Mother-child interactive patterns in abusive families versus nonabusive families: an observational study

The interest in aspects relative to the maintenance of aversive family interactions is common among investigators who, from many different fronts, treat child and family issues. If these interactions end in episodes of physical abuse of a child by his/her parents, the need to quickly detect these patterns of family violence in order to prevent and treat them is all the more urgent. The present work falls within this context and focuses on a detailed analysis of behavior in the home of both the abusive mother and the victimized child. In line with recent investigations, the work also centers on the analysis of the actual mother-child interaction by carrying out a focused analysis of the behavior of the dyad given that these behaviors greatly affect each other. The study was conducted with a group of 23 mother-child dyads that presented episodes of physical abuse towards the child, and a control group of 24 dyads that did not present any interactional problems. The dyads were observed at home by a group of trained observers using the SOC III system of direct observation (Standardized Observation Codes IIIrd revision, Cerezo, 1991; Cerezo, Keesler, Dunn, & Wahler, 1986). Three stepwise discriminant function analyses were carried out for the variables relative to the maternal behavior, the child's behavior, and the measurement of the mother-child sequence of interaction. The results indicate that behaviors with a negative valence better classify the subjects into the groups to which they belong, obtaining a better classification when the variables relative to the interaction are used in the analysis. It can be concluded that it is necessary to include this measurement in future analysis due to its great classificatory and predictive value.