Parental Shame Research Articles

Stigma‐related barriers to participation in support groups for children: Social workers' experiences and destigmatizing strategies

AbstractIn Sweden, preventive support groups for children exposed to domestic violence, substance abuse or mental illness are provided by local child protection services (CPS). The stigma of parental problems and contact with CPS are barriers to recruiting children. This article investigates how such barriers are experienced and handled by professional support group leaders. The empirical data is drawn from five group interviews with 16 professionals, recruited from a purposive sample of nine local authorities in Sweden. It is found that professionals experience stigma as a barrier to recruiting children, mainly the parents' shame but also their fear of CPS involvement. Professionals describe parents' problems on a ‘scale of shamefulness’, ranging from divorce to domestic violence, and the barriers vary in strength relative to the shamefulness of the problem. Parents are gatekeepers for their children's participation, so destigmatizing and shame‐reducing strategies, whether on the interpersonal, organizational or structural level, are called for to increase children's access. However, strategies targeting parental shame are not without their challenges and risks.

Homework Stress and Learning Disability: The Role of Parental Shame, Guilt, and Need Frustration

AbstractUsing a cross‐sectional design, this study examined the relationships between parental guilt, shame, need frustration, and homework stress in students with learning disabilities (LD) and typically developing students (TD) and their parents. One hundred and eight parent‐child dyads (54 LD, 54 TD) completed questionnaires to assess homework stress, parental need frustration, guilt, and shame. Parents of students with LD reported more stress, need frustration, shame, and guilt than parents of TD students. For the LD group, shame mediated the association between parental need frustration and parental and child stress whereas guilt mediated the association between parental need frustration and parental stress. The theoretical and practical implications for lessening homework stress for students with LD and their parents are discussed.

Psychosocial Needs of Parents Engaged in Treatment for Opioid Use Disorder

Background: Little research has examined the needs of parents with opioid use disorder (OUD) who are receiving medications for OUD (MOUDs), which is striking given growing rates of OUD among parents. Objective: The current study expands the literature by examining psychiatric, psychosocial, and parenting-related functioning, as well as 12-month MOUD treatment retention among parents versus non-parents participating in a buprenorphine program at an academic family medicine residency clinic. Methods: Patients (N = 144; 61 parents) completed measures of psychiatric and psychosocial functioning at the first MOUD visit; parents also completed measures of parental functioning. Results: Parents endorsed less anxiety and loneliness, as well as greater social connection, life satisfaction, and life meaning. Parents were also older, more likely to be female, of a race other than white, married, employed, and had higher incomes. Although parents endorsed high levels of parental self-agency and strong bonds with children, many also reported elevated parental shame. Among parents, higher levels of shame were also associated with higher depression, anxiety, anger, stress, and loneliness. Over 25% of parents reported that a child lived with friends/relatives over 3 months, and 11% noted a child having been removed from the home by child protective services. Finally, parents were more likely to be retained in treatment at 12 months, although this finding was non-significant after controlling for covariates. Conclusions/Importance: These findings illustrate the needs experienced by parents engaged in MOUD treatment, which may prove valuable in informing policy, program development, and treatment approaches for parents with OUD.

Who's to Blame for All the Shame?: The Impact of Different Parental Shaming Sources on Guilt Magnitude

Purpose: Parent shaming is defined as criticizing or degrading a parent for their parenting choices. Shaming may come from a myriad of sources, including family, friends, teachers, doctors, and even electronic media/parenting books. While previous studies have identified sources of parental shaming, they have not analyzed their varied impacts on the magnitude of parental guilt experienced. This study seeks to understand the extent to which shaming from various sources facilitates heightened parental guilt and elucidate the most …

Human evolution and culture in relationship to shame in the parenting role: Implications for psychology and psychotherapy.

There is considerable evidence that early parenting has profound effects on a range of physiological and psychological maturation processes. Furthermore, psychotherapy often addresses some of the distortions and developmental difficulties that have arisen from early childhood. While research has focused on obvious candidates such as abuse and neglect, this paper reviews some of the core themes related to a less investigated area, specifically parental shame on child development. Role shame sensitive parenting styles will be explored against an evolutionary background that contrasts early human and modern human rearing contexts. We also outline a study examining the role of shame in psychological controlling and dysfunctional parenting styles, its relationship to different dimensions of shame and fears of compassion. An online survey was conducted containing self-report measures of dysfunctional parenting styles, three dimensions of shame (external, internal, and reflected), fears of compassion, mental health indices, and a measure of psychological flexibility. An online survey was accessed by 333 parents (306 being female) with a child between the ages of 3-9years. Two hierarchical multiple regressions indicated support for our two primary hypotheses, with shame explaining significant variance in both psychological controlling and dysfunctional parenting styles over and above that explained by psychological inflexibility, parental mental health, and fears of compassion. Additionally, results from standard multiple regressions indicated that fears of compassion account for significant variance in external shame, as well as internal and reflected shame. Recommendations for future research include focusing on parental motivation in order to help support parents and children are provided. Shame is a major factor for how parents engage in parenting practices and respond to their children Practitioners need to be sensitive to the shame parents can experience and asses for it Assessing shame-threat in parenting and shifting to compassionate motivation can lead to more responsive and positive parenting.

Exploring the efficacy of reintegrative shaming for non-predatory offending

Since Braithwaite advanced reintegrative shaming theory about 25years ago, the theory has almost invariably been retested only in relation to predatory offending. Few studies have tested the relevance of the theory for non-predatory offending. This study aims to explore the utility of reintegrative shaming theory in explaining non-predatory crimes. Our main research question was: is acknowledgement of shame apportioned by others associated with reduction in non-predatory offending? We used zero-inflated negative binomial modelling to analyse data from a national, longitudinal, population-based study of 1,726 adolescents. Overall, peer shame acknowledgement at age 18-21 was a significant predictor of no non-predatory offending at ages 21-27. Contrary to our expectation, however, similar recognition and incorporation of parental shame was not related to absence of such offending. Our findings add further weight to the validity of reintegrative shaming theory, showing its broader value explaining criminal behaviour-and desistance from it-beyond the original model.

Parental Emotional Response to Children’s Traumas

To better understand how parents react to their child’s trauma exposure and evaluate whether different reactions are related to different types of traumas, 120 parents (79.2% mothers, 18.3% fathers, 2.5% other caregivers) were asked about their emotional reactions related to their child’s self-reported worst trauma. Emotional reactions were assessed with the Parental Emotional Reactions Questionnaire (PERQ). Parents reported high levels of distress and guilt. Furthermore, there was a significant relationship between type of trauma and parents’ overall emotional reactions. Parental distress was equally endorsed among the different trauma groups. Parents of children who experienced intrafamilial violence and extrafamilial sexual abuse reported the highest levels of guilt, and child exposure to intrafamilial violence was associated with higher levels of parental shame.

Parenting and Child Characteristics in the Prediction of Shame in Early and Middle Childhood

We examined individual differences in shame responding in early childhood and predictive relations with shame proneness in middle childhood. Child shame responding, parental shaming, and child temperamental inhibition were assessed at Time 1 ( n = 225, aged 3–4 years), shame responding was reassessed at Time 2 ( n = 199, aged 5–7 years), and shame proneness was assessed at Time 3 ( n = 162, aged 7–9 years). Shame responding was assessed from emotionexpressive reactions to failure, parental shaming from self-reports and spouse reports, temperamental inhibition from mother and father ratings, and shame proneness from hypothetical scenarios. Girls showed more shame than boys by school age. Increased shame responding between preschool age and school age was predicted, for girls, from lower inhibition or higher mother shaming and, for boys, from higher mother shaming if boys were highly inhibited. Shame responding at preschool age predicted higher or lower shame proneness in middle childhood conditional on gender and parenting.

Parental shame and guilt: Distinguishing emotional responses to a child's wrongdoings

AbstractThis research differentiates shame and guilt as distinct emotional reactions that parents in the United States can have for their children's misdeeds. In Study 1, when 93 parents wrote about their child's worst transgression, their ratings of perceived public exposure and threat to their self‐image predicted shame, whereas the degree to which they felt a lack of control over their child and believed the act harmed others predicted guilt. In Study 2, when 123 mothers rated their reactions to an imagined wrongdoing, the presence of a critical observer tended to elevate shame but not guilt. Across both studies, guilt predicted adaptive parenting responses, whereas, shame predicted maladaptive responses. The discussion emphasizes the implications that self‐conscious emotions have for family dynamics.

Stesolid emergency treatment: Cave social fear!

To explore psychosocial effects of rectiole emergency treatment. Children who had at some time been treated with Stesolid rectiole for seizure relief were questioned about feelings of shame in relation to this treatment and their expectation of bullying by peers who might be aware of it. In addition to parental shame, parental worries concerning their children's epilepsy were explored. Data from 39 patients (18 girls) aged 5-19 years were analysed. Of the children aged over seven, most girls (9/12), but not boys (1/6) reported to feeling a sense of shame. Children's shame was not related to parental shame, parental worries or seizure severity. A higher frequency of rectiole applications was related to a stronger expectation of being bullied. Rectal emergency medication may elicit social fear, particularly in girls and if recurring it may (not solely in girls) elicit increased expectations of bullying.

Witnessing Parental Violence as a Traumatic Experience Shaping the Abusive Personality

Summary Previous work by Dutton and his colleagues has established a clinical profile on intimately abusive adult men that is quite similar to profiles of trauma victims in many essential clinical respects. Dutton (in press) showed that arousal modulation problems, affective monitoring, cognitive problem solving deficits, externalizing attributional styles, aggression and dissociative states are common to both groups. Furthermore, intimately abusive men demonstrate similar profiles as men diagnosed independently with PTSD on the MCMI-II. Dutton (1995a, 1995b) attributed the trauma to early assaults on the self through parental shaming, accompanied by insecure attachment and physical abuse victimization. Bowlby (1973) considered insecure attachment itself both a source and consequence of trauma. Since the infant turns to the attachment-object during periods of distress seeking soothing, a failure to obtain soothing maintains high arousal and endocrine secretion. Van der Kolk (1987) considered child abuse as an “overwhelming life experience” and reviewed the defenses that children use to deal with parental abuse: hypervigilance, projection, splitting, and denial. Terr (1979) also described driven, compulsive repetitions, and reenactments that permeate dreams, play, fantasies and object relations of traumatized children. Shaming, conceptualized as verbal or behavioral attacks on the global self, has been found to generate life-long shame-proneness or defenses involving rage. A combination of all three early experiences is traumatizing (Dutton, 1995a, 1995b; Dutton, in press). However, some evidence exists that suggests observation of interparental attacks can be substituted for physical abuse victimization as the third prong in this triad of traumatogenic experiences.