t create abusive patterns in adults, especially with regard to their children. While there are different stresses on parents who abuse, there appear to be five main development tasks that parents who abuse have not successfully completed in their own lives. Often these are the result of a rigid superego in the parent that engenders the need to tightly control themselves and others:
To get their needs met in appropriate ways.
To determine they are responsible for their own actions and not for the actions of others.
This analysis will explore these five issues to help find solutions for a problem that by all accounts appears to be escalating. A review of literature will be used to underscore these five issues as the basic problems and issues that must be resolved if child abuse is to decrease at the source-the dysfunctional parent. A policy and ethics review will focus on what types of policies are now in place to help combat these issues and the overall problem of intervention when children are abused. A conclusion will suggest how these five issues can be resolved in dysfunctional parents, including implications for policies and practices designed to combat them in future.
Getting needs met is often something abusive parents have learned to do in an extreme manner. When they were children they were abused and could only get their needs met by expressing them in an extreme or outrageous manner, i.e., a tantrum or threats of suicide. Because they feel they cannot express their needs in a mild or calm manner and be heard, the now abusive parent often directs these attitudes upon their children, “Because they learned early to overact or react, abusive parents do not know how to make their wishes and feelings known in appropriate, less dramatic ways. They feel so insignificant that they are sure no one will listen if they merely tell how they feel. These parents find themselves directing these attitudes in their chi...