes predicted the youths’ attitudes. Wanting to have a child predicted poorer empathic attitudes towards children (B = - 66, p<.05).

Youth reporting chronic sexual abuse  were less likely to have appropriate developmental expectations (B = -1.37, p<.05). Increased numbers of caregivers was positively related to appropriate expectations (B =  .11, p<.01).

The only additional predictor of  rejecting corporal punishment was whether the youth believed they deserved the physical abuse they received (B = -.47, p<.05). Already having a child at 18 indicated a positive trend to predict rejection of corporal punishment (B =  .53, p<.10).

Implications

These results confirm findings in prior studies regarding the importance of  intergenerational parenting on youths’ parenting attitudes. Further, different kinds of maltreatment (and youths’ interpretation of their deservedness of this maltreatment) may have differential effects on parenting attitudes. As such, parenting interventions for youth who have been maltreated may need to help youth examine how their parents’ parenting attitudes affect them, and target particular parenting concerns depending on the type of maltreatment the youth have experienced. Of particular concern is that youth who want to have children are less likely to believe in expressing empathy to children. This information has significance for workers in child abuse prevention programs who could use such information effectively to develop individualized treatment plans.