Child Abuse, Perpetrators of

General Characteristics of Perpetrators

Intergenerational transmission of child abuse is common but not inevitable. Though estimates vary, approximately 30 percent of parents who were abused and neglected in childhood will victimize their own children, with the likelihood of abuse increasing with the severity of the parents’ own maltreatment in childhood. There tends to be a type-to-type correspondence for transmission of child abuse to the next generation; that is, the physically abused are more likely to physically abuse, and parents who were neglected as children are more likely to neglect.

Parents who abuse alcohol and other drugs are nearly three times as likely to abuse their children and more than four times as likely to neglect their children than other parents. Parents who abuse drugs and alcohol often grew up in homes where their parents abused alcohol and drugs. The effects of alcohol and drug use in contributing to child abuse are intensified by the parent's underlying personality traits. People who become drug abusers tend to share a range of similar personality traits, some that contribute to their likelihood of addiction. Such traits include low frustration tolerance, impulsive behavior, [Page 255]self-centeredness, emotional isolation, feelings of inadequacy and emotional deprivation, as well as depression. These traits can negatively affect parenting capacities. Substance-abusing caregivers tend to spend relatively little time engaged with and supervising their children, and they are prone to feeling dissatisfied as parents. When they do interact, drug-abusing mothers are likely to engage with their children less sensitively, showing a lack of empathy or reflection. Substance-abusing parents are particularly difficult to engage in treatment, which results in a higher instance of child abuse.

Less than a tenth of parents who abuse their children suffer from a severe psychiatric disorder (e.g., paranoid schizophrenia). However, perpetrators are more likely to suffer from personality disorders or depression, and to have a history of learning difficulties or mild mental disability that interferes with their caregiving abilities. Biological children of parents with heritable psychiatric disorders may have an elevated genetic vulnerability for developing mental illness and therefore may be particularly susceptible to the effects of abusive or neglectful parenting. When a psychiatric illness is present, better insight into one's psychiatric condition is associated with more sensitive mothering behavior and lower risk for child abuse.

Clear insight into a psychiatric disorder can lead to a better recognition of signs of relapse, better acceptance of treatment and overall improved outcome. In contrast, mothers with major mental illness who have unrealistic expectations of maternal caregiving relationships are at greater risk for child abuse. This is especially true when children are expected to provide a parent with support and comfort. Though not a common mental disorder, Munchausen syndrome by proxy is a condition where the relationship between parent psychopathology and child maltreatment is perhaps the most obvious. This is a form of child abuse in which a parent, usually the mother, fabricates the existence of illness in her child (usually under the age of 6) by either inducing the actual illness or exaggerating existing symptoms.

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