Family Violence

Child Abuse and Neglect

Historically, the further back in time in many societies, the less adequate the child care and the more likely abuse, abandonment, traumatization, and murder of children. Unwanted newborns (imperfect, sickly, deformed, illegitimate, twins, or females) were thrown on the dung heap to die. Children were often mutilated to improve their potential as beggars. Beatings and whippings were an expected part of childhood. As evidence of a child's station within society, the SPCA (Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) was established quite some time before the SPCC (Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children). In fact, the famous 1866 New York child abuse case of Mary Ellen Wilson actually turned to protection under the SPCA, because the SPCC wasn't created until 1874.

Modern concern with child abuse had its beginnings with the research of Dr. C. Henry Kempe and his colleagues and their discovery in 1962 of “battered child syndrome,” which detailed evidence of repeated multiple bone fractures of children suspected of being abused. Throughout the 1960s, child welfare and protective services were very influential in bringing the serious problem of child abuse and neglect to the public's attention.

On an annual basis, state child protective services (CPS) agencies receive and refer for investigation an estimated 2 million reports of child abuse and neglect, which involve over 2.3 million children. The number of children reported annually has more than tripled over the past 20 years for which this data has been collected (National Child Abuse and Child Neglect Data System, 1998).