CIB - #3 : Abusive Partners as Parents

So this CIB post is going to be about Bancroft’s chapter 10: Abusers as Parents.

I choose to write about this topic because I know a lot people who have been abused as children, or witnessed abuse. My brother and two younger sisters had an abusive stepdad for a long time and we’ve all experienced his control and abuse.

This chapter really gave me some more insight their stepdad. I saw how he treated my brother because he viewed him more of an extension of his mother and treated my youngest sister like saint because she was, in his mind, a direct extension of himself (thank goodness she didn’t turn out that way though). Anyways, that’s what I got from this chapter personally. On a social working career level I got reminded of something’s to look for and how abused children could feel and react to abuse in the household.

Also, I had to laugh for a second while reading this chapter. Bancroft contradicts himself from an earlier chapter. He talks about how witnessing child abuse and being abused as a child has strong correlations with future abuse when in the other chapters I read he talked about it as being a myth. So again, while reading ANYTHING, make sure to think critically.

Also, here is my video recapping everything I learned in this chapter:

*Disclaimer: There are two curse words. I apologize.

So for the peer-reviewed journal I found I decided to look into the outcomes of children in the different parenting types: authoritative, authoritarian, indulgent, and neglectful. I choose to look up this article because Bancroft talks about how abusive parents often times have authoritarian tendencies (however, I have covered earlier than neglectful and indulgent parents are can also be abusive).  This article can be located here:Parenting Style Studies

The study had children take a test to see what their parents parenting style was and then were given another test to se their competencies in different areas such as psychological competency, school, etc. It is found that authoritative parents have rear children that are generally high in all competency areas and are low in psychological dysfunction. Neglectful parents are the exact reverse, and authoritarian parents tend to rear children that scored high very conforming and obedient areas. Note that abuse was not a controlled factor in this study.  This is more of a study showing the differencing parenting types and how they affect children. Take this study and apply it to what we already know about abuse.

For the two website requirements:

This site gave a list of child abuse signs. I think it’s a good start for abused children and adults looking for signs of abuse. However, it totally neglected some subtle signs of abuse and didn’t talk about the manipulative attributes abusive parents show (like putting on a positive hat on outside the home). However, it is a generally touch and go to get started on further research. Prevent Child Abuse Inventory

The other site I found was Love is Respect: http://www.loveisrespect.org/

This site is geared for teens (a target group I want to work with in my future).  It has amazing inventories to check if you are being abused (or showing signs of abusing) in a dating relationship. While this site focuses on the aspects of  dating violence, they are consistent with Bancroft’s parent-child abuse signs. Basically, they can be applied to this area of DV. So check it out! It’s a fantastic site!