Child Maltreatment

Only during the latter half of the twentieth century did the systematic recording of child maltreatment begin. Historically, the concept of childhood had very little practical meaning. In medieval times (approximately 350 CE to 1450 CE), there were two life stages: infancy and personhood. Infancy ended at about age seven, when offspring were no longer physically dependent upon a parent or surrogate parent. After age seven, especially among the poor, children entered into the adult world. They worked and socialized with adults, dressed like adults, and drank in taverns; they were considered little people, rather than children needing nurturing, guidance, and protection. Not until the late Renaissance (sixteenth century) and the Enlightenment (seventeenth century) did the concepts of childhood and adolescence begin to evolve as distinct developmental periods in the life cycle.

During the Enlightenment a perception evolved that children were innocent and deserving of protection from the hardships of life; in the mid- to late nineteenth century the concept of adolescence began to take hold. Spawned by a growing concern for the welfare of children and adolescents, a number of laws and agencies developed in the United States to protect these newly defined categories of persons. Mandatory education, restrictive labor laws, houses of refuge, the juvenile court system, and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children all were created to protect and nurture children and adolescents. Yet it would be several [Page 186]decades before child maltreatment would draw the attention of medical professionals, psychologists, sociologists, criminologists, legal scholars, and the public.

Eleven-year-old Joe Roach was found chained to his bed in Houston, Texas by a deputy sheriff on August 27, 1954. His parents were charged with contributing to the dependency of a minor.

© Bettmann/Corbis; used with permission.

“The Battered Child Syndrome,” published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1962 (Kempe et al.), brought to the forefront the problem of child maltreatment in contemporary American society. The next several years saw every U.S. state enact legislation that defined child abuse and made reporting of suspected cases of maltreatment mandatory for medical professionals (Straus, Gelles, and Steinmetz 1980).