Impact of Different Kinds of Child Abuse on Sense of Parental Competence in Parents Who Were Abused in Childhood

The purpose of this article is to study sense of parental competence in parents who experienced abuse in childhood. Many studies have shown that the kind of abuse (physical, emotional, sexual, neglect) that the parent experienced in childhood and the co-occurrence of several types of abuse affect the sense of parental competence. In particular, we focused on the difference between sexual abuse and other kinds of abuse. The instruments used to collect data were the French versions of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, which assesses abuse, and the Parenting Sense of Competence Scale, which assesses efficacy and satisfaction. These questionnaires were designed to quantitatively evaluate the kind of abuse experienced during childhood and the sense of parental competence. We collected 828 valid protocols. The statistical analyses show that sense of parental competence is lower in parents who were abused during their childhood than in those who were not. More specifically, our results show that these parents feel less satisfaction, one of the two components of the sense of parental competence.