Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Part I History and definition
- Part II Parental and contextual influences on maltreatment
- Part III The developmental consequences of child maltreatment
- 13 How research on child maltreatment has informed the study of child development: perspectives from developmental psychopathology
- 14 Child maltreatment and attachment theory
- 15 Patterns of maternal behavior among infants at risk for abuse: relations with infant attachment behavior and infant development at 12 months of age
- 16 Finding order in disorganization: lessons from research on maltreated infants' attachments to their caregivers
- 17 Peer relations in maltreated children
- 18 The effects of maltreatment on development during early childhood: recent studies and their theoretical, clinical, and policy implications
- 19 Social cognition in maltreated children
- 20 The effects of maltreatment on the development of young children
- 21 Troubled youth, troubled families: the dynamics of adolescent maltreatment
- 22 Child abuse, delinquency, and violent criminality
- 23 The prevention of maltreatment
- Name index
- Subject index
14 - Child maltreatment and attachment theory
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Part I History and definition
- Part II Parental and contextual influences on maltreatment
- Part III The developmental consequences of child maltreatment
- 13 How research on child maltreatment has informed the study of child development: perspectives from developmental psychopathology
- 14 Child maltreatment and attachment theory
- 15 Patterns of maternal behavior among infants at risk for abuse: relations with infant attachment behavior and infant development at 12 months of age
- 16 Finding order in disorganization: lessons from research on maltreated infants' attachments to their caregivers
- 17 Peer relations in maltreated children
- 18 The effects of maltreatment on development during early childhood: recent studies and their theoretical, clinical, and policy implications
- 19 Social cognition in maltreated children
- 20 The effects of maltreatment on the development of young children
- 21 Troubled youth, troubled families: the dynamics of adolescent maltreatment
- 22 Child abuse, delinquency, and violent criminality
- 23 The prevention of maltreatment
- Name index
- Subject index
Summary
The study of child maltreatment has grown exponentially in the years since the identification of the “battered child syndrome” (Kempe, Silverman, and Steele, 1962). In that time the area has experienced many of the conflicts and missteps to be expected in an emerging field. Underlying these problems is the lack of a single, comprehensive theoretical approach to child maltreatment (Newberger, Newberger, and Hampton, 1983). It is the purpose of this chapter to examine attachment theory in regard to its adequacy in accounting for the existing data on child abuse and child neglect.
Because child abuse was identified as a social issue earlier than child neglect, it will be discussed first. However, in regard to the early literature, the dichotomy is difficult, and sometimes impossible, to make because cases of neglect or abuse-with-neglect were included indiscriminately under the rubric of abuse. One goal of this chapter will be to disentangle the conditions and consider separately how relevant attachment theory is to understanding them.
The first studies of child abuse focused on identifying the characteristics of abusers. Although abusers were not usually found to be mentally ill, they were often described as more aggressive, punitive, domineering, and inconsistent than nonabusing parents. As more cases of less severe child abuse were reported and investigated, the incidence of clear parental deviance decreased while the evidence for cultural and child influence increased. The societal variables associated with abuse included unemployment, job dissatisfaction, single-parent families, and social isolation of low-income, multiproblem families.
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- Information
- Child MaltreatmentTheory and Research on the Causes and Consequences of Child Abuse and Neglect, pp. 432 - 463Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1989
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