Children and Youth Services Review

28 (2006) 610 – 619

www.elsevier.com/locate/childyouth

Balancing act: Child welfare and overindulgence

A. Myrth Ogilvie *
University of Washington, Tacoma 1900 Commerce Street, WCG 402 Campus Box 358425 Tacoma,
WA 98402-3100, United States
Received 29 March 2005; received in revised form 21 May 2005; accepted 14 June 2005
Available online 31 August 2005

Abstract

Child welfare workers may struggle to link child maltreatment and overindulgence. Clarke,
Dawson, and Bredehoft [Clarke, J.I., Dawson, C.M., and Bredehoft, D.J. (2004). How much is
enough? Everything you need to know to steer clear of overindulgence and raise likeable,
responsible and respectful children. New York: Marlowe and Company.] describe overindulgence
as parenting that hinders children from accomplishing developmental tasks and from learning life
skills. A brief review of literature and historical foundations is included. Three research studies
guided the identification of overindulgence categories: (a) material, (b) relational, and (c) structural
[Clarke, J. I., Dawson, C. M., and Bredehoft, D. J. (2004). How much is enough? Everything you
need to know to steer clear of overindulgence and raise likeable, responsible and respectful
children. New York: Marlowe and Company.]. Child-welfare consistent examples of overindul-
gence are included.
D 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

Overindulgence may be the farthest thing from a child welfare social worker’s mind when
the subject of child maltreatment, child abuse, or child neglect comes under discussion.
Overindulgence, while not a statutory category of child maltreatment, may provide a lens
and language useful in multi-problem, neglect-related child welfare cases that enhances

* Tel.: +1 253 692 4524; fax: +1 253 692 5825.

E-mail address: amo452@u.washington.edu.

0190-7409/$ - see front matter D 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2005.06.010
 A. Myrth Ogilvie / Children and Youth Services Review 28 (2006) 610–619 611

assessment and effective strengths-based communications with courts, advocates, thera-

pists, and parents. Child welfare prioritizes goals of remaining together as a family with
health, safety, and benefit to the children’s growth and development, and frequently utilizes
parent education as a primary opportunity for communication, assessment, and intervention.
A recent book (Clarke, Dawson, & Bredehoft, 2004) presents research on overindul-
gence, flowing from a parent education construct, in a manner that adds potentially relevant
concepts to child welfare work. Parent education and child welfare share concerns of
balancing nurture, structure, and resources to prevent disruptions in children’s develop-
ment, health, and safety. Educating caregivers and relative caregivers on topics relevant to
the goals (permanency, safety, and child and family well-being) of the Adoption and Safe
Families Act (ASFA) reinforces the relevance of this educational intervention. Clarke et al.
(2004) describe overindulgence as parenting that hinders children from accomplishing
developmental tasks and prevents them from learning life skills. Whether extremes of
abundance or deficits exist, a frame of reference for understanding how to strike a desired
balance between excess and insufficiency may provide a vital missing piece in assessment
and in empowering the healing process. Using scientific research to identify adverse
outcomes affecting children’s lives, this description of overindulgence includes presenta-
tion of assessment techniques and the necessary action steps to assist families in
rebalancing their parenting.
This article reviews relevant literature and provides deductive examples to illustrate the
potential usefulness of this research to child welfare. The examples in this article,
constructed of repeating themes from multiple case examples from several years of child
welfare practice, do not represent specific case examples. Fictional families, representing
several families’ experiences, are intended to disguise any possible identifying information.
Accurately represented family and individual challenges exemplify and illustrate linkages
of parent education’s overindulgence concepts to child welfare concerns.

2. Current and historic literature

A review of recent literature on overindulgence and related concepts such as spoiling

and parental over-involvement identified fifteen offerings between 2000 and 2003 pre-
dating the work of Clark, Dawson, and Bredehoft (Clarke et al., 2004; Dyslin, 2003). The
articles included the concepts of narcissism, spoiling, parental over-involvement, and
permissive-indulgent parenting. The two that examined narcissism (Bradley, 2001; Charles,
2001) focused primarily on questionnaire development and maternal mental health. The
two articles that examined spoiling by parents (Brook, Watemberg, & Geva, 2000; Zhang,
Kohnstamm, Cheung, & Lau, 2001) examined a collection of teacher attitudes toward
parents and parenting in China. Of the three articles that examined parental over-involvement,
the first and second articles (Paley, Shapiro, & Worrall-Davies, 2000; Patterson, Birchwood,
& Cochrane, 2000) focused upon a specific mentally ill population or symptom, and the third
article (Wamboldt, Wamboldt, Gavin, & McTaggart, 2001) described development of a scale.
The remaining articles most closely related to the work by Clarke et al. (2004).
Several articles addressed a permissive-indulgent parenting style which is the view
most related to overindulgence (Bulkley, 2001; Chen, Liu, & Li, 2000; Feinman, 2001;
612 A. Myrth Ogilvie / Children and Youth Services Review 28 (2006) 610–619

Gordon, 2000; Palmer, 2001; Tavoulareas-Karahalios, 2000). The historic roots of efforts
to define overindulgence were explained in brief by Ashford, LeCroy, and Lortie (2001):

Diana Baumrind has investigated parenting styles over several decades (1971–1991),
and her research has described three styles of parenting and their consequent effects on
children: authoritarian, authoritative, and laissez-faire permissive. Maccoby and Martin
(1983) have further differentiated the permissive parenting style to include two distinct
types, permissive indulgent and permissive indifferent (p. 275–276).

This historical perspective, combined with the parental concepts of socialization using
warmth (nurturing) and control (structuring) as described by Erikson (1968), sets a
foundation for these authors’ research. This past work provided a theoretical continuity of
reasoning for the recent works on overindulgence found in the six articles (Bulkley, 2001;
Chen et al., 2000; Feinman, 2001; Gordon, 2000; Palmer, 2001; Tavoulareas-Karahalios,
2000) and the papers by Bredehoft, Clarke, and Dawson (2001, 2003). Clarke et al. (2004)
contributed scientific support to refine a conceptualization of overindulgence from three
research studies of over 1100 people utilizing quantitative and qualitative methods. This
theoretical perspective included the concepts of nurturing and structuring in parenting.

3. Meaning and types of overindulgence

Clarke et al. (2004) explained overindulgence: boverindulgence is a form of child

neglect. . .hinder[ing] children from. . .[accomplishing] their needed developmental tasks,
and [preventing them] from learning necessary life lessonsQ (p. xvii). Three research
studies guided these authors to identify three primary categories of overindulgence: (a)
material overindulgence (bToo MuchQ) characterized by an insufficient understanding of
the concept of enough; (b) relational overindulgence (bOver-nurturingQ) characterized by
excessive over-functioning and attending; and (c) structural overindulgence (bSoft
StructureQ) characterized by a failure to have rules or to enforce them (Clarke et al., 2004).
Research has shown that child welfare cases come from all socioeconomic groups (National
statistics on child abuse and neglect can be found on the web at http://nccanch.acf.hhs.gov/
index.cfm). The following examples from child welfare cases illustrate how to apply the
parent education categories and language of overindulgence, and explore how these
categories may highlight opportunities and avenues for social service workers to support
families’ actions for the health, safety, and developmental needs of their children. Although
the specific examples discussed focus only upon the issues of overindulgence, practitioners
would conduct a more holistic assessment depending upon the theoretical practice
framework applied.

3.1. A case of material overindulgence (MO)

Perhaps the most ironic examples of MO by providing bToo MuchQ exist in families
living below the poverty line. Sarah, 14 years old, and Jenny, 15 years old, lived with their
mother and father. Their parents frequently reported resource deficits and the family had
 A. Myrth Ogilvie / Children and Youth Services Review 28 (2006) 610–619 613

existed on welfare programs for fifteen years. When a new child welfare worker
encountered them, the concerns were still unclear and unsuccessfully addressed. The child
welfare case was open for over 14 years. No amount of assistance, services, and
encouragement from well-intended social workers had given the family enough guidance to
become healthy, safe, and developmentally helpful to the children, in spite of overtly
pleasant and cooperative to parents.
Applying the overlay of overindulgence, MO became evident the morning after this
case assignment came to the child welfare worker. Jenny, facedown, drunk, and in her own
vomit was unable to remove herself from the freezing temperatures of early morning.
Police found her and took her to the local emergency room and prevented her death from
exposure. Later the worker discovered that the excessive alcohol in her system came from
her father, who regularly provided 2-liter bottles of wine coolers to his female children
(any alcohol at their ages was MO).
Jenny returned home from the hospital and the child welfare worker visited the home that
afternoon. Sarah answered the door and invited the worker in saying that her father and
Jenny were due back shortly. The open door behind Sarah allowed the child welfare worker
to see into the duplex. A living room filled floor to ceiling with bstuffQ formed a tangle of
televisions, clothing, broken furniture, dirty dishes, feces, and trash (additional indicators of
MO). Jenny, just released from the hospital, and her father showed up shortly, and Sarah
introduced the new child welfare worker. Upon examination, the other rooms of the duplex
were similarly filled to capacity. The father explained that the family was getting ready to
move the next day. They knew the child welfare agency would not let the children stay in
this chaos, so when things got to this point the family took what was of value to them and
simply moved on to a new place, leaving the landlord to clean things out. Father explained
that this efficient and preferred method of house cleaning and doing laundry had satisfied
the previous child welfare workers. The family, buried in too many things of questionable
value, failed to provide the children with sufficient sleeping and living space. None of the
bstuffQ contributed to the health, safety and development of the children, instead posed a
significant risk, and may be viewed as MO. The family could not remain intact without a
change. The parents identified a new apartment or duplex that would provide a clean living
space in which to begin again. From this choice, the children would not learn basic life
skills, such as housekeeping and living space care, commensurate to their ages, leaving
them at high risk of using these same inappropriate methods of MO in adulthood. Mentoring
to refocus family members from acquisition to caring for an appropriate set of personal
belongings and using applied learning about MO may break this cycle.

3.2. A case of relational overindulgence (RO)

Clarke and Dawson (1998) described a continuum of nurturing for parenting children,
likening it to a highway with assertive care and supportive care as helpful main lanes of the
highway, conditional care and overindulgence as the highway’s shoulders, and abuse and
neglect as the extreme ditches of the highway. This metaphorical description of a highway
assists in understanding RO. Overindulgence and conditional care, or the shoulders of the
highway, can look good enough to a worker who regularly deals with situations where
parenting adults seem to take little heed of the needs of their children. Extremes of
614 A. Myrth Ogilvie / Children and Youth Services Review 28 (2006) 610–619

nurturing such as abuse and neglect, or the ditches of the highway, are the usual concern of
child welfare. However, chronic and less obvious excesses of nurturing found with
overindulgence and conditional care (representing RO) can be destructive of development,
and if unaddressed can cripple the developmental progress of children. Generally, the
intentions of parents are easy to assess as positive and caring, so for child welfare workers
the problems with overindulgence and conditional care as related to RO can become more
difficult to identify, as seen in the following child welfare examples.
Eric was born to loving parents, and Jane, Eric’s mother, took family leave to be with Eric
after his birth. Jane returned to work after the family leave and announced to co-workers that
Eric never found it necessary to cry since she met every need before he even became aware of
a need. No one could argue that Eric was not well cared for until he found himself in
childcare where a parent education issue of a first-time loving parent became an unexpected
burden. Eric failed to communicate with caregivers hunger or the need for a clean diaper.
Eric began to lose weight and developed a horrible diaper rash. His mother blamed the
substitute care providers and filed a formal complaint against them. A child welfare childcare
licensor investigated the day care program and could not find any other children with similar
welfare concerns. Finally, the licensing supervisor requested that a child welfare worker
interview the family filing the complaint and make inquiries into the care the child received
at home.
Eric had become so unaware of his own basic needs that he could not communicate them
to substitute care providers. Only his mother, who had developed a schedule of feedings and
diaper changes, was able to keep bhis care on trackQ. At first, the mother could not see a
problem. Finally, by putting the mother and child in a support group for first time mothers,
she began to grasp the disservice she was doing Eric, and with minimal intervention they
began to establish better communication that extended over to substitute care providers. Had
the mother’s overindulgence continued, Eric’s home care experiences could have prevented
him from learning communication and trust vital to his normal development. In spite of the
fact that it looked good, the result was not helpful.
Debra’s parents were professionals and leaders in their community. Debra pleasantly
cooperated with her parents and teachers at home and in school. At age 16, Debra began to
travel with her high school band. She lacked necessary information to perform basic tasks
that her peers performed easily. She discovered that her friends packed clothing for trips and
fixed basic meals while traveling. Debra’s mother packed her clothing and fixed all the
meals. She quickly decided that increased independence would reduce her embarrassment
and increase her skills.
Debra asked permission to get a job and go on other outings with friends. Her parents
became very critical of the new friends who were willing to include her in their outings.
Eventually there was sufficient conflict between Debra and her family that the parents
went to the child welfare agency to ask for advice and seek help with a Youth at Risk
petition so they could reassert their authority over Debra. Her parents found it hard to let
their daughter explore and discover her own preferences. For years she had been a good
child, mother had done everything for her (unfortunate over-nurturing), and now she
wanted to think and do for herself.
Debra wanted to grow up and develop an independent personality and this heightened
parental fears and distressed her mother, who had done so much for her (RO) for the past
 A. Myrth Ogilvie / Children and Youth Services Review 28 (2006) 610–619 615

16 years. Debra’s thoughts of abandonment were terrifying and she really loved her
mother and father. To have her family’s love, she feared she had to be willing to accept
continued incompetence, and the price seemed too high (conditional nurturing). When the
family’s distress became acute and filled with heated verbal conflict, the parents sought the
help of the court. The court decided to establish some authority to afford Debra an
opportunity to attend school and to attend an independent living skills group. A guardian
ad litem assisted the court and Debra to remain in communication as she and her parents
attempted to redefine their relationships with the help of a therapist. Mother was
encouraged to pursue an interest by taking evening classes, and eventually things began to
improve. The concerns of conditional nurturing existed in this example along with over-
nurturing, both types of RO.

3.3. A case of structural overindulgence (SO)

A final example illustrates a child welfare case that included serious errors in soft
structure, SO, and resulted in developmental problems for a teen mother and baby. Annie’s
father was a prison guard, and her mother stayed home to care for Annie and her teen-age
half-brother. Her father was a critical and rigid parent who had harsh expectations of
himself as the family breadwinner. His wife was the victim of his raging outbursts when he
drank too much and she was afraid to deal with him directly. Annie learned from her
mother to be manipulative and to lie to avoid conflicts with her father by telling him stories
that the mother and child fabricated together to keep the father from knowing or judging
their daily activities. Annie developed a disorganized attachment style in early life and
proceeded to lie and manipulate through her early school years. At age 16, Annie became
her mother’s caretaker after her father’s death. Her mother was the bresponsible leaderQ,
yet Annie, age 16 and pregnant, was bthe effective leader. . .[and] the psychological
leaderQ, effectively the one in charge (Clarke et al., 2004, p. 214). Annie’s shoplifting and
teen pregnancy brought the role reversal and attachment issues to the attention of child
welfare. Family structure and rules had not prepared Annie with the pro-social skills
necessary in early adulthood.
The prenatal care nurse expressed serious concern to child welfare for Annie’s infant
since Annie had begun to binge drink to drunkenness on weekends, in spite of the risks.
Child welfare and the court wished to place the teen mother and soon-to-be-born infant in
the care of the maternal grandmother. Ultimately the court was unable to utilize this
relative placement as a direct result of the SO (e.g. ineffective, un-enforced, and absent
effective family structure).

3.4. Assessment and clarifying questions for a complex case

Clarke et al. (2004) proposed four indicators of overindulgence (e.g. MO, RO, and SO);
solid agreement on any one indicator denotes overindulgence empirically based upon
guidance from three research studies:

There are four common clues to overindulgence: 1. Does the situation hinder the
child from learning the tasks that support his or her development and learning at this
616 A. Myrth Ogilvie / Children and Youth Services Review 28 (2006) 610–619

age? 2. Does the situation give a disproportionate amount of family resources to one
or more of the children? (Resources can include money, space, time, energy,
attention, and psychic input.) 3. Does this situation exist to benefit the adult more
than the child? 4. Does the child’s behavior potentially harm others, society, or the
planet in some way? (p. 13–14)

All these concerns are consistent with the concerns typically considered by child welfare
workers as they assess families to ensure the health, safety, and development of children.
These queries explored below used the first case example for clarification.
Recall the case example of Jenny and Sarah. When pressed, the parent described the
alcoholic beverages as a bsmall pleasureQ to numb the stigma of their poverty and to dull the
shame of prostituting to bring in additional funds to support their family. Jenny and Sarah
were both diagnosed as late stage chronic alcoholics. Unquestionably, their development had
been compromised, as stated in the first question, by the excess of MO (wine coolers), by the
role reversal of RO, and the soft structure of SO (not being kept from toxic substances—
alcohol and sex—inappropriate to their ages).
Jenny and Sarah spent the vast majority of their days with their father hanging out at the
local 24-hour restaurant. From this location, there was easy access to those individuals
who purchased services of the teens from their father. This excessive interaction with him
in his role as father and pimp supported the family and allowed the father to believe he was
working to support the family. Purchases of alcohol to compensate for the emotional
wreckage of this interaction further dedicated an unreasonable amount of family resources
for unhealthy, unsafe, and developmentally damaging purposes.
Ultimately MO, RO, and SO all contributed to this misallocation of family resources
and resulted in extreme health, safety, and developmental risk for the two teens. The
parents had continued this course of action not to benefit the children, but instead to
benefit their own desire to live outside the constraints of regular employment. The children
were the primary resource for meeting the family and survival needs of the children and
adults in the household.
Jenny and Sarah explained that washing clothing created unnecessary work. The
method that worked for them included getting a new item and wearing it until dirt or holes
made it undesirable. They had discovered a number of methods, legal and illegal, for
obtaining clothing and found no shortage existed. Any item worn out or excessively soiled
went into the tangle of household bstuffQ and a new item took its place. Child welfare
workers willingly gave the children clothing vouchers and assisted with new clothing
purchases when school started or seasons changed, and other charities would fill-in if
additional need arose in between. The children also reported that new clothing was the
same as cash, and by saving all new clothing with tags, they had a ready bank account in
case of a need for other things.
Inadvertently, a number of public and charity organizations created access to excessive
clothing for the children without benefit of the structure necessary to teach them
maintenance of the clothing, and supported the parent in keeping the children with him and
out of school. The imbalance of excessive resources (MO), insufficient appropriate adult
guidance (RO), and insufficient structure (SO) resulted in an overall negative impact upon
the health, safety, and development of not only these children, but ultimately the next
 A. Myrth Ogilvie / Children and Youth Services Review 28 (2006) 610–619 617

generation born to these children, further wasting resources of tax paying citizens now and
in the future.

4. Implications for practice, assessment, and outcomes

Child welfare practice brings together a diverse array of community stakeholders to

assess and track outcomes for children and their families. Included in these stakeholders are
a broad variety of professionals, paraprofessionals, and family members invested in the
safety, health, and developmental wellbeing of our society’s most important and vulnerable
asset, children. One challenge faced by all of these diverse individuals is the development
of clear and meaningful language capable of providing a shared framework for guiding
communication and decision-making. Through mutual understanding, meaningful,
supportive, and common knowledge facilitative of healing the parent/child relationship
and improving the safety, health, and developmental success of our citizens can occur. bIn
the context of shrinking resources, the function of decision-making has been to allocate
increasingly limited services to a narrowing group of children, by determining the child’s
risk of abuse at the hands of alleged abusing parentsQ (Lindsey, 2004, p. 159). Within this
challenging context, approaches capable of facilitating common understandings of positive
success become vital. Bringing all that we are to this work and modeling a willingness to
learn and change to prioritize relationships are crucial for a positive outcome.
Use of the highway metaphor facilitates conversion of all-or-nothing thinking into
understandable spectrums of severity that facilitate clarity in communicating concerns
about MO, RO, and SO, along with a shared understanding of impacts clarified by the
bTest of FourQ indicators of overindulgence (Clarke et al., 2004; Clarke & Dawson, 1998).
Supports, as opposed to judgments, and a strengths-based perspective offer parents the
opportunity to contribute bknowledge about the child’s behavior over time and across
situations. . .. [Since] social, emotional, and behavioral problems often reflect a departure
from behavior as usual for the child [and] parents are in a unique position to comment on
change[s]Q (Kazdin & Weisz, 2003, p. 12). Disregarding parental knowledge of and
involvement in the child’s history substantially complicates assessment and diagnosis
geared to meeting the child’s and family’s emergent needs. bNow the time has come for us,
all of us, to learn to listen. That is the first step in healing. And it’s time to learn more about
overindulgence so you can learn how to listen with empathy and without judgmentQ
(Clarke et al., 2004, p. 89). All of the stakeholders—the child, the family, and community
members—gather information upon which to base decisions related to outcomes for the
child, family, and the community. Depriving a child of the benefits offered by effective
communication among these varied informants in a child welfare case degrades the
potential of positive child, family, and community outcomes.
Integration of this body of parenting knowledge in child welfare practice invites
children, families, and community members to build relationships, to develop trust, to
improve self-analysis, and to open opportunities for improved communication. Under-
standing, practicing, and teaching approaches to discuss and balance nurture, structure,
and resources offer increased opportunities for children to develop as healthy, safe, and
competent members of society. Our modeling of behaviors that utilize the dpaved lanes of
618 A. Myrth Ogilvie / Children and Youth Services Review 28 (2006) 610–619

the highwayT supports parents and children in learning life skills, and facilitates clarity as
we all learn to negotiate the balance between excess and insufficiency found on the
dshoulders and ditchesT of MO, RO, and SO. When we provide clothing for children, we
must teach the care skills required to be responsible for personal belongings. When we
provide housing, we must teach housekeeping skills. To encourage the development of
secure attachment models and healthy bonds, we must support positive relationships and
the building of skills necessary to maintain a future that includes reciprocity. This
willingness to engage in learning and personal growth models our commitments to our
fellow human beings and may encourage others to do the same. The increased knowledge
offers opportunities to enhance our relational effectiveness. Each generation can reach out
for increased understanding and skills to become more capable and to utilize our human
capacity to adapt lovingly.

5. Conclusion

Child welfare strives to adopt a perspective based upon strengths (Saleebey, 2001).
Along with this strengths perspective exists an emerging set of practice principles intended
to build partnerships with families and an intent to pursue child protection more as
planning and acting for the safety of children with families than professionals forcefully
guiding the protection of children separate from the family (Turnell & Edwards, 1999).
Overindulgence, as defined and proposed by Clarke et al. (2004), provides a
strengthening addition to progressive child welfare practice principles and provides
language that can be utilized with families, as well as by families, guardians ad litem,
juvenile dependency courts, and social workers. The use of these empirically based
frameworks and the parenting language that flows from them provides opportunities for
strengthened assessment, goals setting, and evaluation criteria. By using language ultimately
understandable and theoretically appropriate to all parties, services may assist families to
understand and identify their current functioning in a coherent, socially agreed upon context
and to identify appropriate goals based upon standards.
As additional research continues on the emerging theoretical definition of overindul-
gence, clarity will likely emerge, along with specific clinical and research measures to
capture the concepts. Utilizing this theoretical framework, child welfare may find the
parent education language and conceptualizations helpful for communication, assessment,
and goal setting in cases shared by varied professionals supporting families. The
theoretical conceptualization presented by Clarke et al. (2004) holds potential to enhance
developmental approaches common to protecting the health, safety, and development
shared by child welfare and parent education.

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