PHYSICAL VIOLENCE, CHILD ABUSE, AND CHILD HOMICIDE: A C o n t i n u u m of Violence, or Distinct Behaviors?
Richard J. Gelles University of Rhode Island
The study of child abuse and child homicide has been based on the often implicit assumption that there is a continuum of violence ranging from mild physical punishment to severe abuse and homicide. Empirical data supporting this assumption are sparse. Existing data can be shown, however, to support an assumption that there are distinct forms of violence, not a continuum. This paper reviews these data and discusses their implications for the study of violence, abuse, and homicide in terms of substantive and methodological explanations. In addition, the implications of the assumption that violence consists of distinct behaviors as opposed to a continuum are discussed in light of sociobiological and evolutionary explanations of child abuse and child homicide. KEY WORDS:
Child abuse; Child homicide; Violence; Sociobiological theory; Evolutionary theory
A long-held a n d traditional a s s u m p t i o n in the s t u d y of violence, family violence, a n d especially violence t o w a r d s children is that a c o n t i n u u m of violence s p a n s f r o m the mildest f o r m of physical p u n i s h m e n t to the Received August 24, 1990; accepted September 5, 1990. Address all correspondence to Richard J. Gelles, Family Violence Research Program, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI 02881.
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most severe and deadly forms of violence. The assumption that family violence, and more particularly violence toward children, exists as a continuum can be traced to examinations of the patterns of criminal assault and homicide. Studies have noted the similarity of patterns of assault with the patterns of homicide (Pittman and H a n d y 1964; Pokorny 1965). The difference between assault and homicide, some scholars have noted, is often luck, aim, or the presence or absence of a weapon. Greven (1991) specifically identifies the continuum of violence in his historical analysis of the religious roots of physical punishment. He states, "Physical punishments, from the mildest and most infrequent to the most severe and deadly, form a continuum of violence that needs to be explored, understood, and rejected." Straus (1983) empirically examined the assumption of the continuum of violence in his analysis of data on violence toward children collected during the first National Family Violence Survey (Straus et al. 1980). Straus notes that, from the beginning, the Family Violence Research Program operated on the assumption that common elements underlie the occurrence of all types of physical violence. Straus found that the same factors used to explain what he called child abuse (acts of serious violence that had a high probability of causing an injury) also explained ordinary physical punishment of children. Straus concludes that, based on this analysis, child abuse is not a distinct behavior that requires a separate explanation from physical punishment. The notion of a linear continuum of violence toward children has significant implications for empirical research, theories of violence, as well as policies for treatment and prevention of violence. From a research point of view, investigators who assume that there is a continuum of violence operationalize violence as a variable, with values ranging from mild and infrequent to severe and frequent (see Straus 1979; Straus and Gelles 1986). From a theoretical point of view, those who accept the notion of a continuum of violence aim at the development of general theories of violence rather than at distinct theories for distinct types of violent behavior. For example, Daly and Wilson (1980) have developed an evolutionary explanation of child abuse based on analyses of data from officially reported cases of abuse and data on child homicide. Daly and Wilson (1985) note that by using homicide data and data on the most serious forms of abuse, they minimize the report bias inherent in the use of official statistics. Implicit in this argument is the idea that violence is a continuum and that findings from examinations of child homicide and the most serious forms of abuse can be generalized to other forms of violence toward children. From a policy point of view, numerous scholars and child advocates propose that prevention of
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physical punishment is a first and major step in the prevention of physical child abuse and child homicide. Despite the widespread agreement that there is a continuum of violence toward children, few rigorous examinations of the data on physical punishment, physical child abuse, and child homicide have attempted to support and confirm this assumption. Straus's analysis is an exception, and his data are based on a fairly narrow range of violent behavior, which excludes violence that is classically conceptualized as child abuse or child homicide. If violence toward children is a continuum, one would expect to find certain types of supporting evidence in the existing empirical literature. For example, as Straus (1983) found, the same factors that explain violence at one end of the continuum should also explain violence at the other end. Temporal trends in the rates of various forms of violence should also be similar. Thus, if the rate of child homicide is increasing, so too should the rate of child abuse and child punishment. Cross-cultural comparisons should also yield similar patterns across the assumed continuum of violence. Thus, societies with similar rates of punishment of children should have similar rates of abuse and homicide. These similarities, or what I call "continuities" in the data on violence toward children, would support, but not prove, the assumption that this violence can be described as a continuum. Discontinuities, such as finding that different underlying patterns of factors are associated with different types of violence, or finding differences in the rates of different forms of violence across time and cultures, would lend support to the assumptions that distinct types of violent behavior are directed toward children and that these behaviors require distinct explanations. This paper reviews a number of examples of discontinuities in the empirical data on violence, abuse, and homicide and discusses their implications in terms of substantive and methodological explanations for these discontinuities. In addition, the implications of assuming that violence is a set of distinct behaviors, as opposed to a continuum, are discussed in light of theoretical explanations of child abuse and child homicide.
DISCONTINUITIES IN THE DATA ON
VIOLENCE, ABUSE, AND HOMICIDE Medical personnel who work in the field of child abuse and neglect note that radiologists sometimes fail to recognize abuse-related injuries. One physician, explaining how an apparently healed fracture could be overlooked, noted that, "You see what you are trained to see, and you are
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trained to see what you see." This inadvertant misdiagnosis may also be the case in the study of violence, abuse, and homicide, since the vast majority of students of child abuse approach the topic with the assumption that violence, abuse, and homicide are points on a linear continuum. Although existing data are not sufficient to overturn the assumption of a continuum, they do provide some point of reference for a more thorough examination of the assumption.
Changing Rates of Violence, Abuse, and Homicide One example that suggests the presence of distinct forms of violent and abusive behavior is the examination of changing rates of violence and abuse between those reported by Straus and Gelles (1986) and official report data. Straus and Gelles analyzed the results of two self-report surveys of family violence---one conducted in 1975 and the second in 1985. The self-report data revealed no change in the rate of physical punishment between 1975 and 1985, but a 47% decrease in very severe or abusive violence was revealed (Straus and Gelles 1986). These findings have been compared to data on officially reported cases of child abuse and child homicide, both of which show a continued and pronounced increase. Data collected by the American Association for Protecting Children (1989) indicate that, for all forms of maltreatment, there has been a 225% increase in rates of reporting between 1976 and 1987.' The National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect conducted two national surveys of the incidence of reported child abuse and neglect (Burgdorf 1980; National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect 1988). The most recent survey reported that countable cases of child maltreatment increased 51% over the number of cases found in 1980. Finally, the data on child homicide collected by the National Committee for the Prevention of Child Abuse indicated an increase in child maltreatment fatalities between 1986 and 1988 (Mitchel 1989). Because the three major data sources on the changing rates of child abuse yield contradictory results, there has been considerable debate over the meaning of the inconsistencies. Much of the debate has centered on methodological issues. Noting the contradictory findings, the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect (1988) has stated that the decline in the rate of violence toward children reported by Straus and Gelles could be a function of parents becoming less candid because of the unacceptability of admitting to abusive behavior. Straus and Gelles (1986) recognize that changing attitudes about child abuse could be a plausible explanation for their findings. They also note, however, that
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the declining rate of child abuse is consistent with the changing character and structure of the American family, the improving economy, increased publicity about child abuse, and the rapid expansion of treatment and prevention programs for child abuse. Although the differences may be due to the use of different methodologies and definitions, they may also be a function of the fact that each study tapped a different type of violence.
Cross-Cultural Comparison of Rates A second study using data from the National Family Violence Survey compared violence toward children in the United States and Sweden (Gelles and Edfeldt 1986). The investigators found that the rate of physical punishment of children in Sweden was significantly lower than the rate in the United States; however, the rate of severe (or abusive) violence was the same in both countries. The investigators explain the similarity in the rate of severe violence as follows: kicking, biting, punching, beating, and using weapons could be considered either more expressive forms of violence . . . or forms of violence consciously designed to inflict serious injury on a child. These behaviors may be less amenable to control by imposing a cultural standard that spanking is wrong (Gelles and Edfeldt 1986:508). Equally plausible, although not mentioned in the paper, is the explanation that physical punishment and severe violence are distinct forms of behavior and, as such, differences and lack of differences in the rates of these behaviors can be attributed to the different generative causes of physical punishment and abuse.
Homicide Rates Examinations of aggregate data on homicide indicate that the same factors do not underlie all types of homicidal violence. Straus's (1987) examination of infant homicide rates found different generative causes for different types of family violence. Straus (1987) examined state-bystate mortality rates of infants (less than 1 year old) and toddlers (1 to 4 years of age). Trends in the infant homicide rates were not the same as those found for toddlers. Rates of adult homicides are highest in the South, whereas infant and toddler homicide rates are highest in the West. The set of sociocultural factors that explain almost all state-to-state differences in adult homicide rates, such as poverty and preexisting social relationships, does not explain differences among states in homicide
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deaths of infants. Finally, when all 50 states are used as the units of analysis, the infant homicide mortality rate is almost uncorrelated with the adult homicide rate, whereas the rate for toddlers is moderately correlated with the adult rate. Although this analysis does not speak directly to the issue of the continuum of violence, it does indicate that there appear to be distinct types of the most severe form of violence-homicide.
Underlying Factors Associated with Violence Toward Children As yet, there has not been a metanalysis of the child abuse, child homicide, and violence-toward-children literature to consider whether distinct forms of violence exist or whether violence can be described as a continuum. One recent examination of child abuse suggests that there may indeed be evidence in the literature to indicate that violence does not exist as a continuum. Milner, Robertson, and Rogers (1990) have examined childhood history of abuse and adult child-abuse potential. In a number of analyses, significant differences were found between the group that experienced moderate abuse and the group that experienced mild or no abuse. No significant difference was found between those who experienced mild abuse and those who experienced no abuse. The authors draw no conclusions about these differences, nor do they even make note of them.
Violence, Abuse, and Homicide by Genetically Unrelated Caretakers The study of the risk of violence, abuse, and homicide among children with caretakers who are not biologically related to them provides yet another example of how there may be distinct forms of violence toward children. The discontinuity among the various studies of violence and abuse by genetically unrelated caretakers has important implications not only for the assumption of a continuum of violence but for sociobiological explanations of child abuse as well. Examination of official child-abuse-report data and data on child homicide indicate that non-genetically related caretakers (stepparents, boyfriends, etc.) are disporportionately likely to abuse or kill children (Daly and Wilson 1981, 1985, 1987; Gil 1970; Giles-Sims and Finkelhor 1984; Wilson et al. 1980). Daly and Wilson have examined a wide range of data on child abuse and child homicide in the United States and Canada and conclude that
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stepchildren (children with non-genetically related caretakers) 2 are consistently overrepresented both in official reports of child maltreatment and as victims of homicide. Wilson, Daly, and Weghorst (1980) examined official report data collected by the American H u m a n e Association in 1976. After analyzing 87,789 official reports of child maltreatment collected from 28 states, the researchers concluded that stepchildren were more likely to be abused than children living with both genetic parents, assuming that 1 in 10 American children lives with a stepparent. Daly and Wilson (1981) examined 177 households in Canada and found that stepparents resided in 40% of the households in which there was evidence of abuse of a juvenile. In another paper these authors analyzed cases of child abuse from two children's aid societies in the Hamilton-Wentworth municipality in Canada and compared the data on living arrangements of abused children with the results of a telephone survey of the same area, which assessed household composition (Daly and Wilson 1985). Children in homes with stepparents were much more likely to be abused than children w h o lived with both natural parents. For example, preschoolers were 40 times as likely to become abuse statistics than like-aged children living with two natural parents (Daly and Wilson 1985). Finally, Daly and Wilson (1987) analyzed data on child homicide in Canada from 1974 to 1983. Here again, stepchildren were found to be more likely to be killed by parents and parent substitutes than children living with both parents. Daly and Wilson use the results of their various studies to support an evolutionary theory of child maltreatment and homicide. Their theory begins with the statement that natural selection is the process of differential reproduction (Daly and Wilson 1980). Natural selection measures an organism's success and is solely determined by reproductive success. Males can be expected to invest in offspring when there is some degree of parental confidence, while females are also inclined to invest under conditions of parental confidence. Parental solicitude, Daly and Wilson argue, is discriminative. Parents recognize their offspring and avoid squandering valuable reproductive effort on someone else's offspring. Thus, Daly and Wilson conclude, " w e should expect parental feelings to vary as a function of the prospective fitness value of the child in question" (1985:197). Parental feelings are seen as more readily and more profoundly established with one's o w n offspring than with children in cases in which the parent-offspring relationship is artificial. Thus, "when people are called upon to fill parental roles toward unrelated children, we may anticipate an elevated risk of lapses of parental solicitude" (Daly and Wilson 1985). Unlike Daly and Wilson's findings, data from the Second National Family Violence Survey revealed that non-genetically related caretakers
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were no more likely than biological parents to exhibit mild, severe, or very severe violence toward their children (Gelles and Harrop 1991). In addition, when the researchers examined the relationship between caretaker relationships and types of violence by age of the child, they also found no greater risk of violence or severe violence for infants, toddlers, or teens. Gelles and Harrop (1991) note a variety of plausible interpretations of the contradictory findings. First, it is possible that Daly and Wilson's data are correct and the data from the Second National Family Violence Survey are somehow biased or flawed. One possible source of error is the smaller than expected percentage of genetically unrelated caretakers in the sample. Glick (1989) states that in 1987, 9.4% of children under the age of 18 were stepchildren. Bachrach (1983) estimates that 8.5% of children living with w o m e n aged 15 to 44 live with a stepparent. These findings contrast with the 6.3% of the children in the Second National Family Violence Survey who lived with stepparents. It is also possible that the sampling design s o m e h o w omitted stepparents w h o were violent. The chances of this kind of systematic sampling error seem low, since in most other analyses the sampling design yielded quite an accurate sample of single parents (Gelles 1989) and minority families (Hampton et al. 1989). Another possibility is that stepparents systematically reported less violence than the amount that actually occurred in their homes, perhaps because they were aware of the image of the cruel stepparent. On the other hand, it is plausible that the self-report data from the survey are correct and that the official report data used by Daly and Wilson are flawed and biased. Wilson, Daly, and Weghorst's (1980) analysis of the American H u m a n e Association data uses household composition as the unit of analysis and not relationship of the perpetrator to the child. Malkin and Lamb's (1989) analysis of the 1984 American Humane Association data, which examines the relationship b e t w e e n perpetrator and child, failed to find that stepparents were more likely to abuse their offspring than biological parents. Giles-Sims and Finkelhor (1984) raise the possibility of bias in official report data in their analysis of the data from the National Incidence Survey. Daly and Wilson (1988) counter this claim and explain that homicide data are generally regarded as valid because the serious nature of the offense means that few cases of homicide go unreported. They also note that stepparents were overrepresented among the severe cases of child maltreatment. Homicide data, however, are not infallible. This is the case with child homicide, especially. It is likely that a number of instances of child homicide are classified as accidents (Gelles 1975). Furthermore, there m a y be a systematic bias in the classification of child homicides, which w o u l d increase the likelihood that cases from intact middle- and upper-class
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homes would be labeled accidents and cases from single-parent, stepparent, or low-income homes would be labeled homicide (Gelles 1987). Finally, there is no evidence that severity of abuse is related to the likelihood that an officially reported case will be found to be "valid." Carr's (1978) examination of official reports in Florida found that seriousness was not related to validity. ~ Rather, the status of the individual making the report was the factor most strongly related to a case's validity---cases reported by professionals, such as physicians, had the highest rate of being found valid, regardless of the severity of the maltreatment.
IMPLICATIONS FOR THEORIES OF VIOLENCE, ABUSE, A N D HOMICIDE
The study of child abuse has focused mainly on descriptive or correlational research that aims at discovering marker variables associated with abuse. Conceptual and theoretical work has generally been sparse. The theoretical work that has been done implicitly accepts the notion of a continuum of violence; thus, general theories have been developed that attempt to explain the full range of violence, from punishment to homicide. Sociobiological or evolutionary explanations of violence, abuse, and homicide appear to have implicitly accepted the notion of a continuum of violence. I say "implicitly" because the theoretical conceptualizations offer no caveat that the theory has been developed for a distinct type of violence (for instance, homicide), nor have the theorists explicitly disavowed the notion of a continuum of violence. For example, Burgess and Garbarino (1983) introduce their evolutionary theory of child abuse by discussing a range of mistreatments of children, including abandonment, sacrifice, and cannibalism. Although they do not present a formal series of propositions, Burgess and Garbarino note that parents do not generally invest in children with low reproductive potential. Thus, they explain, children w h o are not genetically related to the parent, or children with low reproductive potential (e.g., handicapped or retarded children) are at highest risk of abuse. Although the existence of an inverse relationship between parental investment and doubtful paternity or stepparenthood, scarce parental resources, and high costs of parental effort seems logical, one criticism of Burgess and Garbarino's conceptualization is that the logic extends only to cases in which the offspring fail to survive. What about the vast majority of abused and neglected children w h o do survive? What is the logic of maltreating or abusing a child w h o will survive? The maltreatment and abuse might actually decrease the child's reproductive fitness to below its original level. Furthermore, the likelihood of injury or com-
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promised fitness caused by the abuse might actually require more, not less, parental investment in the abused but surviving offspring. The same criticism can be leveled at Daly and Wilson's sociobiological explanation of abuse. Given that parents' feelings of solicitude vary as a function of the prospective fitness value of the child and that parental feelings are more readily established with one's own offspring than with unrelated children, it is logical to conclude that stepparents or nongenetically related caretakers would be more likely to kill their children than would genetically related caretakers. Furthermore, since the actual killing of a child requires significant effort and intent, abuse that is designed, implicitly or explicitly, to kill a child might not always be "successful." Thus, parental investment could logically be seen as inversely related to extremely severe cases of physical abuse or neglect. But what of the majority of cases of maltreatment that injure children but do not place them at grave risk of death? How do Daly and Wilson's propositions apply to cases of moderately severe violence toward children? The application of their explanation to these cases does not seem to be as direct or logical. These criticisms of evolutionary theory and sociobiological theory have been leveled at both theories for some time--albeit more often in informal gatherings at professional meetings or in conversation than in the literature. When we presented our paper (Gelles and Harrop 1991) on the risk of abuse by genetically unrelated caretakers at a recent professional meeting, one respondent in the audience noted that the finding that these caretakers were no more likely to abuse children than genetically related caretakers "disproved" [sic] Daly and Wilson's theory. The criticisms of evolutionary or sociobiological theory are valid only insofar as one accepts the assumption of a continuum of violence. If, however, one assesses the evidence we have presented on discontinuities in the research on violence, abuse, and homicide, and accepts the assumption that there are distinct types of violence toward children, then the criticisms are less significant. Evolutionary or sociobiological theories of abuse appear to be applicable to explanation of infanticide, homicide, and the more severe cases of abuse. On the other hand, the other theoretical conceptualizations of child abuse, such as learning theory, ecological theory, sociocultural theory, and structural theory (Gelles 1985; see Gelles and Straus 1979 for an extensive review of these theories), appear to be applicable to the less severe forms of violence and abuse.
CONCLUSIONS The assumption that there is a continuum of violence has been implicit and sometimes explicit in the study of child abuse and child maltreat-
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m e n t . This review suggests that the a s s u m p t i o n requires critical analysis, especially in light of clear e v i d e n c e of discontinuities in the data o n violence, abuse, a n d child homicide. R e c o n c e p t u a l i z a t i o n of violence, abuse, a n d homicide as distinct f o r m s of b e h a v i o r , each requiring distinct explanation a n d theoretical f o r m u l a t i o n , liberates theories of child a b u s e f r o m the constraints of h a v i n g to explain the full r a n g e of violent a n d a b u s i v e acts. The liberation that occurs as a result of rejecting the notion of a c o n t i n u u m is significant for e v o l u t i o n a r y or sociobiological theories of abuse. T h e s e theories are logically well suited to e x p l a n a t i o n s of infanticide a n d child h o m i c i d e , a n d Daly a n d Wilson h a v e a n a l y z e d an a r r a y of data that s u p p o r t their theoretical p r o p o s i t i o n s . O t h e r theories of abuse, such as the w i d e l y r e f e r e n c e d notions of learning t h e o r y or theories that d r a w o n stress a n d e c o n o m i c h a r d s h i p as significant variables, are also liberated b e c a u s e t h e y d o not h a v e to explain e v e r y thing f r o m p u n i s h m e n t to h o m i c i d e . The a s s u m p t i o n that violence is not a c o n t i n u u m but an artificial g r o u p i n g of distinct t y p e s of violent b e h a v i o r also requires theorists to inject a n o t e of caution in their f o r m u l a t i o n s . T h u s , h o m i c i d e is not simply an " e x t r e m e form of i n t e r p e r s o n a l v i o l e n c e " or a f o r m of b e h a v i o r that, b e c a u s e of its s e r i o u s n e s s , p r o v i d e s a valid " a s s a y " of i n t e r p e r sonal conflict (Daly a n d Wilson 1988:519). Rather, h o m i c i d e is a distinct form of b e h a v i o r that requires a distinct e x p l a n a t i o n . This e x p l a n a t i o n , a l t h o u g h valuable b e c a u s e it i m p r o v e s o u r u n d e r s t a n d i n g of h o m i c i d e , is not directly generalizable to other, less s e v e r e f o r m s of family violence. This paper was written under the auspices of the Family Violence Research Program at the University of Rhode Island. A complete list of books and articles is available upon request. Richard J. Gelles is Professor of Sociology and Anthropology and the Director of the Family Violence Research Program at the University of Rhode Island. He is the author or coauthor of 14 books and more than 90 articles and chapters on family violence, tiis most recent books are Intimate Violence, published in 1988 by Simon and Schuster; Physical Violence in American Families: Risk Factors and Adaptations in 8,145 Families, published by Transaction Books in 1990; and Intimate Violence in Families, published in 1990 by Sage Publications.
NOTES 1. The report does not include a breakdown for types of maltreatment. 2. Studies of the risk of child abuse among children with non-genetically related caretakers tend to classify stepchildren as children with stepparents or other unrelated caretakers, such as a parent's live-in lover. Although there are clearly significant differences in role expectations for stepparents and live-in lov-
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ers, research to date tends to combine these roles and label the individuals as stepparents. 3. "Valid" meant that the investigating social worker deemed the case to be an actual incidence of child abuse that required further action by the child protection agency.
REFERENCES American Association For Protecting Children 1989 Highlights of Official Child Neglect and Abuse Reporting, 1987. Denver: American Humane Association. Bachrach, C. A. 1983 Children in Families: Characteristics of Biological, Step-, and Adopted Children. Journal of Marriage and the Family 45:171-179. Burgdorf, K. 1980 Recognition and Reporting of Child Maltreatment. Rockville, Maryland: Westat. Burgess, R. L., and J. Garbarino 1983 Doing What Comes Naturally? An Evolutionary Perspective on Child Abuse. In The Dark Side of the Families: Current Family Violence Research, D. Finkeihor, R. GeUes, M. Straus, and G. Hotaling eds. Pp. 88-101. Beverly Hills, California: Sage. Carr, A. 1978 Reported Child Maltreatment in Florida: The Operation of Public Child Protective Service Systems. Report submitted to the Administration on Children, Youth, and Families, National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, Kingston, Rhode Island. Daly, M., and M. Wilson 1980 Discriminative Parental Solicitude: A Biosocial Perspective. Journal of Marriage and the Family 42:277-288. 1981 Child Maltreatment from a Sociobiological Perspective. New Directions for Child Development 11:93-112. 1985 Child Abuse and Other Risks of Not Living with Both Parents. Ethology and Sociobiology 6:197-210. 1987 Children as Homicide Victims. In Child Abuse and Neglect: Biosocial Dimensions, R. J. Gelles and J. B. Lancaster, eds. Pp, 201-214. Hawthorne, New York: Aldine de Gruyter. 1988 Evolutionary Social Psychology and Family Homicide. Science 242:519524. Gelles, R. J. 1975 The Social Construction of Child Abuse. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 43:363--371. 1985 Family Violence. Annual Review of Sociology 11:347-367. 1987 Family Violence, second ed. Newbury Park, California: Sage Publications. 1989 Child Abuse and Violence in Single Parent Families: Parent-absence and Economic Deprivation. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 59:492-501.
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GeUes, R. J., and M. Straus 1979 Determinants of Violence in the Family: Toward a Theoretical Integration. In Contemporary Theories About the Family, vol. 1, W. R. Burr, R. Hill, F. 1. Nye, and I. L. Reiss, eds. Pp. 549-581. New York: Free Press. Gelles, R. J., and A. Edfeldt 1986 Violence Towards Children in the United States and Sweden. Child Abuse and Neglect: The International Journal 10:501-510. Gelles, R. J., and J. W. Harrop 1991 The Risk of Abusive Violence Among Children with Non-Genetic Caretakers. Family Relations, in press. Gil, D. 1970 Violence Against Children: Physical Child Abuse in the United States. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Giles-Sims, J., and D. Finkelhor 1984 Child Abuse in Stepfamilies. Family Relations 33:407-413. Glick, P. 1989 Remarried Families, Stepfamilies, and Stepchildren: A Brief Demographic Profile. Family Relations 38:24-27. Greven, P., Jr. 1991 Spare the Child: The Religious Roots of Punishment and the Psychological Impact of Physical Abuse. New York: Alfred Knopf. Hampton, R. L., R. J. Gelles, and J. W. Harrop 1989 Is Violence in Black Families Increasing? A Comparison of 1975 and 1985 National Survey Rates. Journal of Marriage and the Family 51:969-980. Malkin, C. M., and M. E. Lamb 1989 Child Maltreatment: A Test of Sociobiology Theory. Unpublished manuscript in author's possession. Milner, J. S., K. R. Roberston, and D. L. Rogers 1990 Childhood History of Abuse and Adult Child Abuse Potential. Journal of Family Violence 5:15-34. Mitchel, L. 1989 Report on Fatalities from NCPCA. Protecting Children 6:3-5. National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect 1988 Study Findings: Study of National Incidence and Prevalence of Child Abuse and Neglect: 1988. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Pittman, D., and W. Handy 1964 Patterns in Criminal Aggravated Assault. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 55:462--470. Pokorny, A. D. 1965 Human Violence: A Comparison of Homicide, Aggravated Assault, Suicide, and Attempted Suicide. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 56:488497. Straus, M. A. 1979 Measuring Intrafamily Conflict and Violence: The Conflict Tactics (CT) Scales. Journal of Marriage and the Family 41:75--88. 1983 Ordinary Violence, Child Abuse, and Wife Beating: What Do They Have in Common? In The Dark Side of Families: Current Family Violence Research, D.
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Finkelhor, R. J. Gelles, G. T. Hotaling, and M. A. Straus, eds. Pp. 213-234. Newbury Park, California: Sage Publications. 1987 State and Regional Differences in U.S. Infant Homicide Rates in Relation to Sociocultural Characteristics of the States. Behavioral Sciences and the Law 5:61-75. Straus, M. A., and R. J. Gelles 1986 Societal Change and Family Violence from 1975 to 1985 as Revealed by Two National Surveys. Journal of Marriage and the Family 48:465-479. Straus, M. A., R. J. Gelles, and S. K. Steinmetz 1980 Behind Closed Doors: Violence in the American Family. Garden City, New York: Anchor Press. Wilson, M., M. Daly, and S. Weghorst 1980 Household Composition and Risk of Child Abuse and Neglect. Journal of Biosocial Science 12:333-340.
Richard J. Gelles University of Rhode Island
The study of child abuse and child homicide has been based on the often implicit assumption that there is a continuum of violence ranging from mild physical punishment to severe abuse and homicide. Empirical data supporting this assumption are sparse. Existing data can be shown, however, to support an assumption that there are distinct forms of violence, not a continuum. This paper reviews these data and discusses their implications for the study of violence, abuse, and homicide in terms of substantive and methodological explanations. In addition, the implications of the assumption that violence consists of distinct behaviors as opposed to a continuum are discussed in light of sociobiological and evolutionary explanations of child abuse and child homicide. KEY WORDS:
Child abuse; Child homicide; Violence; Sociobiological theory; Evolutionary theory
A long-held a n d traditional a s s u m p t i o n in the s t u d y of violence, family violence, a n d especially violence t o w a r d s children is that a c o n t i n u u m of violence s p a n s f r o m the mildest f o r m of physical p u n i s h m e n t to the Received August 24, 1990; accepted September 5, 1990. Address all correspondence to Richard J. Gelles, Family Violence Research Program, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI 02881.
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most severe and deadly forms of violence. The assumption that family violence, and more particularly violence toward children, exists as a continuum can be traced to examinations of the patterns of criminal assault and homicide. Studies have noted the similarity of patterns of assault with the patterns of homicide (Pittman and H a n d y 1964; Pokorny 1965). The difference between assault and homicide, some scholars have noted, is often luck, aim, or the presence or absence of a weapon. Greven (1991) specifically identifies the continuum of violence in his historical analysis of the religious roots of physical punishment. He states, "Physical punishments, from the mildest and most infrequent to the most severe and deadly, form a continuum of violence that needs to be explored, understood, and rejected." Straus (1983) empirically examined the assumption of the continuum of violence in his analysis of data on violence toward children collected during the first National Family Violence Survey (Straus et al. 1980). Straus notes that, from the beginning, the Family Violence Research Program operated on the assumption that common elements underlie the occurrence of all types of physical violence. Straus found that the same factors used to explain what he called child abuse (acts of serious violence that had a high probability of causing an injury) also explained ordinary physical punishment of children. Straus concludes that, based on this analysis, child abuse is not a distinct behavior that requires a separate explanation from physical punishment. The notion of a linear continuum of violence toward children has significant implications for empirical research, theories of violence, as well as policies for treatment and prevention of violence. From a research point of view, investigators who assume that there is a continuum of violence operationalize violence as a variable, with values ranging from mild and infrequent to severe and frequent (see Straus 1979; Straus and Gelles 1986). From a theoretical point of view, those who accept the notion of a continuum of violence aim at the development of general theories of violence rather than at distinct theories for distinct types of violent behavior. For example, Daly and Wilson (1980) have developed an evolutionary explanation of child abuse based on analyses of data from officially reported cases of abuse and data on child homicide. Daly and Wilson (1985) note that by using homicide data and data on the most serious forms of abuse, they minimize the report bias inherent in the use of official statistics. Implicit in this argument is the idea that violence is a continuum and that findings from examinations of child homicide and the most serious forms of abuse can be generalized to other forms of violence toward children. From a policy point of view, numerous scholars and child advocates propose that prevention of
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physical punishment is a first and major step in the prevention of physical child abuse and child homicide. Despite the widespread agreement that there is a continuum of violence toward children, few rigorous examinations of the data on physical punishment, physical child abuse, and child homicide have attempted to support and confirm this assumption. Straus's analysis is an exception, and his data are based on a fairly narrow range of violent behavior, which excludes violence that is classically conceptualized as child abuse or child homicide. If violence toward children is a continuum, one would expect to find certain types of supporting evidence in the existing empirical literature. For example, as Straus (1983) found, the same factors that explain violence at one end of the continuum should also explain violence at the other end. Temporal trends in the rates of various forms of violence should also be similar. Thus, if the rate of child homicide is increasing, so too should the rate of child abuse and child punishment. Cross-cultural comparisons should also yield similar patterns across the assumed continuum of violence. Thus, societies with similar rates of punishment of children should have similar rates of abuse and homicide. These similarities, or what I call "continuities" in the data on violence toward children, would support, but not prove, the assumption that this violence can be described as a continuum. Discontinuities, such as finding that different underlying patterns of factors are associated with different types of violence, or finding differences in the rates of different forms of violence across time and cultures, would lend support to the assumptions that distinct types of violent behavior are directed toward children and that these behaviors require distinct explanations. This paper reviews a number of examples of discontinuities in the empirical data on violence, abuse, and homicide and discusses their implications in terms of substantive and methodological explanations for these discontinuities. In addition, the implications of assuming that violence is a set of distinct behaviors, as opposed to a continuum, are discussed in light of theoretical explanations of child abuse and child homicide.
DISCONTINUITIES IN THE DATA ON
VIOLENCE, ABUSE, AND HOMICIDE Medical personnel who work in the field of child abuse and neglect note that radiologists sometimes fail to recognize abuse-related injuries. One physician, explaining how an apparently healed fracture could be overlooked, noted that, "You see what you are trained to see, and you are
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trained to see what you see." This inadvertant misdiagnosis may also be the case in the study of violence, abuse, and homicide, since the vast majority of students of child abuse approach the topic with the assumption that violence, abuse, and homicide are points on a linear continuum. Although existing data are not sufficient to overturn the assumption of a continuum, they do provide some point of reference for a more thorough examination of the assumption.
Changing Rates of Violence, Abuse, and Homicide One example that suggests the presence of distinct forms of violent and abusive behavior is the examination of changing rates of violence and abuse between those reported by Straus and Gelles (1986) and official report data. Straus and Gelles analyzed the results of two self-report surveys of family violence---one conducted in 1975 and the second in 1985. The self-report data revealed no change in the rate of physical punishment between 1975 and 1985, but a 47% decrease in very severe or abusive violence was revealed (Straus and Gelles 1986). These findings have been compared to data on officially reported cases of child abuse and child homicide, both of which show a continued and pronounced increase. Data collected by the American Association for Protecting Children (1989) indicate that, for all forms of maltreatment, there has been a 225% increase in rates of reporting between 1976 and 1987.' The National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect conducted two national surveys of the incidence of reported child abuse and neglect (Burgdorf 1980; National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect 1988). The most recent survey reported that countable cases of child maltreatment increased 51% over the number of cases found in 1980. Finally, the data on child homicide collected by the National Committee for the Prevention of Child Abuse indicated an increase in child maltreatment fatalities between 1986 and 1988 (Mitchel 1989). Because the three major data sources on the changing rates of child abuse yield contradictory results, there has been considerable debate over the meaning of the inconsistencies. Much of the debate has centered on methodological issues. Noting the contradictory findings, the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect (1988) has stated that the decline in the rate of violence toward children reported by Straus and Gelles could be a function of parents becoming less candid because of the unacceptability of admitting to abusive behavior. Straus and Gelles (1986) recognize that changing attitudes about child abuse could be a plausible explanation for their findings. They also note, however, that
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the declining rate of child abuse is consistent with the changing character and structure of the American family, the improving economy, increased publicity about child abuse, and the rapid expansion of treatment and prevention programs for child abuse. Although the differences may be due to the use of different methodologies and definitions, they may also be a function of the fact that each study tapped a different type of violence.
Cross-Cultural Comparison of Rates A second study using data from the National Family Violence Survey compared violence toward children in the United States and Sweden (Gelles and Edfeldt 1986). The investigators found that the rate of physical punishment of children in Sweden was significantly lower than the rate in the United States; however, the rate of severe (or abusive) violence was the same in both countries. The investigators explain the similarity in the rate of severe violence as follows: kicking, biting, punching, beating, and using weapons could be considered either more expressive forms of violence . . . or forms of violence consciously designed to inflict serious injury on a child. These behaviors may be less amenable to control by imposing a cultural standard that spanking is wrong (Gelles and Edfeldt 1986:508). Equally plausible, although not mentioned in the paper, is the explanation that physical punishment and severe violence are distinct forms of behavior and, as such, differences and lack of differences in the rates of these behaviors can be attributed to the different generative causes of physical punishment and abuse.
Homicide Rates Examinations of aggregate data on homicide indicate that the same factors do not underlie all types of homicidal violence. Straus's (1987) examination of infant homicide rates found different generative causes for different types of family violence. Straus (1987) examined state-bystate mortality rates of infants (less than 1 year old) and toddlers (1 to 4 years of age). Trends in the infant homicide rates were not the same as those found for toddlers. Rates of adult homicides are highest in the South, whereas infant and toddler homicide rates are highest in the West. The set of sociocultural factors that explain almost all state-to-state differences in adult homicide rates, such as poverty and preexisting social relationships, does not explain differences among states in homicide
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deaths of infants. Finally, when all 50 states are used as the units of analysis, the infant homicide mortality rate is almost uncorrelated with the adult homicide rate, whereas the rate for toddlers is moderately correlated with the adult rate. Although this analysis does not speak directly to the issue of the continuum of violence, it does indicate that there appear to be distinct types of the most severe form of violence-homicide.
Underlying Factors Associated with Violence Toward Children As yet, there has not been a metanalysis of the child abuse, child homicide, and violence-toward-children literature to consider whether distinct forms of violence exist or whether violence can be described as a continuum. One recent examination of child abuse suggests that there may indeed be evidence in the literature to indicate that violence does not exist as a continuum. Milner, Robertson, and Rogers (1990) have examined childhood history of abuse and adult child-abuse potential. In a number of analyses, significant differences were found between the group that experienced moderate abuse and the group that experienced mild or no abuse. No significant difference was found between those who experienced mild abuse and those who experienced no abuse. The authors draw no conclusions about these differences, nor do they even make note of them.
Violence, Abuse, and Homicide by Genetically Unrelated Caretakers The study of the risk of violence, abuse, and homicide among children with caretakers who are not biologically related to them provides yet another example of how there may be distinct forms of violence toward children. The discontinuity among the various studies of violence and abuse by genetically unrelated caretakers has important implications not only for the assumption of a continuum of violence but for sociobiological explanations of child abuse as well. Examination of official child-abuse-report data and data on child homicide indicate that non-genetically related caretakers (stepparents, boyfriends, etc.) are disporportionately likely to abuse or kill children (Daly and Wilson 1981, 1985, 1987; Gil 1970; Giles-Sims and Finkelhor 1984; Wilson et al. 1980). Daly and Wilson have examined a wide range of data on child abuse and child homicide in the United States and Canada and conclude that
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stepchildren (children with non-genetically related caretakers) 2 are consistently overrepresented both in official reports of child maltreatment and as victims of homicide. Wilson, Daly, and Weghorst (1980) examined official report data collected by the American H u m a n e Association in 1976. After analyzing 87,789 official reports of child maltreatment collected from 28 states, the researchers concluded that stepchildren were more likely to be abused than children living with both genetic parents, assuming that 1 in 10 American children lives with a stepparent. Daly and Wilson (1981) examined 177 households in Canada and found that stepparents resided in 40% of the households in which there was evidence of abuse of a juvenile. In another paper these authors analyzed cases of child abuse from two children's aid societies in the Hamilton-Wentworth municipality in Canada and compared the data on living arrangements of abused children with the results of a telephone survey of the same area, which assessed household composition (Daly and Wilson 1985). Children in homes with stepparents were much more likely to be abused than children w h o lived with both natural parents. For example, preschoolers were 40 times as likely to become abuse statistics than like-aged children living with two natural parents (Daly and Wilson 1985). Finally, Daly and Wilson (1987) analyzed data on child homicide in Canada from 1974 to 1983. Here again, stepchildren were found to be more likely to be killed by parents and parent substitutes than children living with both parents. Daly and Wilson use the results of their various studies to support an evolutionary theory of child maltreatment and homicide. Their theory begins with the statement that natural selection is the process of differential reproduction (Daly and Wilson 1980). Natural selection measures an organism's success and is solely determined by reproductive success. Males can be expected to invest in offspring when there is some degree of parental confidence, while females are also inclined to invest under conditions of parental confidence. Parental solicitude, Daly and Wilson argue, is discriminative. Parents recognize their offspring and avoid squandering valuable reproductive effort on someone else's offspring. Thus, Daly and Wilson conclude, " w e should expect parental feelings to vary as a function of the prospective fitness value of the child in question" (1985:197). Parental feelings are seen as more readily and more profoundly established with one's o w n offspring than with children in cases in which the parent-offspring relationship is artificial. Thus, "when people are called upon to fill parental roles toward unrelated children, we may anticipate an elevated risk of lapses of parental solicitude" (Daly and Wilson 1985). Unlike Daly and Wilson's findings, data from the Second National Family Violence Survey revealed that non-genetically related caretakers
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were no more likely than biological parents to exhibit mild, severe, or very severe violence toward their children (Gelles and Harrop 1991). In addition, when the researchers examined the relationship between caretaker relationships and types of violence by age of the child, they also found no greater risk of violence or severe violence for infants, toddlers, or teens. Gelles and Harrop (1991) note a variety of plausible interpretations of the contradictory findings. First, it is possible that Daly and Wilson's data are correct and the data from the Second National Family Violence Survey are somehow biased or flawed. One possible source of error is the smaller than expected percentage of genetically unrelated caretakers in the sample. Glick (1989) states that in 1987, 9.4% of children under the age of 18 were stepchildren. Bachrach (1983) estimates that 8.5% of children living with w o m e n aged 15 to 44 live with a stepparent. These findings contrast with the 6.3% of the children in the Second National Family Violence Survey who lived with stepparents. It is also possible that the sampling design s o m e h o w omitted stepparents w h o were violent. The chances of this kind of systematic sampling error seem low, since in most other analyses the sampling design yielded quite an accurate sample of single parents (Gelles 1989) and minority families (Hampton et al. 1989). Another possibility is that stepparents systematically reported less violence than the amount that actually occurred in their homes, perhaps because they were aware of the image of the cruel stepparent. On the other hand, it is plausible that the self-report data from the survey are correct and that the official report data used by Daly and Wilson are flawed and biased. Wilson, Daly, and Weghorst's (1980) analysis of the American H u m a n e Association data uses household composition as the unit of analysis and not relationship of the perpetrator to the child. Malkin and Lamb's (1989) analysis of the 1984 American Humane Association data, which examines the relationship b e t w e e n perpetrator and child, failed to find that stepparents were more likely to abuse their offspring than biological parents. Giles-Sims and Finkelhor (1984) raise the possibility of bias in official report data in their analysis of the data from the National Incidence Survey. Daly and Wilson (1988) counter this claim and explain that homicide data are generally regarded as valid because the serious nature of the offense means that few cases of homicide go unreported. They also note that stepparents were overrepresented among the severe cases of child maltreatment. Homicide data, however, are not infallible. This is the case with child homicide, especially. It is likely that a number of instances of child homicide are classified as accidents (Gelles 1975). Furthermore, there m a y be a systematic bias in the classification of child homicides, which w o u l d increase the likelihood that cases from intact middle- and upper-class
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homes would be labeled accidents and cases from single-parent, stepparent, or low-income homes would be labeled homicide (Gelles 1987). Finally, there is no evidence that severity of abuse is related to the likelihood that an officially reported case will be found to be "valid." Carr's (1978) examination of official reports in Florida found that seriousness was not related to validity. ~ Rather, the status of the individual making the report was the factor most strongly related to a case's validity---cases reported by professionals, such as physicians, had the highest rate of being found valid, regardless of the severity of the maltreatment.
IMPLICATIONS FOR THEORIES OF VIOLENCE, ABUSE, A N D HOMICIDE
The study of child abuse has focused mainly on descriptive or correlational research that aims at discovering marker variables associated with abuse. Conceptual and theoretical work has generally been sparse. The theoretical work that has been done implicitly accepts the notion of a continuum of violence; thus, general theories have been developed that attempt to explain the full range of violence, from punishment to homicide. Sociobiological or evolutionary explanations of violence, abuse, and homicide appear to have implicitly accepted the notion of a continuum of violence. I say "implicitly" because the theoretical conceptualizations offer no caveat that the theory has been developed for a distinct type of violence (for instance, homicide), nor have the theorists explicitly disavowed the notion of a continuum of violence. For example, Burgess and Garbarino (1983) introduce their evolutionary theory of child abuse by discussing a range of mistreatments of children, including abandonment, sacrifice, and cannibalism. Although they do not present a formal series of propositions, Burgess and Garbarino note that parents do not generally invest in children with low reproductive potential. Thus, they explain, children w h o are not genetically related to the parent, or children with low reproductive potential (e.g., handicapped or retarded children) are at highest risk of abuse. Although the existence of an inverse relationship between parental investment and doubtful paternity or stepparenthood, scarce parental resources, and high costs of parental effort seems logical, one criticism of Burgess and Garbarino's conceptualization is that the logic extends only to cases in which the offspring fail to survive. What about the vast majority of abused and neglected children w h o do survive? What is the logic of maltreating or abusing a child w h o will survive? The maltreatment and abuse might actually decrease the child's reproductive fitness to below its original level. Furthermore, the likelihood of injury or com-
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promised fitness caused by the abuse might actually require more, not less, parental investment in the abused but surviving offspring. The same criticism can be leveled at Daly and Wilson's sociobiological explanation of abuse. Given that parents' feelings of solicitude vary as a function of the prospective fitness value of the child and that parental feelings are more readily established with one's own offspring than with unrelated children, it is logical to conclude that stepparents or nongenetically related caretakers would be more likely to kill their children than would genetically related caretakers. Furthermore, since the actual killing of a child requires significant effort and intent, abuse that is designed, implicitly or explicitly, to kill a child might not always be "successful." Thus, parental investment could logically be seen as inversely related to extremely severe cases of physical abuse or neglect. But what of the majority of cases of maltreatment that injure children but do not place them at grave risk of death? How do Daly and Wilson's propositions apply to cases of moderately severe violence toward children? The application of their explanation to these cases does not seem to be as direct or logical. These criticisms of evolutionary theory and sociobiological theory have been leveled at both theories for some time--albeit more often in informal gatherings at professional meetings or in conversation than in the literature. When we presented our paper (Gelles and Harrop 1991) on the risk of abuse by genetically unrelated caretakers at a recent professional meeting, one respondent in the audience noted that the finding that these caretakers were no more likely to abuse children than genetically related caretakers "disproved" [sic] Daly and Wilson's theory. The criticisms of evolutionary or sociobiological theory are valid only insofar as one accepts the assumption of a continuum of violence. If, however, one assesses the evidence we have presented on discontinuities in the research on violence, abuse, and homicide, and accepts the assumption that there are distinct types of violence toward children, then the criticisms are less significant. Evolutionary or sociobiological theories of abuse appear to be applicable to explanation of infanticide, homicide, and the more severe cases of abuse. On the other hand, the other theoretical conceptualizations of child abuse, such as learning theory, ecological theory, sociocultural theory, and structural theory (Gelles 1985; see Gelles and Straus 1979 for an extensive review of these theories), appear to be applicable to the less severe forms of violence and abuse.
CONCLUSIONS The assumption that there is a continuum of violence has been implicit and sometimes explicit in the study of child abuse and child maltreat-
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m e n t . This review suggests that the a s s u m p t i o n requires critical analysis, especially in light of clear e v i d e n c e of discontinuities in the data o n violence, abuse, a n d child homicide. R e c o n c e p t u a l i z a t i o n of violence, abuse, a n d homicide as distinct f o r m s of b e h a v i o r , each requiring distinct explanation a n d theoretical f o r m u l a t i o n , liberates theories of child a b u s e f r o m the constraints of h a v i n g to explain the full r a n g e of violent a n d a b u s i v e acts. The liberation that occurs as a result of rejecting the notion of a c o n t i n u u m is significant for e v o l u t i o n a r y or sociobiological theories of abuse. T h e s e theories are logically well suited to e x p l a n a t i o n s of infanticide a n d child h o m i c i d e , a n d Daly a n d Wilson h a v e a n a l y z e d an a r r a y of data that s u p p o r t their theoretical p r o p o s i t i o n s . O t h e r theories of abuse, such as the w i d e l y r e f e r e n c e d notions of learning t h e o r y or theories that d r a w o n stress a n d e c o n o m i c h a r d s h i p as significant variables, are also liberated b e c a u s e t h e y d o not h a v e to explain e v e r y thing f r o m p u n i s h m e n t to h o m i c i d e . The a s s u m p t i o n that violence is not a c o n t i n u u m but an artificial g r o u p i n g of distinct t y p e s of violent b e h a v i o r also requires theorists to inject a n o t e of caution in their f o r m u l a t i o n s . T h u s , h o m i c i d e is not simply an " e x t r e m e form of i n t e r p e r s o n a l v i o l e n c e " or a f o r m of b e h a v i o r that, b e c a u s e of its s e r i o u s n e s s , p r o v i d e s a valid " a s s a y " of i n t e r p e r sonal conflict (Daly a n d Wilson 1988:519). Rather, h o m i c i d e is a distinct form of b e h a v i o r that requires a distinct e x p l a n a t i o n . This e x p l a n a t i o n , a l t h o u g h valuable b e c a u s e it i m p r o v e s o u r u n d e r s t a n d i n g of h o m i c i d e , is not directly generalizable to other, less s e v e r e f o r m s of family violence. This paper was written under the auspices of the Family Violence Research Program at the University of Rhode Island. A complete list of books and articles is available upon request. Richard J. Gelles is Professor of Sociology and Anthropology and the Director of the Family Violence Research Program at the University of Rhode Island. He is the author or coauthor of 14 books and more than 90 articles and chapters on family violence, tiis most recent books are Intimate Violence, published in 1988 by Simon and Schuster; Physical Violence in American Families: Risk Factors and Adaptations in 8,145 Families, published by Transaction Books in 1990; and Intimate Violence in Families, published in 1990 by Sage Publications.
NOTES 1. The report does not include a breakdown for types of maltreatment. 2. Studies of the risk of child abuse among children with non-genetically related caretakers tend to classify stepchildren as children with stepparents or other unrelated caretakers, such as a parent's live-in lover. Although there are clearly significant differences in role expectations for stepparents and live-in lov-
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ers, research to date tends to combine these roles and label the individuals as stepparents. 3. "Valid" meant that the investigating social worker deemed the case to be an actual incidence of child abuse that required further action by the child protection agency.
REFERENCES American Association For Protecting Children 1989 Highlights of Official Child Neglect and Abuse Reporting, 1987. Denver: American Humane Association. Bachrach, C. A. 1983 Children in Families: Characteristics of Biological, Step-, and Adopted Children. Journal of Marriage and the Family 45:171-179. Burgdorf, K. 1980 Recognition and Reporting of Child Maltreatment. Rockville, Maryland: Westat. Burgess, R. L., and J. Garbarino 1983 Doing What Comes Naturally? An Evolutionary Perspective on Child Abuse. In The Dark Side of the Families: Current Family Violence Research, D. Finkeihor, R. GeUes, M. Straus, and G. Hotaling eds. Pp. 88-101. Beverly Hills, California: Sage. Carr, A. 1978 Reported Child Maltreatment in Florida: The Operation of Public Child Protective Service Systems. Report submitted to the Administration on Children, Youth, and Families, National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, Kingston, Rhode Island. Daly, M., and M. Wilson 1980 Discriminative Parental Solicitude: A Biosocial Perspective. Journal of Marriage and the Family 42:277-288. 1981 Child Maltreatment from a Sociobiological Perspective. New Directions for Child Development 11:93-112. 1985 Child Abuse and Other Risks of Not Living with Both Parents. Ethology and Sociobiology 6:197-210. 1987 Children as Homicide Victims. In Child Abuse and Neglect: Biosocial Dimensions, R. J. Gelles and J. B. Lancaster, eds. Pp, 201-214. Hawthorne, New York: Aldine de Gruyter. 1988 Evolutionary Social Psychology and Family Homicide. Science 242:519524. Gelles, R. J. 1975 The Social Construction of Child Abuse. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 43:363--371. 1985 Family Violence. Annual Review of Sociology 11:347-367. 1987 Family Violence, second ed. Newbury Park, California: Sage Publications. 1989 Child Abuse and Violence in Single Parent Families: Parent-absence and Economic Deprivation. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 59:492-501.
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GeUes, R. J., and M. Straus 1979 Determinants of Violence in the Family: Toward a Theoretical Integration. In Contemporary Theories About the Family, vol. 1, W. R. Burr, R. Hill, F. 1. Nye, and I. L. Reiss, eds. Pp. 549-581. New York: Free Press. Gelles, R. J., and A. Edfeldt 1986 Violence Towards Children in the United States and Sweden. Child Abuse and Neglect: The International Journal 10:501-510. Gelles, R. J., and J. W. Harrop 1991 The Risk of Abusive Violence Among Children with Non-Genetic Caretakers. Family Relations, in press. Gil, D. 1970 Violence Against Children: Physical Child Abuse in the United States. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Giles-Sims, J., and D. Finkelhor 1984 Child Abuse in Stepfamilies. Family Relations 33:407-413. Glick, P. 1989 Remarried Families, Stepfamilies, and Stepchildren: A Brief Demographic Profile. Family Relations 38:24-27. Greven, P., Jr. 1991 Spare the Child: The Religious Roots of Punishment and the Psychological Impact of Physical Abuse. New York: Alfred Knopf. Hampton, R. L., R. J. Gelles, and J. W. Harrop 1989 Is Violence in Black Families Increasing? A Comparison of 1975 and 1985 National Survey Rates. Journal of Marriage and the Family 51:969-980. Malkin, C. M., and M. E. Lamb 1989 Child Maltreatment: A Test of Sociobiology Theory. Unpublished manuscript in author's possession. Milner, J. S., K. R. Roberston, and D. L. Rogers 1990 Childhood History of Abuse and Adult Child Abuse Potential. Journal of Family Violence 5:15-34. Mitchel, L. 1989 Report on Fatalities from NCPCA. Protecting Children 6:3-5. National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect 1988 Study Findings: Study of National Incidence and Prevalence of Child Abuse and Neglect: 1988. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Pittman, D., and W. Handy 1964 Patterns in Criminal Aggravated Assault. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 55:462--470. Pokorny, A. D. 1965 Human Violence: A Comparison of Homicide, Aggravated Assault, Suicide, and Attempted Suicide. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 56:488497. Straus, M. A. 1979 Measuring Intrafamily Conflict and Violence: The Conflict Tactics (CT) Scales. Journal of Marriage and the Family 41:75--88. 1983 Ordinary Violence, Child Abuse, and Wife Beating: What Do They Have in Common? In The Dark Side of Families: Current Family Violence Research, D.
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Finkelhor, R. J. Gelles, G. T. Hotaling, and M. A. Straus, eds. Pp. 213-234. Newbury Park, California: Sage Publications. 1987 State and Regional Differences in U.S. Infant Homicide Rates in Relation to Sociocultural Characteristics of the States. Behavioral Sciences and the Law 5:61-75. Straus, M. A., and R. J. Gelles 1986 Societal Change and Family Violence from 1975 to 1985 as Revealed by Two National Surveys. Journal of Marriage and the Family 48:465-479. Straus, M. A., R. J. Gelles, and S. K. Steinmetz 1980 Behind Closed Doors: Violence in the American Family. Garden City, New York: Anchor Press. Wilson, M., M. Daly, and S. Weghorst 1980 Household Composition and Risk of Child Abuse and Neglect. Journal of Biosocial Science 12:333-340.
