Parenting and family support within a broad child abuse prevention strategy: Child maltreatment prevention can benefit from public health strategies

Abstract

By definition, child maltreatment (CM) by a family caregiver is parenting gone awry. That prevention of CM would not directly involve the strengthening of parenting is not an easily defended position. However, it is also widely accepted that broader contextual conditions and factors, including those associated with pronounced poverty, adversely affect families and parenting, and exacerbate risk for CM. Parenting-focused intervention is not the only piece needed in a prevention strategy, but it is a critical piece nonetheless. Another contextual consideration, often overlooked, is the collective modeling and contagion effect of parenting across the entire community, for better or worse. Coercive and problematic parenting practices do not arise in a vacuum, nor do pro-social ones. Interventions to improve parenting are important to CM prevention but need to be embedded in a broader public health strategy.