This paper incorporates three separate levels of information acquired slowly from clinical experience:

1. a) From clinical research into maltreated children and their parents.

2. b) From the assessment and treatment of maltreated children removed from parental care and adopted as Special Needs Children with unfroseen results.

3. c) From the assessment for legal purposes of the emotional status of parents who have seriously injured or killed their children and who had not received treatment in their own childhood, despite their severe distress levels.

Their are five separate types of childhood experience which may interfere seriously with that individual's capacity to be a parent when this time arrives. They are:

1. Physical maltreatment; 2. Maternal deprivation; 3. Institutionalisation in early childhood; 4. Constant destructive criticism from a parent; 5. Premature demands for parenting behaviour.