UNDERSTANDING CULTURAL CONTEXT OF PARENTING TO DEFINE CHILD ABUSE AND VALIDATE AN EXISTING MEASURE ON CHILD PHYSICAL AND EMOTIONAL ABUSE IN SOUTH INDIAN PARENTS LIVING IN GEORGIA

Child maltreatment is a significant public health problem that affects all countries and cultures alike. Previous studies have shown the prevalence of all forms of child abuse in India, which is also home to one fifth of the... [ view full abstract ]

Child maltreatment is a significant public health problem that affects all countries and cultures alike. Previous studies have shown the prevalence of all forms of child abuse in India, which is also home to one fifth of the world’s children. However, adequate resources and efforts are not being made to understand the true scope of this problem. The present study utilized an existing measure, the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ), to understand how parents from the South Indian culture defined acceptable child rearing practices and physical and emotional child abuse. It was hypothesized that fathers would report higher scores on the physical abuse subscale and mothers would report higher scores on the emotional abuse subscale. This study recruited 41 participants to complete the CTQ. Ten participants were randomly assigned to participate in an in-depth interview, which focused on how parents in the South Indian community in Georgia interpreted the items on the CTQ and how parents defined child physical and emotional abuse. Quantitative analysis revealed low to moderate internal consistency for the emotional abuse scale (α = 0.65) and moderate to high internal consistency for the physical abuse scale (α = 0.88). Independent t-test results showed that fathers reported higher scores on both the physical and emotional abuse subscale. A majority of participants reported spanking as an acceptable form of discipline and believed that neither child physical nor emotional abuse was prevalent in the South Indian community in the United States. Establishing a concise definition of child abuse will aid in the development of valid measures that will determine the actual scope of the problem and create solutions, such as laws and policies that will shift a society’s view on appropriate interactions with children.