Shifting the Paradigm from Child Neglect to Meeting the Needs of Children: A Qualitative Exploration of Parents’ Perspectives

Disentangling Poverty From Neglect: Using a Person-Centered Approach to Examine Risk Factors for Neglect Among Families in Poverty

“…This is not particularly surprising given the U.S. policy context provides minimal supports to families, thereby leaving the structural challenges of poverty to fall solely on families. In the context of poverty, parents often struggle to find resources on their own, either due to limited availability or quality, due to the prohibitory cost of resources, or due to exclusion criteria (Elias et al, 2018; Saar-Heiman, 2022). Therefore, in order to alleviate exposure to high levels of risk in the context of poverty, policy solutions are warranted to create equitable environments.…”

“…Indeed, based on the Family Stress Model, poverty combined with economic pressures (e.g., residential instability, lack of health insurance) and parental psychological distress (e.g., depressive symptoms and parenting stress) increases the risk of disrupted parenting (Conger et al, 2010), or in this case neglect. As such, addressing financial, housing, food, child care, and health care insecurity requires policy-level change to reduce society-level risk factors associated with poverty (Elias et al, 2018; Klika et al, 2022; Smith et al, 2021; Thomas & Waldfogel, 2022; Zhang et al, 2022). Therefore, practitioners and policymakers should consider how to address structural inequalities when working with families in poverty, in addition to providing family-level supports (Briar-Lawson et al, 2021; Saar-Heiman, 2022).…”

“…Depressive symptoms can prevent parents from being emotionally available to their children and have been shown to be predictive of maltreatment (Dubowitz et al, 2011; Stith et al, 2009) and neglect (Clément et al, 2016; Slack et al, 2011). Poverty can increase parenting stress, which then could cause parents to feel overwhelmed or fatigued (Elias et al, 2018), thereby undermining parenting behaviors. Parenting stress has been linked to both maltreatment generally (Stith et al, 2009) and neglect specifically (Clément et al, 2016).…”

“…Children in low socioeconomic households are nearly seven times more likely to be neglected than children who live in more affluent households (Sedlak et al, 2010). This could be in part be due to poverty constraining parents’ time and resources (Elias et al, 2018; Saar-Heiman, 2022). It is also possible that parents in poverty might come into contact with bureaucratic institutions, such as public assistance or social services, and may experience monitoring of parenting behaviors by mandated reporters.…”

Psychological Applications and Trends 2022

“…Despite the importance of the issue of child neglect, there is a scarcity of scholarly literature aimed at understanding, preventing, and intervening with child neglect (Elias et al, 2018). Child neglect generally includes a lack of parental supervision, protection, and provision of basic needs such as nutrition, medical care, clothing, shelter, and education.…”