Beyond a cross-cultural definition of child maltreatment: Comparing immigrants from the caucasus and European countries of the Former Soviet Union

A major barrier to accurate assessment and effective intervention in situations of children at risk among immigrant families could be lack of knowledge what they consider to be the boundaries for inappropriate child rearing practices, their rationale for these beliefs and their help seeking patterns in situations of maltreatment. To acquire knowledge about this subject among immigrant parents from different regions of the Former Soviet Union, a study was conducted in Israel with 53 immigrants from the European countries of this region and 52 immigrants from the Caucasus. A low level of willingness to request help from formal networks was found in both samples. Differences were found in the underlying rationale of the participants' perceptions of inappropriate parental behaviors. Immigrants from the Caucasus were concerned with the inappropriateness of the parents' behaviors by relating to what is normative and what is not while immigrants from the European countries were concerned with the potential harm to the child. The comparison between the two groups of immigrants illuminates the significance of adopting a differentiated approach when assessing and intervening in situations of child maltreatment among immigrants who speak the same language and could be considered as coming from the same nonwestern culture.