Child abuse and neglect: Usefulness of the animal data.

Abstract

This article reviews and critically discusses the relevance of animal data to research on child abuse and neglect. Although parental investment theory can be useful in investigating the adaptiveness, if any, of child abuse and neglect, the evolutionary approach also has some limitations. The most suitable animal models for investigating the psychosocial processes underlying child abuse and neglect are probably found among the nonhuman primates. Whereas the heuristic value of social deprivation paradigms may be limited, recent studies suggest that the spontaneous occurrence of infant maltreatment in monkeys may be the closest approximation to child maltreatment provided by nonhuman animals. The investigation of adaptive and maladaptive processes in the parenting behavior of socially living nonhuman primates can inform research on child abuse and neglect and allow investigators to conduct studies that would be difficult or impossible in humans.

The biology of human parenting: insights from nonhuman primates

“…Abusive mothers, however, were not more likely than control mothers to ®nd themselves in such situations, suggesting that they may be individuals particularly vulnerable to stress or with problems in emotion regulation [64]. High vulnerability to stress and emotional disorders are also relatively common among human abusive parents [63].…”

“…Old World monkeys and apes, is more sensitive to experiential, cognitive, and social processes than the parental behavior of other mammals [78,79]. In fact, despite obvious differences in the way parents care for their offspring in humans and other primates, many psychological and social mechanisms underlying parenting are likely to be very similar in humans and other primates [53,59,62,63,66]. Therefore, primates represent excellent animal models to investigate the potential role played by neuroendocrine mechanisms in regulating human parenting and how these mechanisms interact with psychological and social processes [9].…”

Behavioral and environmental correlates of infant abuse in group- living pigtail macaques

“…Therefore, the study of this phenomenon could provide information potentially useful to the understanding and prevention of child abuse (Maestripieri & Carroll, 1998a). Infant abuse in group-living monkeys is a relatively infrequent phenomenon, however, and only one study has quantitatively investigated the behavior of abusive mothers and their infants with a sample size greater than one (Maestripieri, 1998).…”

Early experience affects the intergenerational transmission of infant abuse in rhesus monkeys

“…Infant abuse in monkeys shares several similarities with child abuse in humans, including its prevalence in the population, the relation between age and vulnerability to abuse, some psychological characteristics of abusive mothers, and the role of psychosocial stress in triggering abuse (10). In rhesus and pigtail macaques, infant abuse is concentrated in some matrilines and among closely related individuals such as mothers and daughters or sisters (12)(13).…”

“…Some of these difficulties can be overcome with the use of an animal model. Child maltreatment is not unique to humans but has been observed in some species of nonhuman primates as well (10). Infant abuse by socially deprived rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) mothers was first documented in the laboratory by Harlow and his collaborators (11).…”