Incest

Incest refers to sexual relations between closely related persons. The degrees of kinship defined as incestuous vary, but virtually every known society has prohibited father and daughter, mother and son, or brother and sister from having sexual contact or marrying. Only in recent decades, though, has society recognized incest as a social problem. Earlier, the cultural prohibition, known as the “incest taboo,” was of primary interest and a topic of considerable theoretical concern. Many leading social theorists, including Sigmund Freud, Emile Durkheim, and Claude [Page 485]Levi-Strauss, considered the incest taboo foundational to human social organization.

Consistent with understandings of the taboo, most people long viewed the incidence of incest as extremely rare, and until the 1980s, no prevalence studies of incest occurred. The closest thing to survey data came from general studies of sexual behavior, such as those by Alfred Kinsey, but these studies did not focus on incest and did not separately define or report it. Although incest was prohibited by law in most jurisdictions, the conviction rate of incest offenders was extremely low. As late as the mid-1960s, for example, the annual conviction rate of offenders did not exceed two cases per million persons in any U.S. state. Social scientists recognized that the actual incidence of incest must far exceed the rate of detection by law enforcement. Yet, the available evidence and the cross-cultural studies suggested that the incest taboo was uniquely powerful. Other forms of sexual offenses and sexual pathologies were of professional and occasionally public concern, but not incest.

A series of developments, beginning in the 1960s, led to a changed awareness of sexual offenses within the nuclear and extended family. The emergence of family therapy as a clinical specialty in the 1960s was important in establishing a concern with the child victim of incest. Family therapists initiated a rejection of key elements of Freudian psychoanalysis, particularly with respect to the role of incest fantasies in mental life, and their work led to the first of many treatment programs in which child victims received counseling. The child protection movement, originally organized to draw attention to the physical abuse of children, and the anti-rape movement of the early 1970s drew public and mass media attention to child sexual abuse as a social problem. They also spurred new legislation, such as the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act of 1974, which made it a criminal offense for professionals working with children and public officials not to report suspected instances of child maltreatment. These movements classified incest within the more general category of sexual abuse—sometimes using terms like intrafamilial child sexual abuse—and argued that family members and known others, not strangers, committed most abuse. In the ensuing years, research studies, surveys, and increased reporting have confirmed that incest is far more prevalent than previously assumed.

The extent of incest behavior, however, has eluded careful measurement. Studies of such highly stigmatized behavior are notoriously difficult to conduct, and under-reporting is a serious methodological problem. So too is the lack of consensus among researchers about what behaviors and what degrees of kinship define the experience of incest. Some employ narrow definitions of sexual contact—touching or penetration—whereas others use broad definitions that span a wide range of sexual and sexualized activities from penetration to such non-touch behavior as exhibitionism and sexual propositions. There is also wide latitude in what relatives are included, with some researchers adding “father figures” and other unrelated persons. Discrepancies like these have led to great inconsistency in the estimates of the prevalence of incest.

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