Child maltreatment, self regulation, and parenting

Family is a group constituted by individuals linked with ties of kinship and affection, wherein children grow and develop. Caring and educating children are parents' duties. However, quite often, family is not the optimum environment for the development of children, especially when it creates and maintains attitudes and conflicts that act against the emotional and physical stability of minors. Child abuse occurs frequently within families and it causes short and long term consequences. However, in several victims of child abuse the negative effects never appear; thus, it is assumed that a number of factors protect them against these negative consequences. A protective factor is something that, in relation or in interaction with risk, reduces the likelihood of psychosocial problems. Social support is one of these variables. The aim of this study was to identify the protective function of social support and the effects of dispositional resilience and self-regulatory skills on the intergenerational transmission of child abuse. An inventory with various scales was constructed, assessing demographic variables such as mothers' age and marital status, monthly family income, separate income for each partner, partner's current occupations, mothers' and fathers' education, history of abuse, resilience, parenting styles, self-regulation and social support. The data were analysed using structural equation modelling. The resulting model confirms a negative relation between lack of self-regulation and resilience, so that the higher the lack of behavioural self-regulation the lower the resilience. In this research child abuse history was positively related to negative parenting. Findings are discussed in relation to the developmental system theory.