This study aims to examine the extent of child abuse at general homes and to identify parental factors related to child abuse, that were not so deeply studied in prior research. The primary objective of this study is to provide policy measures for pre...
This study aims to examine the extent of child abuse at general homes and to identify parental factors related to child abuse, that were not so deeply studied in prior research. The primary objective of this study is to provide policy measures for preventing child abuse and to help children to grow safe and sound based on the study results.
The parental factors are grouped into two, socio-demographic characteristics of age, sex, educational level, income, job, and residence of parents, and psycho-social factors of abuse history, drinking problem, supporting punishment, spouse relationship, and child rearing attitude. To answer the research questions, this study surveyed 132 mothers and fathers who have one or more children at home and currently live in 4 areas in Gyeongnam Province.
The major study findings are as follows.
First, the parents in this study do not do child abuse so severely with mean score of 11.74 between 10 and 50 points scale. It is attributable to focusing on general parents at home not abusing parents who are reported to the Child Abuse Prevention Center. As the parents in this study have higher educational level and economic status than on average, they probably do not do child abuse compared to those who are poor and low educated.
Second, only sex of parents and residential type among socio-demographic factors are significantly associated with the degree of child abuse by the parents at home. Mothers are more frequently abusing children at home than fathers are, and the parents who own house are less frequently abusing children at home than those who have not.
Third, abuse history and authoritative child rearing attitude of psycho-social factors are significantly associated with the degree of child abuse by parents at home. The higher abuse history of parent and the more authoritative child rearing attitude of parent, the severe and frequent the child abuse.
Finally, this study has limitations not to compare with other parents, because this study focused on general parents at home. Therefore, further study is necessary to expand this research scope to dissolution families of low educational level and economic status.