This accessible resource coordinates what we know about the intergenerational transmission of child maltreatment (ITCM), with a specific focus on prevention in context. Cutting through facile cause-and-effect constructs, the authors review and critique the recent literature on the complicated nature of the phenomenon and weigh different approaches to its conceptualization. The book identifies child and parental risk factors linked to ITCM as well as protective factors involved in its reduction, while examining complex relationships between family, parenting, and social contexts that can provide keys to understanding and healing traumatized families. This close attention to crucial yet often overlooked details will aid professionals in creating the next wave of salient research projects and effective interventions, and enhance current efforts to break longstanding patterns of abuse and neglect. Among the topics covered: • Theoretical frameworks conceptualizing intergenerational transmission of child maltreatment.• Empirical studies on intergenerational transmission of child maltreatment.• Risk factors associated with ITCM.• Protective factors associated with breaking the cycle of maltreatment.• Methodological challenges in studying ITCM.• Recommendations for evaluation of intervention and prevention strategies. Geared toward novices and veterans alike, Intergenerational Transmission of Child Maltreatment is a solution-focused reference of singular importance to practitioners and research professionals involved in improving children’s well-being.

This accessible resource coordinates what we know about the intergenerational transmission of child maltreatment (ITCM), with a specific focus on prevention in context. Cutting through facile cause-and-effect constructs, the authors review and critique the recent literature on the complicated nature of the phenomenon and weigh different approaches to its conceptualization. The book identifies child and parental risk factors linked to ITCM as well as protective factors involved in its reduction, while examining complex relationships between family, parenting, and social contexts that can provide keys to understanding and healing traumatized families. This close attention to crucial yet often overlooked details will aid professionals in creating the next wave of salient research projects and effective interventions, and enhance current efforts to break longstanding patterns of abuse and neglect. Among the topics covered: • Theoretical frameworks conceptualizing intergenerational transmission of child maltreatment.• Empirical studies on intergenerational transmission of child maltreatment.• Risk factors associated with ITCM.• Protective factors associated with breaking the cycle of maltreatment.• Methodological challenges in studying ITCM.• Recommendations for evaluation of intervention and prevention strategies. Geared toward novices and veterans alike, Intergenerational Transmission of Child Maltreatment is a solution-focused reference of singular importance to practitioners and research professionals involved in improving children’s well-being.

This Handbook examines core questions still remaining in the field of child maltreatment. It addresses major challenges in child maltreatment work, starting with the question of what child abuse and neglect is exactly. It then goes on to examine why maltreatment occurs and what its consequences are. Next, it turns to prevention, treatment and intervention, as well as legal perspectives. The book studies the issue from the perspective of the broader international and cross-cultural human experience. Its aim is to review what is known, but even more importantly, to examine what remains to be known to make progress in helping abused children, their families, and their communities.

This clear-sighted reference offers a transformative new lens for understanding the role of family processes in creating — and stopping — child abuse and neglect. Its integrative perspective emphasizes the interconnectedness of forms of abuse, the diverse mechanisms of family violence, and a child/family-centered, strengths-based approach to working with families. Chapters review evidence-based interventions and also model collaboration between family professionals for effective coordination of treatment and other services. This powerful ecological framework has major implications for improving assessment, treatment, and prevention as well as future research on child maltreatment. Included among the topics:• Creating a safe haven following child maltreatment: the benefits and limits of social support.• “Why didn’t you tell?” Helping families and children weather the process following a sexual abuse disclosure.• Environments recreated: the unique struggles of children born to abused mothers.• Evidence-based intervention: trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy for children and families.• Preventing the intergenerational transmission of child maltreatment through relational interventions.• Reducing the risk of child maltreatment: challenges and opportunities. Professionals and practitioners particularly interested in family processes, child maltreatment, and developmental psychology will find Parenting and Family Processes in Child Maltreatment and Intervention a major step forward in breaking entrenched abuse cycles and keeping families safe.

Exploring the conditions under which children, as a function of their own abuse, become abusive themselves. That experiences from childhood affect our behavior in adulthood, especially in the ways we treat our children and intimate partners, is generally accepted. Indeed, theories of intergenerational transmission of violence indicate that if we ourselves have been abused and neglected as children, we will likely be abusive and neglectful to others close to us—thus extending the cycle across generations. However, many individuals who were maltreated as children do not replicate this cycle, and such models make little sense of the individual raised in a “good family” who is violent either as a child or as an adult. These discontinuities of cycles of violence and trauma have challenged professionals and nonprofessionals alike. However, broadening our vision and attending to new areas of research can help to illuminate this conundrum and open up new avenues of intervention. In this book, Pamela Alexander does just that. She proposes that an increased risk for abusive behavior or revictimization, as a function of one’s own experiences of abuse or trauma in childhood, can best be understood through the complementary lenses of attachment theory (focusing on the relationship between the child and the caregiver) and family systems theory (focusing on the larger context of this relationship). That is, what a child acquires from her relationship with a caregiver is not simply a reflection of what she has “learned” from experiencing or witnessing abuse. Rather, it emerges from the child’s felt experience of the relationship itself—on implicit emotional, physical, and neurobiological levels. Alexander founds the book on this multifaceted parent–child attachment relationship and its place in the wider family system, integrating clinical experience with close attention to the long-term neurobiological and epigenetic effects of trauma. She focuses on common outcomes of a history of maltreatment, and of child sexual abuse in particular, including peer victimization, partner violence, parenting problems, and sexual offending. A detailed review of the literature accompanies instructive case examples. Sources of trauma from outside the family, including combat exposure, political terrorism, foster care, and incarceration of parents are considered. Finally, Alexander analyzes the multiple sources of natural resilience—the neurobiological, the individual, the relational, and the social—to enable professionals of all backgrounds to tailor-make effective interventions for interrupting cycles of trauma and violence.

Over forty contributors, including highly regarded researchers in the field, present the most recent findings on the impact of abuse and neglect on cognitive, linguistic, social and emotional development in children.

"The serious consequences of child abuse or maltreatment are among the most challenging things therapists encounter. This volume integrates results from the latest research showing the importance of early traumatization into a compact, practical and evidence-based guide for practitioners. This text first overviews our current knowledge of the effects of childhood maltreatment on psychiatric and psychological health, then provides diagnostic guidance, and subsequently goes on to profile promising and effective evidence-based interventions. It helps the practitioner or student to know what to look for, what questions need to be asked, how to handle the sensitive ethical implications, and what are promising avenues for effective coping."--Publisher.

The Classic Edition of Promoting Positive Parenting illuminates the widespread success of the Video-feedback Intervention to promote Positive Parenting and Sensitive Discipline (VIPP-SD), now used in many countries, offering thousands of families the support they need to thrive. A new preface from the authors reflects on the original research and development of the program, considers its effectiveness, and outlines future aims to broaden implementation and test new modalities. The original volume offers a new generation of students and professionals an introduction to the brief and focused parenting intervention program that has been successful in a variety of clinical and nonclinical groups and cultures. It offers detailed descriptions and case reports of studies with the program, describes the implementation and testing of VIPP-based interventions in a variety of family and childcare settings, and in various countries including the Netherlands, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It details the successful implementation of the program in samples of insecure mothers, mothers with eating disorders, preterm infants, adopted children, children suffering from dermatitis, and children with early externalizing behavior problems. The Classic Edition of Promoting Positive Parenting is for all those concerned with family support and parenting interventions in the fields of developmental and clinical psychology, human development and family studies, psychiatry, social work, public health and nursing, and early childhood education.

Despite a growing body of scholarship on the phenomenon of adolescent parenting, minimal attention has been given to investigating systematic changes in adolescent mothers' and their children's psychological functioning over time. This book reports on a longitudinal study conducted to examine the social and psychological consequences of teen parenting for both mothers and their children. Qualitative and quantitative analyses are used to explain why some mothers and children fare better than others, showing that the lives and developmental trajectories of adolescent mothers and children are inextricably interwoven and closely linked to the social contexts within which they live. The book closes with social policy implications of the research including recommendations for intervention programs and policies to help adolescent parents and their children achieve developmental success and find happiness.