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Effective intervention to prevent or remedy child neglect requires an understanding of the causes. However, specification of the causes of neglect is hampered by the limited research on child neglect. Most studies of child maltreatment include both neglectful and abusive families and fail to differentiate between the groups, thus making it impossible to identify results specifically related to neglect. The numbers of studies that focus specifically on child neglect are few in comparison to studies on other types of maltreatment. Studies are most often based on small, selected samples of reported and verified neglect, composed almost exclusively of very low-income families. For these reasons, the information about causes of neglect is limited and must be considered as only suggested by the existing research.

Nevertheless, it is clear from existing studies and from the experience of practitioners that there is no single cause of the inadequate parenting we term child neglect. Thus, understanding the causality of child neglect requires that it be viewed from a broad ecological-systems perspective. Building on the previous work of child development experts, Urie Bronfenbrenner, James Garbarino, and others, Belsksy has proposed that the causes of child maltreatment be considered in such an ecological framework. Belsky and Vondra have proposed that the determinants of adequate parenting arise from three sources:

• parents' own developmental history and resultant personal psychological resources,
• characteristics of the family and child, and
• contextual sources of stress and support.

Belsky and Vondra suggest that these factors interact to influence parenting as illustrated in Figure 1. The model illustrates that the sources of influence on parenting are interactive and often reciprocal. The developmental experiences of parents influence their personality and psychological resources, which directly influence both their parenting attitudes and behavior and their ability to develop supportive relationships with others. Parenting behavior influences the child's personality and behavior, which reciprocally influences parents' response to the child. The social context of the parent-child relationship, which includes the marital relationship, social network supports, and work-related factors, is highly influential on parenting. The model provides an organizing framework for examining the contributing causes of neglect suggested by the existing research.

Parents' Developmental History and Personality Factors

The ability of a parent to provide adequate care for a child depends partly on his/her emotional maturity, coping skills, knowledge about children, mental capacity, and parenting skills.

Belsky and Vondra review evidence from numerous studies that provide support for the conclusion that "at least under certain stressful conditions, developmental history influences psychological well-being, which in turn affects parental functioning and, as a result, child development."

These authors cite, among others, the Berkeley Growth Study, which provided data to support the linkages between personality, parenting, and then to child development. Growing up in unstable, hostile, nonnurturing homes led to unstable personalities when the children became adults, which led to stressful marriages and abusive parenting practices with their own children. Belsky and Vondra conclude from their review of relevant research that parental personality is the most influential factor on parenting because the personal psychological resources of the individual are also influential in determining the marital partner, the quality of the marital relationship, and the amount of social support one receives.

Child development researchers have used attachment theory to shed light on the personality development of abusive and neglectful mothers. Egeland and colleagues have concluded from their longitudinal study of high-risk mothers and children that the mothers' lack of secure psychological attachment and psychological immaturity result from inadequate care received as children. They found that regardless of level of stress or the availability of emotional supports for parenting, the emotional stability of the mother was the most significant predictor of maltreatment. Mothers who were no longer maltreating their children at a 6-year followup were "more outgoing, more mature and less reactive to their feelings, more realistic in problem solving" than those who continued to neglect and abuse. Others have also concluded that anxious or insecure emotional attachment between children and their parents results from interactions with parents who are physically or emotionally inaccessible, unresponsive, or inappropriately responsive to their children. The conclusion of these studies is that it is not so much the inadequate or abusive nurturing experienced as children, but the unacknowledged deprivations and unresolved feelings around these early experiences that leave the parents unable to offer their children the consistent nurturing needed for the development of secure psychological attachments.

A cycle of neglect is suggested in numerous studies. In Egeland et al.'s longitudinal study of maltreatment, only two out of the eight mothers who had been physically neglected as children were providing adequate care for their children. For the 35 mothers who had grown up in emotionally supportive homes, 20 were providing adequate care for their children; only 1 was maltreating her child. Results of a study by Main and Goldwyn of 30 middle class women, not known to be abusive or neglectful, indicated that a mother's rejection by her own parents in childhood was strongly related to her own infant's avoidance of her following brief separations. Over 56 percent of the 46 neglectful mothers in Polansky's study felt unwanted as children, and 41 percent had experienced some long-term out-of-home care as a child. Nevertheless, the direct cause-effect relationship between parental history of neglect and subsequent neglect of children is not clearly established by the research. Most of the studies cited above are based on high risk or clinical samples or retrospective studies of identified neglectful parents who are not representative of the population of neglect victims.

Indeed, the indication is that there are important mediating factors in the transmission of neglect from one generation to the next. Victims of neglect who do not repeat the cycle have fewer stressful life events; stronger, more stable and supportive relationships with husbands or boyfriends; physically healthier babies; and fewer ambivalent feelings about their child's birth. They are also less likely to have been maltreated by both parents and more apt to have reported a supportive relationship with one parent or with another adult. These mediating factors provide critical indicators for interventions to improve parenting potential.

Polansky and colleagues identified distinguishing psychological characteristics of neglectful mothers, first among poor whites in rural areas of the South, then among poor whites in Philadelphia. From the research with rural, Appalachian mothers, Polansky et al. identified five distinct types of neglectful mothers:

• impulse-ridden mothers,
• apathetic-futile mothers,
• mothers suffering from reactive depression,
• mentally retarded mothers, and
• psychotic mothers.

The subsequent study in Philadelphia confirmed the first two classifications of neglectful mothers and identified character disorders, rather than neuroses or psychoses, as the predominant psychiatric diagnosis of neglectful mothers. Polansky and colleagues described the characteristic "modal personality" for neglectful mothers as:

"Less able to love, less capable of working productively, less open about feelings, more prone to living planlessly and impulsively, but also susceptible to psychological symptoms and to phases of passive inactivity and numb fatalism."

Polansky et al. referred to the personalities of neglectful parents as "infantile or narcissistic" to reflect their markedly immature personality development resulting from early emotional deprivation. Many neglectful mothers are indeed psychologically immature and childlike in their inabilities to consider the needs of others, postpone gratification of basic impulses, and to invest themselves emotionally in another person. Polansky and colleagues found impulsivity to be the personality characteristic that was most highly correlated with neglect among the low-income white mothers studied.

Tags: Child Abuse

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