CITATION: Crittenden, P. M. (1998). Child Neglect: Causes and contributors. In Dubowitz, H.
(Ed.) Neglected Children: Research, Practice and Policy. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
Publications, Inc.
The article looks at contributing and causal factors for child neglect
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Low socioeconomic status is believed to contribute to neglect
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Poor interpersonal relationships resulting from distortions of mental processing of information are believed to be critical causal factors of child neglect
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Distortions occur in
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Cognition – information about what actions effectively cause specific outcomes
(effects of one’s behavior)
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Affect – information about the safety or danger of context (experienced as feeling states that motivate protective and affectionate behavior and when feelings of distress are low, that promote exploration and learning)
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Types of child neglect based on differences in the kind of mental processing used by the adults
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Disorganized neglect resulting from limited cognitive processes
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Living from crisis to crisis
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Parents provide inconsistent parenting
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Families have multiple problems and always seem to be on the verge of disaster
 Affect is dominant and cognition is minimized because feelings motivate behavior
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The multiple problems (e.g. electricity being turned off, child suspended from school, husband fired for being drunk, etc…)
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The chaos creates an environment in which maternal response to children is unpredictable with the most immediate, extreme crisis the focus of response
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Parents seem to respond sensitively when there is nothing more important going on, display anger when they are trying to do other things and the children are very disruptive, and ignore children when children’s signals are not intense (parents both positively reinforce and also punish children’s negative behavior

Principles of working with this kind of neglect
Feelings must be dealt with first
Professionals must provide a structured, predictable environment with no surprises (cognition always works, providing accurate information about the relation between behavior and outcomes)
Families must seek independence rather than the professional cutting back on service
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Emotional neglect – failure to connect emotionally with others

Rigid highly structured families
More rules for how to behave than in other homes
Everyone has a role and knows what to do

Children seem to be more mature and independent than other children
Children seem to be more diligent in their housework and schoolwork
Homes are often advantaged with regard to material and educational things
Parental love and concern are expressed through material things in the absence of affective expression
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Children’s objections to the lack of affective expression from their parents may result in rejection causing them to experience psychological abandonment
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Children may pretend that they don’t need anyone
Relationships with others are based on performance
Superficially successful families that do not usually receive professional attention
 Depressed and withdrawn parents in highly structured families
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Don’t reject their children, they simply don’t notice them because of their self-involvement
Roles become reversed with the children reassuring the parent that the parents are safe and that the world and their child are happy

Children from both situations act like little adults using a mental and behavioral strategy of inhibiting feeling and depending on cognitive rules to guide their behavior
 The children’s relationships become puzzles since they must look for cues and signs about how to behave because of their dependency on cognitive rules as guides to behavior
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For both types of families it is usually best to keep the children with their parents as removal adds to the problems with separation and learning to adjust to life with new people
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Parents need to be taught to engage emotionally with their children
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Emotional engagement needs to be highly structured since neither parent nor child knows how to interact normally and spontaneously (both fear affect)
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Depressed Neglect (avoiding both affect and cognition)
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Reflect the classic image of child neglect
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Family members tend to be passive and helpless
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Many seem to be mildly retarded
 Parents do not recognize their children’s needs
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Some parents may be so withdrawn that they do not respond to their children at all
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Children eventually learn that their feelings and actions have no meaning and that they are helpless
 Children’s condition becomes the learned helplessness of chronic depression in which there is little feeling or thought

Very difficult to create change in this type of family

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Interventions need to include
Teaching all members of the family that their behavior has predictable and meaningful results and empathic others can share affective states
A long term supportive approach in which nurturing relationships are developed with neglectful parents to enable them to develop the same with their children
Appropriate expressions of affect must be taught to parents
(i.e. smiling when appropriate, laughing with others looking concerned when children are distressed)