Conflict in Families Chiefly to Blame - causes of child abuse - Brief Article

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), August, 1999

Personal stress, marital dissatisfaction, and lack of activities outside the family are contributing factors to conflict in families where child abuse has occurred, according to a study by Francesca Adler-Baeder, a Ph.D. candidate at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. "The vast majority of physical child abuse starts out as discipline or a conflict between parent and child that went too far.... All three of these factors were present in families where child abuse has taken place. They appear to be very strong predictors, whether the abuse is done by a biological mother or father or a stepfather."

Personal stress was the factor that contributed the most to producing conflict in abusive biological mothers, but it was also significant for biological fathers. Parents and stepfathers in highly conflicted families experienced high levels of personal stress from sources both inside and outside the family.

Low levels of marital satisfaction most affected abusive biological fathers and were highly predictive of family conflict in all three groups. Lack of participation in extra-familial activities affected stepfathers more than the other two factors. They and biological mothers in abusive families reported little connection to outside activities and social groups.

Adler-Baeder included two other factors in the study--rigid parenting attitudes and controlling behaviors. Both, she says, were not as strong in predicting conflict in families. Her research, she believes, has implications for social work practice, in addition to family and psychological counseling for child abuse offenders. "You need to examine what's going on within and outside the family to get the entire picture. It may not necessarily be a problem in the relationship between parent and child, but something that has happened in the context of personal isolation and a very conflicted marriage."