Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2023

DOI

10.3390/children10030545

Publication Title

Children

Volume

10

Issue

3

Pages

545 (1-13)

Abstract

Much of the research conducted on social information processing (SIP) factors predictive of child abuse risk has been conducted in North America, raising questions about how applicable such models may be in other cultures. Based on the premise that the parents’ child abuse risk is affected by both risk and protective factors, the current study considered how specific SIP socio-cognitive risk factors (acceptability of parent–child aggression as a discipline approach; empathic ability; frustration tolerance) as well as social support satisfaction as a resource related to child abuse risk by comparing a sample of mothers in Peru (n = 102) with a sample of mothers in the U.S. (n = 180). Using multi-group regression analyses, the current investigation identified that lower empathy was more salient for the abuse risk of U.S. mothers relative to the salience of lower frustration tolerance for Peruvian mothers. Although effects were observed for the approval of parent-aggression for the child abuse risk of both samples, such approval did not appear to be related to the Peruvian mothers’ actual use of such tactics. When considered alongside the socio-cognitive risk factors, greater social support satisfaction did not significantly relate to child abuse risk for either sample. The findings are discussed in reference to future cross-cultural work that may need to better examine how factors may or may not be universal to craft more culturally informed child abuse prevention programs.

Rights

© 2023 by the authors.

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.

Data Availability

Article states: The data analyzed in this study are available upon request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available in accordance with the consent provided by the participants, and as approved by the University of Alabama at Birmingham Institutional Review Board.

Original Publication Citation

Rodriguez, C. M., Bárrig Jó, P., Gracia, E., & Lila, M. (2023). Social information processing theory indicators of child abuse risk: Cultural comparison of mothers from Peru and the United States. Children, 10(3), 1-13, Article 545. https://doi.org/10.3390/children10030545

ORCID

0000-0002-5090-0707 (Rodriguez)

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