Parental Battlefield: Divorcing Parents and the Treatment of Children with ADHD

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) typically manifests as inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity among children, resulting in stimulant drug therapy. Children exposed to high‐stress situations, such as divorcing parents, are twice as likely to present with ADHD symptoms. Often these symptoms are a result of the stress and not truly ADHD. Additionally, parents in conflict frequently disagree about the appropriate diagnosis and treatment for their child, which leads to court disputes. Thus, this Note proposes a policy be implemented setting forth alternatives that must be exhausted for a period of time prior to administering stimulants to a child of divorce.     

Parental Sociopathy as a Predictor of Childhood Sexual Abuse

Research on childhood sexual abuse has often examined, in isolation of one another, such highly correlated risk factors as parental substance abuse, domestic violence, and pathological family functioning. Investigating comorbid antecedents separately does not allow accurate specification of the predictors of abuse. Moreover, sexual trauma research has tended to neglect parental sociopathy as a risk factor. Given the limitations of past research, the present study examined the relationships among parental sociopathy, parental substance use, marital violence, poor family functioning, and childhood sexual abuse. We administered a battery of questionnaires to a nonclinical sample of 130 college women and replicated previous findings by showing that parental substance use predicted sexual abuse when examined in isolation. However, when parental sociopathy and the other risk factors were included in a regression model, parental sociopathy was the only significant predictor. Mother's and father's sociopathy predicted sexual abuse independently and when combined.     

Face to Face with Child Abuse: Towards an Ethics of Listening

This paper is concerned with faces. It is concerned with the face of a sexually abused seven years old child -- with my face -- and with the marginalisation and violation of children’s own subjective experiences of abuse by the law. Drawing upon my own subjective experience of sexual abuse as a young child, silenced for twenty-five years, I interpret my own sexual abuse as a profound experience of ‘homelessness’. To be homeless is to lack a primal place in the world, to be in a permanent state of disorientation, to be displaced. To be homeless is not necessarily to be emotionally insecure, but to be voiceless. Accordingly, the subject of sexual abuse is an emotionally dislocated subject and I interpret my own abuse in terms of an enduring experience of the violation of place. In other words, I would argue that the physical act of sexual abuse is less important than the site or place of abuse. The significance of sexual abuse is that it reveals the homelessness of our own sojourn and the poverty of our own subjectivity. Given this interpretation, I find the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child problematic and I attempt to think child sexual abuse in ethical terms. Following Emmanuel Levinas, I present sexual abuse in terms of the ethical significance of the face-to-face relationship and I argue that rights-based advocacy must listen to what children say. It must think through what listening to that voice entails in ethical terms. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

台湾地区父母对未成年子女扶养之研究

当今社会,已由过去之大家族生活模式走向小家庭模式,由父母与未成年子女组成之核心家庭。家庭之功能,其中之一即为扶养。父母对未成年子女之扶养,尤其重要,盖未成年子女尚处成长阶段,仍在学习,不具谋生能力。因此,父母对未成年子女之扶养系未成年子女重大利益。台湾地区民法亲属篇第五章设有扶养之规定,共计11个条文,在父母以外之其他亲属与未成人间之扶养,固有其适用,然而于父母对于未成年子女之扶养是否有适用,容有疑义。     

Coping with Interparental Verbal Conflict by Children Exposed to Spouse Abuse and Children from Nonviolent Homes

Children are distressed by parental conflict, but the influence of the conflict topic has rarely been studied, especially in relation to children's history of witnessing domestic conflict. Responses to three conflict topics (money, child-related, political candidate) were examined in two groups of 5 1/2-through 12-year-olds: 40 children who have witnessed spouse abuse and 72 children from nonviolent homes. Children listened to taped scenarios (with accompanying drawings) of two parents engaged in one friendly and three angry interactions. Children reported their feelings, intensity of feelings, and coping strategies. Children's emotional responses varied from sadness, to anger, to guilt depending on their age and the conflict topic. Primary control strategies for coping with family conflict (e.g., direct intervention) were favored for all. Boys from violent homes responded to certain simulated conflicts with more intense anger and sadness than other children. Results emphasized children's sensitivity to different conflict topics and advance understanding of relations between a history of witnessing spouse abuse and child outcomes.     

Behavior Problems in Children Exposed to Wife Abuse: Gender Differences

Family aggression patterns and behavior problems of children, aged 6-12, recruited from shelters for battered women (shelter group) were contrasted with three comparison groups of currently nonviolent families: two-parent, single-mother, and homeless. Girls who had been exposed to recent interparental wife abuse were predicted to show more internalizing and externalizing behavior problems than similarly exposed boys, based on recent literature. Homeless and shelter mothers reported the highest rates of parent-child aggression. Shelter girls obtained significantly higher total, internalizing and externalizing behavior problem ratings than shelter boys, and than two-parent and single-mother girls. Shelter boys obtained significantly higher internalizing ratings than two-parent boys. Shelter and homeless children were rated as having equivalent levels of behaviour problems. Across all groups, mothers' psychological adjustment was a better predictor of daughters' adjustment than that of sons. The study concluded that the assumption that preadolescent girls have greater immunity to psychosocial risk is unfounded.     

Imprisoned Mothers and Their Children

Abstract

Presently, there is concern regarding the imprisonment of female offenders who are mothers occasioned by both the numerical increase in women prisoners and by the fact that research and public policy have centered primarily on separation issues. It is estimated that 70%-80% are mothers, incarceration results in the separation of mothers and children. Following their incarceration, most mothers plan to be reunited with their children. This paper examines the reunion aspect and makes recommendations for its successfully implementation.     

Women's Violence Against Their Children

Feminist scholars have rarely ventured into the realm of child abuse research. The aim of this paper is to lay the foundation for a feminist understanding of women's violence against their children. It begins with an assessment of the fundamental nature of the oppression of women in society and within the family. It continues with a critical analysis of how conventional child abuse and family violence experts have attempted to explain the problem of violence against children in the family. Ultimately, this paper reveals that if one is genuinely interested in unlocking the secrets of maternal child abuse, then the key is a feminist perspective that provides insight into the lives of women in the patriarchy.     

Accuracy of Investigators' Verbatim Notes of Their Forensic Interviews with Alleged Child Abuse Victims

Verbatim contemporaneous accounts of 20 investigative interviews were compared with audiotaped recordings thereof. More than half (57%) of the interviewers' utterances along with 25% of the incident-relevant details provided by the children were not reported in the verbatim notes. The structure of the interviews was also represented inaccurately in these accounts. Fewer than half (44%) of the details provided by the children were attributed to the correct eliciting utterance type. Investigators systematically misattributed details to more open rather than more focused prompts. These results underscore the superiority of electronic recording when the content and structure of investigative interviews must be preserved.     

Parental management,ADHD, and delinquent involvement: Reassessing Gottfredson and Hirschi's general theory

A core proposition of Gottfredson and Hirschi's general theory of crime is that ineffective parenting fosters low self-control in children, which leads to delinquent conduct. Using a sample of 2,472 students, we examined the impact of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) on self-control and delinquency. The analysis revealed three main findings. First, low self-control was a strong predictor of both self-reported delinquency and self-reported arrests. Second, parental monitoring not only increased self-control, but had direct effects on both measures of delinquency. Third, the effects of ADHD on delinquency were largely through low self-control.     

Safeguarding Themselves and Their Children: Mothers Share Their Strategies

This paper describes a single aspect of an ongoing program of research that seeks to create an open dialog among low-income parents of young children, staff from a large urban Head Start program, and researchers on child and woman safety. Authors conducted a content analysis of three focus groups within a larger ethnographic study employing qualitative methods. Data emerging from this analysis illustrates the ingenuity with which women keep themselves and their children safe in unsafe contexts.     

Child Abuse,Social Support,and Social Functioning in African American Children

This study examined the relationship among child abuse (physical, emotional, and sexual), social support from friends and family, and social functioning in a sample of low-income African American children (N?=?152). With the exception of the association between sexual abuse and peer support, all of the correlations among study variables were significant. The relationship between child physical and emotional abuse and social functioning were mediated by both family and peer support; however, only family (not peer) support was a significant mediator in the sexual abuse-social functioning link. Additionally, there was no difference found in the strength of mediation via family support versus peer support. Results suggest that mental health professionals should inquire about and attempt to increase children’s levels of social support from family and peers when working with abused youth in order to promote healthy psychological and psychosocial outcomes.     

Spousal Rejection as a Risk Factor for Parental Rejection of Children

Limited information is available about the international generalizability of the common conclusion that marital discord tends to be associated with problematic parenting. Pakistan is a sociocultural context known for a high frequency of marital distress. Accordingly, this study draws from a sample of 270 Pakistani families with children between the ages of 9 to 13 years (M?=?11.21 years). In this study we explore the question: Are Pakistani children’s perceptions of maternal and/or paternal rejection related to their parents’ perceptions of spousal rejection? Results of a hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that wives’ perceptions of husbands’ rejection predicted children’s perceptions of maternal rejection, as well as—but to a significantly lesser extent—children’s perceptions of paternal rejection. Similarly, husbands’ perceptions of wives’ rejection predicted children’s perceptions of paternal rejection, as well as—but to a significantly lesser extent—children’s perceptions of maternal rejection. Results of this research, along with the slim body of prior international research, suggests that the concept of “spillover effect” used to explain the association between spousal rejection and parental rejection may have widespread international applicability.     

Postmortem Changes of Female External Genitalia and Their Importance in Suspected Sexual Abuse

Examination of the female external genitalia to assess for sexual abuse is performed in living individuals, and the interpretation of the findings is based on evidence-based studies. However, in the deceased, no such studies are available, and postmortem changes could present as suspicious findings that can be mistaken for trauma. Patches of discoloration in the hymen were reported previously in one case as hypostasis (i.e., livor and lividity), and based on this finding, it was listed as a finding that is not associated with trauma. This was a retrospective study that was conducted in the Center of Forensic and Legal Medicine in Dammam, Saudi Arabia over a 4-year period. The study included 30 deceased women in whom photographic documentation of their external genitalia was assessed for postmortem changes. The postmortem interval ranged from less than 24 h to more than 100 days, and the ages of these deceased women were in the 20–40 year-old age group. In cases where the hymen, vagina, and/or fossa navicularis were clearly visible, none of these areas showed any hypostatic discoloration. A comparison between antemortem and postmortem appearance of the hymen in one case clearly showed the absence of hypostatic changes in the hymen. In conclusion, any discoloration of the external genitalia that is detected in a female decedent requires serious consideration.     

Navajo Women and Abuse: The Context for Their Troubled Relationships

In this article, on the basis of interviews with seven Navajo women, the author discusses the Navajo womans perspective on domestic violence. These discussions reveal several factors that distinguish the Navajo womans experience of abuse from that of the Anglo³ woman. These factors are examined in light of historical and contemporary understandings of the Navajo world. Three cultural elements can help us understand the Navajo womans experience of abuse: the cultural concept of hózhó, the searing tale (in the Creation Story) of the quarrel between First Man and First Woman, a quarrel that brought great tragedy to the people; and the Kinaáldá, the female puberty rite. It is the authors argument that these facets of the Navajo culture, in addition to Western explanations for womens staying with abusive partners, are powerful contributors to the Navajo womans understanding of abuse in her life and if we are to develop successful techniques for intervention, we must consider these elements as well as those of the dominant culture.     

Protect Our Children: Vaccination Exemptions Can Establish Child Abuse and Neglect

The need to protect public health has increased as the anti‐vaccine movement is on the rise. Exemptions to vaccination requirements have become more lax, and parents find ways to avoid vaccinating their children, thereby exposing not only their children to the dangers of serious diseases, but other children as well. This Note proposes a federal statute mandating that parents subject their children between the ages of infancy and 6 to acquire vaccinations for all diseases recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention unless a licensed physician recommends otherwise.     

Legal,Ethical and Professional Concerns When Representing Children in Abuse Cases in Juvenile Court

But in every case, regardless of the parties, the welfare of the child is the controlling and important fact. This is not intended to nullify the laws of nature; for in most instances it will be found that the legal right of the parent and the interest of the child are the same. But if through misconduct or other circumstances it appears that the case is exceptional, and that the welfare of the child requires that it should be separated from its parent, the parens patriae must protect the helpless and the innocent. They are the wards of the court, the hope of the state, and the seed corn of the future. Williams v. Crosby, 118 Ga. 296 (1903).