The Reach of Child Abuse Potential: Its Relationship With Features of Parenting at Home

Abstract

This paper examines the reach of child abuse potential by exploring its association with multiple features of parenting (i.e., connection, regulation, and stimulation). Twenty-four mothers with infants or toddlers from low-income families who were beginning participation in an intergenerational learning program completed the Child Abuse Potential Inventory (CAPI; Milner, 1986) when they enrolled in the program. A family worker visited each family's home during the same week and administered the Infant-Toddler HOME Inventory (Caldwell & Bradley, 1984), a 45-minute interview and observation system that assesses the quality of stimulation and support available to a child in the home environment. Total scores from the CAPI and HOME Inventories were inversely associated (r = −0.61, p < .002), as were scores on the CAPI and two features of parenting represented by subscales of the HOME, regulation and stimulation. Contrary to expectations, the CAPI was not significantly inversely associated with the connection feature of parenting. Results suggest that researchers and family service providers need to consider how to help parents cope with sources of distress and problems in relationships because these markers for child abuse potential also impact multiple features of parenting in the home which in turn are associated with important developmental outcomes for children.

Notes

¹Reflecting societal assumptions and practices, most attachment researchers have assumed mothers were the primary caretakers and hence assessed maternal sensitivity. There is, however, a growing literature looking at children's attachments to fathers/father figures as well (e.g., Brown, McBride, Shin, & Bost, 2007).

²Mothers responded to two items regarding ethnicity and race, one which asked participants to describe themselves as Hispanic/Latina or Non-Hispanic Latina and a second which asked participants to describe themselves more broadly. The categories for race and ethnicity were predetermined as part of the intergenerational learning program's enrollment forms. Participants agreed to give the researchers access to the enrollment forms. Enrollment forms served as the source of demographic information for the families to prevent the families from having to provide virtually the same information multiple times.

³We also conducted a regression analysis in addition to the partial correlations reported in the text to assess whether the CAPI significantly predicted the HOME after controlling for all of the socio-demographic variables (maternal education, marital status, family income, maternal age, child age, and child sex) simultaneously. HOME scores were the dependent variable; the six sociodemographic variables were entered as a set at Step 1, followed by the CAPI at step 2. Results of the regression indicated the CAPI still significantly predicted the HOME (β = 0.045, p < 0.05) even after controlling for socio-demographic. Partial correlations are reported in the text because only 18 of 24 families reported their income and at least one parent is missing data on two other sociodemographic variables so the hierarchical regression analyses reported here were conducted with only N = 16 families. We believe the partial correlations are more informative for the entire sample.