Psychological and Support Characteristics of Parents of Child Sexual Abuse Victims: Relationship with Child Functioning and Treatment

Child sexual abuse continues to be a prevalent and complex problem in today’s society as it poses serious and pervasive mental health risks to child victims and their non-offending parents. The main objectives of this study were (a) to elucidate the psychological symptoms and support needs of parents of child sexual abuse victims as they present to group treatment, (b) to examine changes in psychological symptoms and support needs and their relationship with child functioning over the course of a parallel group treatment, and (c) to examine the impact of these factors on completion of group treatment. Participants included 104 sexually abused youth and their non-offending parent presenting to Project SAFE Group Intervention, a 12-session cognitive-behavioral group treatment for sexually abused children and their non-offending parents. This project had a unique advantage of utilizing a variety of demographic, parent-, and child-report measures, allowing for a more comprehensive examination of change in symptomatology and needs over the course of treatment. Several significant findings were noted, including the identification of four clusters of youth at pre-treatment, which were maintained at post-treatment; elevations on the CTQ Sexual Abuse scale; parents of youth sexually abused by a non-family member had significantly higher PSI-Restriction of Role subscale scores; parental expectations of a negative impact on their child were worse for older children; several parent characteristics predicted client treatment retention (e.g., older parents, lower SCL-90-R GSI scores); and an early age of onset of abuse also increased treatment retention. Future directions, recommendations, and limitations were discussed.

Parental Ethnotheories of Child Development: Looking Beyond Independence and Individualism in American Belief Systems

Over the past several decades, the topic of child development in a cultural context has received a great deal of theoretical and empirical investigation. Investigators from the fields of indigenous and cultural psychology have argued that childhood is socially and historically constructed, rather than a universal process with a standard sequence of developmental stages or descriptions. As a result, many psychologists have become doubtful that any stage theory of cognitive or socialemotional development can be found to be valid for all times and places. In placing more theoretical emphasis on contextual processes, they define culture as a complex system of common symbolic action patterns (or scripts) built up through everyday human social interaction by means of which individuals create common meanings and in terms of which they organize experience. Researchers understand culture to be organized and coherent, but not homogenous or static, and realize that the complex dynamic system of culture constantly undergoes transformation as participants (adults and children) negotiate and re-negotiate meanings through social interaction. These negotiations and transactions give rise to unceasing heterogeneity and variability in how different individuals and groups of individuals interpret values and meanings. However, while many psychologists—both inside and outside the fields of indigenous and cultural psychology–are now willing to give up the idea of a universal path of child development and a universal story of parenting, they have not necessarily foreclosed on the possibility of discovering and describing some universal processes that underlie socialization and development-in-context. The roots of such universalities would lie in the biological aspects of child development, in the evolutionary processes of adaptation, and in the unique symbolic and problem-solving capacities of the human organism as a culture-bearing species. For instance, according to functionalist psychological anthropologists, shared (cultural) processes surround the developing child and promote in the long view the survival of families and groups if they are to demonstrate continuity in the face of ecological change and resource competition, (e.g. Edwards & Whiting, 2004; Gallimore, Goldenberg, & Weisner, 1993; LeVine, Dixon, LeVine, Richman, Leiderman, Keefer, & Brazelton, 1994; LeVine, Miller, & West, 1988; Weisner, 1996, 2002; Whiting & Edwards, 1988; Whiting & Whiting, 1980). As LeVine and colleagues (1994) state: A population tends to share an environment, symbol systems for encoding it, and organizations and codes of conduct for adapting to it (emphasis added). It is through the enactment of these population-specific codes of conduct in locally organized practices that human adaptation occurs. Human adaptation, in other words, is largely attributable to the operation of specific social organizations (e.g. families, communities, empires) following culturally prescribed scripts (normative models) in subsistence, reproduction, and other domains [communication and social regulation]. (p. 12) It follows, then, that in seeking to understand child development in a cultural context, psychologists need to support collaborative and interdisciplinary developmental science that crosses international borders. Such research can advance cross-cultural psychology, cultural psychology, and indigenous psychology, understood as three sub-disciplines composed of scientists who frequently communicate and debate with one another and mutually inform one another’s research programs. For example, to turn to parental belief systems, the particular topic of this chapter, it is clear that collaborative international studies are needed to support the goal of crosscultural psychologists for findings that go beyond simply describing cultural differences in parental beliefs. Comparative researchers need to shed light on whether parental beliefs are (or are not) systematically related to differences in child outcomes; and they need meta-analyses and reviews to explore between- and within-culture variations in parental beliefs, with a focus on issues of social change (Saraswathi, 2000). Likewise, collaborative research programs can foster the goals of indigenous psychology and cultural psychology and lay out valid descriptions of individual development in their particular cultural contexts and the processes, principles, and critical concepts needed for defining, analyzing, and predicting outcomes of child development-in-context. The project described in this chapter is based on an approach that integrates elements of comparative methodology to serve the aim of describing particular scenarios of child development in unique contexts. The research team of cultural insiders and outsiders allows for a look at American belief systems based on a dialogue of multiple perspectives.

The Quality of Spousal Social Support as a Moderator of the Associations Between Child Maltreatment Severity and Adult Trauma Symptoms

Child maltreatment has been linked to a myriad of long-term difficulties, including trauma symptomatology. However, not all victims experience long-term distress. Thus, a burgeoning area of research focuses on factors that may impede or facilitate resiliency to the psychological correlates of child maltreatment. Specifically, the severity of the abusive acts may be associated with greater long-term difficulties. To date, however, with the exception of child sexual abuse, few studies have examined the severity of maltreatment as a risk factor in the development of trauma symptoms. In contrast, social support has been theorized to contribute to resiliency following abuse. However, to date, the majority of studies examining positive social support as a protective factor have relied on self-report measures of perceived social support, rather than observational measures of received social support. Moreover, no study to date has examined the role that negative social support (i.e, blaming, criticizing) may play in potentiating trauma symptoms among victims of child maltreatment. Because child maltreatment involves serious boundary violations by a trusted person, a marital relationship is an important domain in which to examine these constructs. That is, it may serve as an arena for the manifestation of psychological disturbances related to maltreatment. Thus, the present study examined whether observationally measured positive and negative spousal social support moderated the relationship between child maltreatment severity (i.e., sexual, physical, psychological abuse; neglect) and trauma symptomatology in women and men. Results indicated that the severity of each type of child maltreatment significantly predicted increased adult trauma symptomatology. Contrary to hypothesized outcomes, positive spousal social support did not predict decreased trauma symptomatology. However, negative spousal social support generally did predict increased trauma symptomatology. There were no consistent patterns of interactions between child maltreatment severity and either type of social support. Future directions for research will be discussed and clinical implications with regard to the intrapersonal and interpersonal functioning of child maltreatment victims will be highlighted.

Collaboration as a Foundation for the Project Approach in Family Child Care

Supporting children's curiosity was considered important at my family child care home. How could we best achieve this? As my assistant caregiver Deb and 1 attended professional development workshops, we began to wonder if the project approach (Helm & Katz 2001) would be an effective means of supporting inquiry and collaborative learning. Before we would commit ourselves, we wanted to learn more. We had many questions. Just what is the project approach? What does it look like? How will it support children's learning? What do we need to be successful with it? The literature suggested many examples of successful projects at child care centers and preschools (Breig-Allen et al. 1998; Harkem: 1999; Beneke 2000; Glassman & Whaley 2000). Our challenge was how to adapt the project approach to our home child care situations.