Shared parenting: A new paradigm for the treatment of child abuse

Abstract

The thesis of this article is that child abuse can be most effectively prevented by recasting it as a part of a larger problem of inadequately parented families. Services for these families may be offered for voluntary participation. They need not be thought of as treatments since they would be designed to prevent rather than treat injuries. The goal of the services would be to improve the childrearing experiences of children in two ways: by helping their parents to function more effectively and providing whatever elements of parental functioning (nurture, education, discipline, or protection) which the natural parents could not give. The proposed facilities would provide supplemental parenting and other services for children as necessary. Facilities would include outreach into the homes, family drop-in centers, family half-way houses for parents who can take care of their children only with onsite supervision, and residential facilities and foster homes at which natural parents would be encouraged to visit and participate. The majority of child abuses occur when there is stress on parents who are inadequate because they themselves have received deficient parenting. The proposed services would relieve stress on parents. This sharing of parental responsibilities between the natural parents and the sharing parents encountered in the proposed facilities would provide children with more adequate parenting than they could receive from their natural parents alone. This would give them a chance to grow into adequate, nonabusive parents and thus interrupt the generational cycle of abuse. The paper recommends some kinds of new services, but more importantly suggests revisions of the goals and functions of current facilities that would make them more effective in preventing child abuse and helping inadequately parented families.