An attempt is made to integrate existing theories of family violence by introducing the concept of family role stress. Role stressors may be defined as factors inhibiting the enactment of family roles. Multiple regression analyses were performed on data from 190 families to test a hypothesis involving the prediction of negative discipline at…

Child abuse involves more than the use of corporal punishment with a child. Investigators have measured parents' emotional reactivity and attributions in relation to aversive child behavior. A "video recall" procedure has been used for assessing affective responding of adults engaged in marital conflict and has been valid for obtaining…

Both the literature and common beliefs suggest that unemployment increases family stress and child abuse. To test this idea, data were collected on monthly unemployment rate and number of child abuse complaints during 1978-91 in a rural county in the northwestern United States dependent on the lumber industry. Unexpectedly, the data showed that…

This study expands previous research on stress in the superintendency by addressing the links between the superintendents' levels of stress, early trauma, coping responses, and superintendent health. The study focuses on the intersection of sex and gender in these relationships. A nationwide random sample of superintendents resulted in a working…

Purpose: The objective of this article is to describe the implementation of the Skills Training in Affective and Interpersonal Regulation (STAIR), a manualized, evidence-based cognitive behavioral group treatment for childhood trauma at Cedar Centre, a community-based trauma treatment center, and describe the preliminary evaluation of the…

The thesis underlying this paper is that maltreatment of children is fundamentally a socio-cultural problem, rather than a personal one. The use of an ecological model of human development is advocated to provide insight into the dynamics of child maltreatment, with emphasis on organism-environment interaction, social policy and second-order…

Ten mothers and their children (4 to 8 years old) interacted in a situation analogous to that thought to precipitate child abuse. Without directly observing the child, each mother telemetrically monitored her child's performance on a puzzle. Following an error, she selected the intensity of punishment to be delivered. However, the frequency of…

The Parenting Stress Index (PSI) is a clinical and research self-report instrument (101 items) designed as a screening and diagnostic assessment technique to identify parent and child systems which are under stress, and in which deviant development of the child is likely to take place, or where dysfunctional parenting is likely to occur. The PSI…

To explore the correlation between unemployment and child abuse rates, a literature review was conducted and the phenomenon was examined in a rural Inland Northwest county (X County) of 9,800 population which derived its main income from lumber and agriculture. Monthly substantiated child abuse cases were tallied from the Department of Health and…

This study investigated the way in which parental beliefs moderate affective reactions to children at risk for abuse. A sample of 40 unrelated mothers was drawn from a larger research project. At-risk and not-at-risk children were recruited from 40 families participating in counseling at a local child abuse agency. At-risk status was determined…

Studies have traced a possible link between patterns of family interaction, faulty socialization, child abuse, and delinquent behavior. Counselors can respond to the needs of society to reduce violence by their access to the research on human development and in their work with families and children. Some types of discipline and parental attitudes…

A brief overview describes a study in which high school students were taught to deal effectively with "critical incidents" in a pre-parenting program. The program described involved pretest; training in anger control, alternative responses to stress, and appropriate responses to behaviors; and posttesting. The study found students could be taught…

This paper examines the arbitrary distinctions between intentional and unintentional child injuries, noting that a careful review of the literature of both child abuse and unintentional child injury revealed similarities among the risk factors associated with the two outcomes. A single, multifactor model of injury etiology, the ecologic model, is…

This study examined the underlying common origins of pediatric social illnesses (i.e., child abuse and neglect, failure to thrive, accidents, and poisonings) in children under age 4. Subjects were 560 children admitted to the Children's Hospital Medical Center in Boston. Children admitted with pediatric social diagnoses were matched on the basis…

In order to study signs of stress in speech directed to children at risk for abuse, sentences matched on content were collected from audio recordings of adult-child interactions. The children were audiotaped during an unstructured interaction with both their own mother and an unrelated mother. A total of 40 sibling pairs, each including one…