Faculty Bibliography

This article discusses patterns across reviews of the risk and protective factors for each of seven forms of family violence: partner physical, psychological, and sexual abuse; child physical, psychological, and sexual abuse and child neglect. We note that both child and partner literatures have large research bases on risk factors for physical abuse, but relatively few articles on psychological or sexual abuse (or child neglect). In addition, co-occurrence of forms of maltreatment within families is high, but little integrative work has been conducted. We argue that the overlap of both occurrence and risk factors across forms of maltreatment suggests that both etiological and intervention models would be improved by considering all forms of maltreatment more explicitly in a family (rather than dyadic) context. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Physical aggression toward a child and a partner within the same family occurs more frequently than once thought, In community samples, the co-occurrence rate appears to be 5% to 6%; in clinical samples, it may be more than 50%. The possibility of causal connections between and common predictors of the two problems is real. Despite data demonstrating a consistent relation between aggression toward a child and aggression toward a partner, research and clinical services are not well coordinated. We discuss ways research could benefit from greater awareness of co-occurring aggression, comment on issues related to assessing families for presence of co-occurring aggression or abuse, and describe approaches to intervention that take advantage of what we know about common correlates of parent and partner aggression. Finally, we acknowledge fledgling collaborative efforts by service agencies to keep both children and parents safe and offer suggestions for training clinicians to address co-occurring aggression.

The association between children's externalizing behavior problems and mothers' overreactive discipline was examined in a longitudinally assessed sample of toddlers and their mothers. Path analyses indicated that mothers' overreactive discipline and children's externalizing behaviors were significantly and similarly stable over a 2 1/2-year period. No evidence of a cross-time influence of either variable on the other was observed. Mothers' overreactive discipline at Time 2 had a significant effect on Time 2 externalizing behavior. No significant effects of children's behavior on mothers' discipline were found. Mothers' depressive symptomatology and marital discord predicted initial overreactivity and were related to externalizing problems through their relations to overreactivity. The results support the appropriateness of implementing parenting interventions for externalizing problems before age 2 years.

This study explored the factor structure of a modified version of the Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS; M. A. Straus, 1979) in a large multiethnic high school sample. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analytic approaches were used. Results generally supported 2-factor models for males and females. A substantial proportion of residual variance remained after the 2 primary factors were extracted, and correlations among this residual Variance suggested meaningful differences in the perpetration and experience of dating violence for males and females. Furthermore, the factor structure for males' self-reported victimization suggested that items representing psychological and mild physical aggression, which loaded on 1 factor, may be perceived similarly. Convergent validity analyses that examined the correlation among CTS traditional and factor scores with jealous actions,control tactics, and attitudes justifying males' and females' use of dating aggression provided initial support for the constructs identified. Results are discussed in terms of improving measurement of dating aggression.

To address the direction of causality underlying the robust association of mothers' attributions for child misbehavior and mothers' parenting, mothers' child-centered responsibility attributions for their hard-to-manage toddlers' misbehavior were experimentally manipulated. Mothers and children were then videotaped interacting in typical but challenging situations. Relative to mothers who were told that their children were not to blame for misbehaving, mothers who were told that their children would misbehave voluntarily and with negative intent were rated as significantly more overreactive in their discipline and felt angrier; their children exhibited higher rates of negative affect. Therefore, mothers' attributions for children's misbehavior can determine the harshness of their discipline. Further research on attribution-focused interventions and their role in facilitating treatment response and maintenance in parenting programs is warranted.

A model of the development and maintenance of overreactive and lax parental discipline styles was tested in a sample of 40 mothers of toddlers by assessing mothers' arousal to and attributions for videotaped scenes of children expressing negative affect and by examining these data in relation to self-reported parenting style. The dysfunctionality of mothers' child-centered attributions for the child negative affect accounted for a significant portion of the variance in mothers' emotional arousal and their overreactive/harsh parenting. However, the dysfunctionality of mothers' mother-centered attributions did not account for a significant portion of the variance in mothers' lax parenting. These findings suggest that emotions and cognitions play important roles in maintaining overreactive or harsh parenting. Interventions aimed at altering parenting behavior may be more effective if they address emotional arousal and attributions as well as teach appropriate parenting strategies.