Characteristics of parents who abuse and neglect

Parents involved in childcare proceedings who have criminal convictions are more likely to have directly harmed their children, either by abusing and / or neglecting them, than parents without criminal convictions.

Parents without convictions are more likely to have caused harm to their children indirectly, by failing to protect their children from the perpetrator of the abuse.

These are the results of a study carried out by psychologists Karen Bailey and Taljinder Basra. Their findings were presented on Monday 22 March 2004 at the British Psychological Society's Division of Forensic Psychology Annual Conference, which is being held at Leicester University.

Their research used data collated from the files of 100 parents who have undergone psychological assessment during childcare proceedings, regarding their personal history, psychometric testing and type of child abuse perpetrated.

They found that while parents with criminal convictions were more likely to directly abuse or neglect their children than parents without criminal convictions, non-criminal parents are more likely to allow others to abuse their children, rather than perpetrate the abuse themselves. Non-criminal parents also have poorer coping strategies and intellectual functioning.

However, this only accounts for parents already involved in childcare proceedings, and not for parents in the general population. The study also found differences between parents who neglect their children and those who abuse them.

Parents who neglect their children have a higher incidence of anti-social and drug-dependent personality traits than those who abuse their children. They are also more likely to have schizoid personality traits - meaning that they tend to have emotional, interpersonal, social and behavioural deficits in their personality.

However, abusive parents report greater levels of stress in their lives than parents who neglect. No differences in demographic factors between the two groups were found.

The researchers therefore concluded that parents involved in childcare proceedings have different treatment needs in order to make them safer, due to their different personalities, coping styles, criminality and abuse type.