NCJ Number
227069
Date Published
2008
Length
396 pages
Annotation
Intended for professionals who work with children or adults who were maltreated as children, this book provides a systematic analysis of parental behavior and the means of identifying and addressing poor parenting and its adverse effects.
Abstract
The six chapters of Part One analyze the information processing that underlies behavior, with examples provided of dangerous and violent parental behavior. The chapters link the findings of cognitive neurosciences with parenting, child protection, and forensic psychology. One chapter examines changing views of how parents should raise their children in the context of children's needs that do not change. Other chapters address the roles of parents in meeting children's developmental needs, from learning to be safe at home in early childhood, to coping with the complex world of school, becoming an independent and loving adult, and shaping mental representations of one's world. The seven chapters of Part Two focus on a gradient of distortions of information processing that results in increasingly dangerous parental behavior, with examples provided of parental behavior that ranges from inadequate to dangerous childrearing. Some of the topics discussed are the marginal maltreatment of children rationalized by parents as necessary for the protection of the child, how parents' own needs can dominate how children are raised and harm their development, and how parental information processing can result in viewing a child as a threat. The eight chapters of Part Three address issues of prevention, treatment, and forensic decisionmaking. The chapters break new ground in linking information processing to the selection of treatment strategies. The principles and practice of the Dynamic-Maturational Model are advocated for comprehensive treatment. Under this model, the treatment of parents who endanger their children focuses on the dangers the parents have experienced and the psychological and behavioral strategies they developed to cope with them. A bibliography of approximately 550 listings and a subject index