Hi maari...
I've spent 20 years in the mental health field, and the most common
knowledge, which is backed up by loads of research, is that those
parents who are abusive toward their children are very likely to
have been abused, themselves, as children. Consequently, the behavior
gets passed from generation to generation.
Tasha (last name unknown) has some women's resource pages on her
site at Geocities, one of which talks about this concept:
"the intergenerational transmission theory is commonly used
to explain the occurrence of wife battering. The general
thesis of this theory states that individuals who observe
and/or experience violence in the home as children become
likely to use violence in their own homes. Said another
way, men who observed their fathers abuse their mothers
and/or were abused by their parents as children are likely
to resort to violent actions toward their wives (and/or
children). This idea initially developed out of the child
abuse literature, with Kempe, Silverman, Steele,
Droegemueller, and Silver's (1962) description of the
"battered child syndrome." This literature disseminated
the idea that abusing parents were themselves abused, and
that the transmission of abuse, or a cycle of abuse,
occurs across generations."
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Square/8005/women/ittheory.htm
One way to understand this is to realize that, as children, we look
to adults, and especially our parents, as role models for how to
survive and succeed in a world we are only beginning to fathom.
Innately, we look for what seems to produce success. The fact that
our parents are alive proves that they are successful to some
degree. Beyond that, we tend to assess and absorb, without thinking,
behaviors which demonstrate the power to get our needs met.
Consequently, if Dad always wins an argument and/or gets his
way by yelling, we tend to absorb this behavior by osmosis,
trying it out on our siblings and using it if it works.
Likewise, if Mom always gets her way by breaking down into
tears, then we may model this behavior. Naturally, it could just
as well be Mom who gets her way by yelling.
Of course, some children who have been abused vow never to be
this way with their children, yet the very act of rejecting
an emotion such as anger can cause it to build, by its very
suppression, until it explodes, completely out of control.
Another way of describing the dynamics of abuse is mentioned
in a summary of the book 'A Secure Base: Clinical Applications
of Attachment Theory', by Bowlby, J. (1988), on the Thames
Valley University Psychology website, under chapter 5:
"Bowlby considers the aetiology of violent behaviour within
family systems. He argues that family violence is rooted in
functional anger but has been taken to an extreme and cites
various studies to support this. He shows that physically
abusive mothers tend to yearn for care and are over sensitive
to forms of rejection, having experienced threatened or actual
abandonment in their own childhood. When their own children
fail to care for them, they resort to anger and violence."
http://psyche.tvu.ac.uk/phdrg/atkins/atws/document/12.html
The treatment of choice for such individuals is a combination
of Assertiveness Training, Self-Esteem support, and Anger
Management courses. Assertiveness Training teaches that it's
okay to feel angry, and to express it, verbally, rather than
suppress it until it explodes emotionally and physically.
Self-Esteem helps people realize their inherent worth despite
how worthless they may have been led to believe they are by
the abusive behaviors of their own parents. Anger Management
takes Assertiveness Training a step further in teaching one
how to determine whether, and how much of, the anger one
feels in the present is actually related to the present
situation, and how much is, in fact, related to childhood
events in which our anger was never expressed. It then
provides ways to identify the childhood events and release
the anger in a safe and private way.
There are, of course, other possibilites for the roots of
abusive behavior, such as a mental illness like Schizophrenia
or Borderline Personality Disorder, Mental Retardation, or
others, but the vast majority of those who are abusive were
victims of abuse. To complicate matters, those who were
abused as children often attract, and are attracted to,
members of the opposite sex who were also abused. This
often leads to relational dynamics in which the mother,
who was abused as a child, finds herself in successive
failed relationships with abusive men. This makes it
even more likely that she will eventually abuse her
children.
More from Tasha's page:
"Straus (1977) claims that at least 90 percent of parents
use physical punishment in early childhood. Moreover, for
about 50 percent of all children, such physical punishment
continues through the end of high school, essentially until
these children leave home. What likely occurs, therefore,
is that these children learn to associate love with
violence. Said differently, these children learn that those
who love them the most are those who hit them and have the
right to hit, or use other forms of abuse. Then, when these
children form their own marital dyads and families, they
apply what they have learned as children, namely, that it
is okay to abuse the ones they love. This idea of a "cycle
of violence" has become one of the most widely accepted
explanations for the occurrence of family violence, and
wife abuse is certainly no exception."
"For example, Straus, Gelles, and Steinmetz (1980) report
in their national study of family violence that those men
who observed their parents physically attacking each other
were almost three times more likely to have hit their own
wives (than those men who didn't witness interparental
abuse). Roy (1977) found that 80 percent of abusive
husbands had been abused as children or had witnessed
their fathers abusing their mothers. Johnston (1988)
found a relationship between men experiencing
(or observing) violence in their families-of-origin and
later wife abuse, and concluded that male children who
experience parent-to-child violence or observe
father-to-mother violence may learn how to control
and get what they want by resorting to violence as
adults as a means to communicate their needs. As yet
a fourth example, Gelles (1976) found that one of the
main factors related to a wife tolerating abuse from
her husband is the extent to which she was hit by her
parents as a child."
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Square/8005/women/ittheory.htm
On the National Network For Health site, there is a page
with a table summarizing the risk factors for child abuse:
--------------------------------------------------------------
Risk Factor Table for Child Physical Abuse: Family Risk Factors
Black, D.A., Schumacher, J.A, Smith Slep, A.M., & Heyman,
R.E. (December, 1999).
Risk Factors for Partner Abuse and Child Maltreatment:
A Review of Literature.
C.M. Allen, Editor. Retrieved from CYFERNet Web site,
http://www.cyfernet.org
"Children from lower income families have an increased
risk for child physical abuse."
"abused children were more likely to come from families
experiencing high levels of family stress than nonabused
children"
"The relation between family structure and child physical
abuse is moderated by age. Two parent Families with
children above the age of 5 are at increased risk for
child physical abuse."
"Abusive parents disagreed more with each other compared
to nonabusive parents"
"There is an increased risk of child physical abuse in
families with only one child in the household."
"Husband-to-Wife physical aggression increased the
likelihood of minor child physical abuse"
"The abusive mothers were more likely to have been
assaulted by an ex-partner compared to nonabusive mothers"
"The abusive mothers were more likely to have experienced
husband-to-wife physical aggression compared to nonabusive
mothers"
"Wives experiencing husband-to-wife verbal aggression had
higher rates of child physical abuse"
...and so on. There is more data on the page:
http://www.nnh.org/risk/newchap11_RiskFactorTableforChildPhysicalAbuse.htm
--------------------------------------------------------------
I hope that provides some insight into this tragic phenomenon.
Of course there is more to read by following the links to the
pages I cited, and in the search results below.
Please do not rate this answer until you are satisfied that
the answer cannot be improved upon by means of a dialog
established through the "Request for Clarification" process.
sublime1-ga
Searches cone, via Google:
"abusive mothers"
://www.google.com/search?q=%22abusive+mothers
percent OR percentage of abusive parents who were abused
://www.google.com/search?q=percent+OR+percentage+of+abusive+parents+who+were+abused |
