Successive generations of child maltreatment: social and medical disorders in the parents.

Sustained attempts were made to identify all families in which there was a pattern of two or more generations of child maltreatment and multi-agency involvement in North-East Wiltshire (population 200,000) and where there were also two or more children maltreated in the current generation (born between 1960 and 1980). One hundred and forty-seven families were discovered. Disorders of behaviour of the parents of the 1960-1980 children are described. Collating information laboriously from at least 34 different agencies revealed very high levels of disturbance. Such detail was generally inaccessible, and its full significance for each family could only be assessed by using family medical record linkage methods. In the parents and antecedents, mental and personality disorders, suicidal attempts, mental handicap, dependence on drugs (mothers) or on alcohol (fathers), epilepsy and criminality were conspicuous features.