It has been suggested that maltreating parents display two forms of cognitive deficits that relate to their child's maltreatment. These are unrealistic expectations of their children's behavior and poor problem-solving ability in childrearing situations. This study documents the existence of these two deficits in a sample of maltreating versus comparison mothers. Using two measures of unrealistic expectations and a problem-solving inventory, we explored differences between two types of maltreating mothers (abuse vs. neglect). Results indicated that both groups of maltreating mothers showed significantly greater unrealistic; expectations and poorer problemsolving skills than did the comparison mothers. No differences were found between abusing and neglectful mothers. Implications for treatment, as well as difficulties in operationalizing the concept of "unrealistic expectations," are discussed.

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The parental fitness of psychiatrically diagnosed individuals is often questioned in termination of parental rights cases. The goal of this article is to shift the focus from a predisposing bias of unfitness to a functional-contextual analysis of parenting behavior and competency. Three underlying biased assumptions are relevant for the courts' decision making: (a) that a diagnosis (past or present) predicts inadequate parenting and child risk, (b) that a diagnosis predicts unamenability to parenting interventions, and (c) that a diagnosis means the parent is forever unfit. Each assumption will be considered in light of empirical evidence, with major depression, schizophrenia, substance abuse, and mental retardation provided as examples of diagnostic labels often assumed to render a parent unfit. A research agenda to improve clinicians' ability to assess parental fitness and understanding of how parental mental illness, mental retardation, or substance abuse might compromise parenting capacities is discussed for forensic purposes.

This second validation study of the Parent Opinion Questionnaire (POQ) compared the unrealistic expectations of child abusing mothers (n= 16) with mothers whose partners perpetrated the abuse (n = 14). This comparison provided a more stringent test of the POQ's validity in that it controlled for nonspecific factors associated with being in a family identified for child maltreatment. As expected, significantly greater unrealistic expectations of child behavior were found for abusing mothers than for control mothers. A discriminant function analysis showed that the POQ correctly classified 83% of the subjects. This measure's clinical usefulness is discussed.

Parents with intellectual disabilities (PID) are over-represented in the child protective services (CPS) system. This study examined a more nuanced view of the role of cognition in parenting risk. Its goal was to validate a social information processing (SIP) model of child neglect that draws on social cognition research and advances in neuroscience. Mothers who had CPS child neglect cases were compared with mothers with no CPS involvement on a set of SIP factors. Mothers with low IQs were oversampled. As predicted, the Neglect group had significantly greater SIP problems than the Comparison mothers. SIP problems were associated with direct measures of neglect (e.g., cognitive stimulation provided children, home hygiene, belief regarding causes of child injuries). Further, for the direct measures that were most closely linked to CPS Neglect Status, IQ did not add significant predictive capacity beyond SIP factors in preliminary model testing. Implications for intervention with PID discussed.