This medical model is a single factor main effect model. This means there is one cause that leads to an outcome. The unit for the model is the mother. The cause is psychiatric problems in an abusive mother and emotional trauma in the abused child. The measures used are psychiatric evaluations of the individual done by professionals. The outcome of the model is lasting and permanent emotional injury. The mechanism seen is an intergenerational transmission of the emotional wound brought upon one as a child and passed onto the next generation of children. Additionally a sufficiency mechanism can be seen in that it is sufficient to say that an abusive mother is sufficient enough to cause lasting and permanent emotional injury. The only intervention possible is to prevent the abuse as primary intervention or stop the abuse before it is too late as

Moving away from ideas that can be seen as easily solved, such as moving to a new community, there is another idea related to abuse. This idea is gender (Simons, Whitbeck, Conger, & Chyi-In 1991). Findings show that harsh parenting by the grandmother is associated with father’s harsh parenting of sons. The mother being the unit in the main effect model is proven wrong here. The study also found a relation between abusive parenting by the grandfather and father’s abusive parenting of daughters. Obviously the unit of the single factor model should not simply be the mother.

Individual characteristics certainly play a role, as do individual life events (Okun. Parker, & Levendosky 1994). It has been shown that it may not simply be abuse, which leads to emotional injury but abuse overlapping with stressful life events. These stressful life events have been correlated with children having poorer self-perceptions. Also they are related to increased depression in children. These stressful life events were also linked with poor peer relationships and less social competence. Having all of these relations shows a major flaw in the single factor model. Obviously the findings that abuse overlapping with stressful life events strongly correlates with emotional injury as an outcome weakens the single factor argument.

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Some topics in this essay:
Conger Chyi-In, , Parker Levendosky, Emery Laumann-Billings, Su Chow, single factor, main effect, factor main effect, single factor main, main effect model, effect model, factor main, emotional injury, life events, stressful life events, stressful life, socio-economic status, Whitbeck Conger, emotional trauma, Simons Whitbeck, simons whitbeck, simons whitbeck conger, Okun Parker,