Characteristics of Abusive Parents

Unfulfilled Needs for Nurturance and Dependence:

Many abusive and neglectful parents were significantly deprived of emotional support as children themselves. Often they too were abused or neglected by their parents, and were unable to depend on the adults in their lives for support, nurturing, love, or physical and/or emotional care. These unmet needs may have caused the parent to develop mental health problems later in life, or to be unable to make social attachments. If the parent lacks the skills necessary to provide for his or her own emotional care, it is unlikely that that individual will be able to provide the nurturance and support necessary for a child's emotional well-being. Often such individuals have not learned how to gain emotional support from others, and have not learned healthy methods for dealing with extreme emotions such as fear and anger. They also may not have learned appropriate impulse control, and therefore, are more likely to act on their impulses. As a result, they are less likely to seek help in controlling their emotions, and are more likely to give in to the impulsive behavior that these emotions may evoke.

Role-Reversal:

Abusive and neglectful parents often have not had their emotional needs met in childhood, which causes them to continue to seek nurturance from others. They often seem to be very immature in their interpersonal skills, and are focused on their own selves and their own needs. This makes it more difficult for them to see the needs of others, including their children. Often the result of this emotional immaturity is a role-reversal with the child being expected to care for the parent. The child may be looked at as the person who needs to fulfill the parent's need for love and acceptance. This is particularly true of very young mothers, who may treat their child as a peer or a friend, rather than as a child. When the child is not able to fulfill the parent’s emotional needs, the resulting frustration may lead to abuse. The parent may also perceive the child as being an extension of herself rather than a separate individual. She may project her lack of self-esteem and negative self-image on the child. This may cause the child to become a scapegoat for the parent’s frustrations and sense of inadequacy.

Low Self-Esteem:

Due to their deprived childhoods, many abusive and neglectful parents have a severe lack of self-esteem and low self-worth. They may feel unloved, unwanted, and unappreciated, which leads to perceptions of being unattractive, stupid or insignificant. Low self-esteem often leads to low expectations for both parent and child. 

Low expectations for a family lead to a belief that life is going to be hard. Abusive parents often expect rejection from others; this negative attitude leads them to become involved in unsatisfying relationships with others.  The vicious cycle of low expectations and expected rejection can cause isolation as the person seeks to avoid rejection and pain. 

This cycle can also cause either aggressive or offensive behaviors that provoke rejection. So while these parents still need the love, support and positive reinforcement denied them in childhood, they are at a loss about how to achieve it, and may act in ways that deny them the sense of worth and belonging they so desperately need.

Poor Relationships With Own Parents: 

Since many abusers have had abusive childhoods, it is not surprising that many do not have good relationships with their own parents. This lack of positive intergenerational relationships contributes to the problems of lack of support and isolation discussed below. Since the parent may not have bonded well with his parents as a child, this becomes a contributing factor in his inability to make attachments with his own children. Being placed in foster care or group homes as a child also influences the lack of parental bonding that is necessary to form an attachment to future children. Lack of parental bonding also contributes to the other personality factors, such as low self-esteem, that plague abusive parents. 

Depression or Mental Illness:

Research studies have shown that regardless of stress or the availability of emotional supports in parenting, the single most determinant factor in predicting maltreatment of children is the mother’s emotional stability. Mothers who are suffering from mental illness or who are impulsive are at high risk of being abusive parents. Mothers who suffer from apathy or who are severely depressed are at high risk of becoming neglectful to their children. Neglectful parents as a group are more dysfunctional than abusive parents as they are less socialized, angrier and more impulsive; furthermore, they have greater difficulty in dealing with stress.

They tend to score higher on scales of rigidity, loneliness, unhappiness, and negative concept of self and child. Depressed mothers are more likely than nondepressed mothers to be rejecting and indifferent to their children’s needs in regard to feeding and supervision. Their altered mental state makes these mothers less available to offer their children love and support, and less able to recognize and deal with their emotions in a healthy manner. It also makes them less attuned to reality, which makes them more likely to live impulsively and to lack the ability to plan for the future.