Causes and Effects of Child Abuse - Some Contributing Factors To Child Abuse, The Violent Family, Abusive Mothers, Abusive Fathers, Abusive Siblings
Raising a child is not easy. Everyday stresses, strains, and sporadic upheavals in family life, coupled with the normal burdens of child care, cause most parents to feel angry at times. People who would not dream of hitting a colleague or an acquaintance when they are angry may think nothing of hitting their children. Some feel remorse after hitting a loved one; nevertheless, when they are angry, they still resort to violence. The deeper intimacy and greater commitment in a family make emotionally charged disagreements more frequent and more intense.
Murray A. Straus and Richard J. Gelles, experts in child abuse research, believe that cultural standards permit violence in the family. The family, which is the center of love and security in most children's lives, is also the place where the child is punished, sometimes physically.
The 1975 National Family Violence Survey and the 1985 National Family Violence Resurvey, conducted by Straus and Gelles, are the most complete studies of spousal and parent-child abuse yet prepared in the United States. The major difference between these two surveys and most other surveys discussed in Chapter 4 is that the data from these surveys came from detailed interviews with the general population, not from cases that came to the attention of official agencies and professionals. Straus and Gelles had a more intimate knowledge of the families and an awareness of incidences of child abuse that were not reported to the authorities. (Straus and Gelles incorporated research from the two surveys and additional chapters into the book Physical Violence in American Families: Risk Factors and Adaptations to Violence in 8,145 Families, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1990.)
Additional Topics
The factors contributing to child maltreatment are complex. The Third National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (NIS-3; Andrea J. Sedlak and Diane D. Broadhurst, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services [HHS], National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, Washington, DC, 1996), the most comprehensive federal source of information about the incidence of child maltreatment in the United …
Child abuse is sometimes a reflection of other forms of severe family conflict. Violence in one aspect of family life often flows into other aspects. Murray A. Straus and Christine Smith found that parents who were in constant conflict were also more likely to abuse their children ("Family Patterns and Child Abuse," Physical Violence in American Families: Risk Factors and Adaptations…
A national survey in the United Kingdom of the childhood experiences of young adults ages eighteen to twenty-four found that mothers were more likely than other household members to be violent toward their children. Child Maltreatment in the United Kingdom—A Study of the Prevalence of Child Abuse and Neglect (Pat Cawson, Corinne Wattam, Sue Brooker, and Graham Kelly, National Society for th…
Katreena L. Scott and Claire V. Crooks noted that, despite the fact that some fathers are perpetrators of child maltreatment, very little research has been done on abusive fathers. According to the authors, for intervention services to be effective, it is important to know the characteristics of abusive fathers ("Effecting Change in Maltreating Fathers: Critical Principles for Intervention …
In What Parents Need to Know about Sibling Abuse: Breaking the Cycle of Violence (Springville, UT: Bonneville Books, 2002), Vernon R. Wiehe explored the reasons why siblings hurt each other. Sibling abuse may stem from a desire to control another person in order to take advantage of that person. The sibling in control typically does not know how to empathize (be aware and sensitive to the feelings…
One of the most detailed longitudinal studies of the consequences of childhood maltreatment involved 908 children in a metropolitan area of the Midwest who were ages six to eleven when they were maltreated (between 1967 and 1971). A control group of 667 children with no history of childhood maltreatment was used for comparison. Each group had about two-thirds white and one-third African-American i…
Cathy Spatz Widom studied a group of girls who had experienced neglect and physical and sexual abuse from TABLE 5.5
ages zero to eleven through young adulthood ("Childhood Victimization and the Derailment of Girls and Women to the Criminal Justice System," Research on Women and Girls in the Justice System, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, DC, September 2000). Widom found …
In midyear 2002 a total of 665,475 inmates were held in local jails (Doris J. James, Profile of Jail Inmates, 2002, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Washington, DC, June 2004). Nearly 11% of inmates reported having experienced abuse before age eighteen. About twice as many females (20.3%) than males (9.7%) were abused during childhood. Overall, …
Researchers in Ontario, Canada, investigated the relationship between childhood maltreatment and mental health problems and dating violence in adolescents with a history of childhood abuse and neglect (David A. Wolfe, Katreena Scott, Christine Wekerle, and Anna-Lee Pittman, "Child Maltreatment: Risk of Adjustment Problems and Dating Violence in Adolescence," Journal of the American A…
It is recognized that illicit drug use is associated with behaviors leading to violence, sexually transmitted diseases, other health problems, and crime. A study population of 8,613 adult members of a health plan filled out a questionnaire relating to their adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) during the first eighteen years of life. The aim of the study was to determine the effects of related ACE…
Increasing research has shown that child abuse or neglect during infancy and early childhood affects early brain development. The National Clearinghouse on Child Abuse and Neglect Information, in Understanding the Effects of Maltreatment on Early Brain Development (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Washington, DC, October 2001), defined "brain development, or learning," a…
When most people think of child maltreatment, they think of abuse and not neglect. Furthermore, research literature and conferences dealing with child maltreatment have generally overlooked child neglect. The congressional hearings that took place before the passage of the landmark Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act of 1974 (CAPTA; Public Law 93-247) focused almost entirely on examples of ph…
In 2002 an estimated 1,390 children died of abuse or neglect in the United States. About 76% of these children were younger than four, making maltreatment the main cause of injury death in this age group. Another 12% of victims were ages four to seven. To determine the role of family composition as a risk factor for fatal child maltreatment, researchers examined all information related to Missouri…
All fifty states allow parents to use corporal punishment for purposes of disciplining their children. This means that the parent may use objects such as belts as long as the child does not suffer injury, as well as the more typical spanking with the hand. When states passed child abuse laws in the 1960s, provisions allowing parents to use corporal punishment helped facilitate passage of the legis…
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