Who are they? Abusers or stressed mothers?

Abstract

Introduction: In Hong Kong, parents could be prosecuted for physical punishment applied to the children. Yet to many Chinese parents, physical punishment is just a matter of child discipline. A study was done on parental anger which often precedes use of violence. Aim: The study was launched to understand what triggers parents’ anger and the possible factors that influence abusive parental behaviour. Method: In depth interviews were used for data collection in this study. Thirty mothers were interviewed on their anger experience in parenting. They came from three sources: ten mothers not known to have any parenting problem were recruited from a community centre, ten mothers who had sought voluntary counselling on parenting problem were recruited from family service centres, and ten mothers were recruited from organizations serving abusive parents. Results: All interviewees reported angry experiences in parenting and some use of physical punishment. Only some were known for intervention while some were not. Anger triggers and forms of anger expression were shared in the interviews. From the stories of the respondents, the stress of these mothers was well reflected and the stressors were very much cultural based. Abusive mothers tended to be heavily stressed and they had less support. Different effects of different influencing factors were analyzed. Conclusion: Many mothers who are considered abusers due to the application of physical punishment are very responsible mothers. To help the children, we need to render more support to these mothers so that the children could be ultimately benefited and a healthy parent child relationship restored.