CAMH Centre for Prevention Science, Canada.
Child Abuse Negl. 2011 Oct;35(10):802-13. doi: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2010.12.009. Epub 2011 Oct 19.
This paper was intended to distinguish between poor parenting and child emotional maltreatment (CEM), to inform child welfare and public health policymakers of the need for differentiated responses.
Scientific literature was integrated with current practice and assumptions relating to poor/dysfunctional parenting and child emotional maltreatment, with a primary focus on the parent-child relationship context (rather than abnormal parent behavior alone). Numerous factors that impinge on the distinction between these acts were considered, such as the child's age, the frequency, and severity of behavior shown by caregivers, cultural norms, and parental beliefs and goals in childrearing.
The literature on child emotional maltreatment has advanced beyond the descriptive phase of scientific understanding, and principles and practical criteria for distinguishing such behavior from poor parenting are presented.
Recommendations focus on practical guidelines for assessing risk and activating appropriate prevention and intervention: (1) parental actions and relative risk of harm to the child are both important ingredients in defining and distinguishing child emotional maltreatment from other forms of poor parenting; (2) poor parenting methods fall along a broad continuum and fit within a population health mandate aimed at reducing incidence of all forms of negative parenting methods; (3) child emotional maltreatment can be defined categorically based on qualitatively more extreme and potentially more harmful behaviors (than poor parenting), which requires a focused intervention response. Additional recommendations for training, research, and community-based public health initiatives are presented.
本文旨在区分不良养育和儿童情感虐待（CEM），使儿童福利和公共卫生政策制定者认识到需要做出差异化反应。
将科学文献与当前与不良/功能失调养育和儿童情感虐待相关的实践和假设相结合，主要关注亲子关系背景（而不仅仅是异常父母行为）。考虑了许多影响这些行为区分的因素，例如儿童的年龄、照顾者表现出的行为的频率和严重程度、文化规范以及父母在育儿方面的信念和目标。
儿童情感虐待的文献已经超越了科学理解的描述阶段，提出了区分这种行为与不良养育的原则和实际标准。
建议侧重于评估风险和激活适当预防和干预的实用指南：（1）父母的行为和对孩子的相对伤害风险都是定义和区分儿童情感虐待与其他形式不良养育的重要因素；（2）不良养育方法沿着广泛的连续统分布，并符合旨在减少所有形式负面养育方法发生率的人口健康任务；（3）可以根据更极端和潜在更有害的行为（而非不良养育）对儿童情感虐待进行分类定义，这需要有针对性的干预反应。提出了关于培训、研究和基于社区的公共卫生倡议的其他建议。
