The Intergenerational Transmission of Child Maltreatment: Socio-ecological and Psychological Origins of Maternal Risk

Abstract

This volume is the direct outgrowth of a recent meeting, held at Penn State University on May 5-6, 2014, entitled 'The role of parenting and family processes in child maltreatment and intervention.' This meeting's and this volume's central purpose was to bring together internationally renowned scholars to address child maltreatment in terms of the roles that family processes, and in particular parent-child processes, play in the etiology, impact, treatment, and prevention of maltreatment. The hope was and is to push family science toward the development of innovative approaches in the study of the etiology of maltreatment, a broader understanding of the transmission of child maltreatment and/or parenting-at-risk across generations, and new ideas on how best to treat and, ideally, prevent maltreatment. Like the meeting, this volume is organized into four main parts. The first part. Child Maltreatment and Family Processes, addresses child maltreatment in the context of the broader family system. The second part, Intergenerational Transmission of Child Maltreatment, leads off with Laura McCloskey's chapter addressing the intergenerational (IG) cycle of abuse. Judith Cohen and Anthony Mannarino kick off Part III of this volume. Intervening with Maltreated Children and Their Families, with a detailed overview of Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT), one of the most well-established, evidence-based treatments for child maltreatment in the field. The final part turns to new approaches in preventing child maltreatment simply preventing its recurrence (i.e., secondary prevention), but preventing it from occurring at all (primary prevention). In the absolute, this is, of course, a practically unreachable goal, but given what is now known about parenting competence, which is considerable, this part addresses how can this knowledge be brought to bear to reduce, significantly, the incidence of child neglect, physical, and sexual abuse. It is hoped that this volume will promote a more integrative understanding of the role of family processes in the etiology, impact, treatment, and ultimate prevention of child maltreatment, and as such be useful to researchers and practitioners alike. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)