Women and Children at Risk: A Feminist Perspective on Child Abuse (From Issues in Intimate Violence, P 25-41, 1998, Raquel Kennedy Bergen, ed. -- See NCJ-176608)

• NCJ Number: 176610
• Author(s): E Stark; A Flitcraft
• Date Published: 1998
• Length: 17 pages
• Sale Source: Sage Publications, Inc
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This study examines the link between child abuse and woman battering, weighing evidence that abusive behavior reflects some combination of pathology and stress against the possibility that it arises from a power struggle between partners.

Abstract

At Yale-New Haven Hospital, the medical records of children suspected of being abused or neglected are specially marked or "darted," and the children are referred for investigation and disposition to a special hospital Dart Committee. The study population included the mothers of all children referred to the hospital Dart Committee for suspicion of abuse and/or neglect in a single year, between July 1977 and June 1978, 116 mothers in all. Dart Committee reports on children were matched to the medical records of their mothers, and the mothers were then classified as battered or nonbattered based on their adult trauma history and the risk classification. The analysis of medical records was supplemented by data from family background notes in Dart Committee reports. The trauma screen used in the study was designed to identify abuse in a population that had not been explicitly identified as battered and to generate sufficiently large groups of abused and nonabused women to permit statistical analysis and comparison. Data were collected on the significance of battering in families experiencing child abuse, the identity of perpetrators, whether mothers who were battered came disproportionately from problem homes, and whether current dispositions responded appropriately to the family situation. The findings support the hypothesis that woman battering -- a dramatic expression of male dominance -- is a major context for child abuse. If battering is the major context for child abuse and female independence is a basic issue in both problems, then female empowerment is the best means to prevent child abuse. As practiced by the battered women's movement, intervention to facilitate empowerment involves advocacy to protect and expand women's entitlements, collective support, and enhanced control. 2 tables, 60 references, and questions for discussion