ABSTRACT
A central component of our parenting assessments is the attempt to understand personal and interpersonal conflicts which have intruded into the adults’ relationships with their family-of-origin, their partner/s, their children and involved professionals. In this chapter, we shall describe the concept of ‘unresolved care and control conflicts’, a theme that emerged from two studies we have undertaken into fatal child abuse. We shall propose that the concept has a wider application than child fatalities and is relevant to child maltreatment in general. As such, it can help us understand the functioning of many parents whose care of their children has become the subject of family proceedings. While not suggesting that these unresolved conflicts explain all child maltreatment, or are the only relevant contributor to parenting breakdown, we do believe that they should be specifically addressed as one important aspect of the overall assessment.
