NCJ Number
163624
Journal
Journal of Family Violence Volume: 11 Issue: 2 Dated: (June 1996) Pages: 149-166
Date Published
1996
Length
18 pages
Annotation
This study addressed the identification of the correlates of adolescent mothers' maltreatment of their children, so as to reduce a major gap in the empirical knowledge base and provide information that will help to promote the development of theory about both social problems.
Abstract
The 119 subjects of this secondary analysis of data are a subset of the respondents from a cohort of 518 mothers who participated in a case-comparison study conducted during 1984 and 1985 (Zuravin and Taylor, 1987). All of the mothers included in the current study gave birth to their child prior to their 18th birthday. The study focused on identifying characteristics that discriminate among low-income adolescent mothers with maltreated children and comparable mothers whose children were not known to be maltreated. Bivariate analyses of 18 characteristics from several theoretically justified domains revealed that 11 were associated with neglect and four with abuse. Stepwise discriminant analysis identified six correlates of neglect that correctly classified 85 percent of the mothers and four correlates for abuse that correctly classified 79 percent of the mothers. The discussion focuses on implications for future research and hypothesis generation. 3 tables and 31 references