Introduction
Child abuse and neglect violate some of our most cherished views of human relationships. Parents are expected to nurture and care for their offspring, providing the foundation for families and societies. Nevertheless, child abuse and neglect have occurred throughout history and across cultures. Child maltreatment became a concerted field of inquiry and a matter of public and professional attention in the United States in the early 1960s (Kempe, Silverman, Droegmueller, & Silver, 1962). Many nations had similar experiences of first denying the existence of child maltreatment within their boundaries, only to later “discover” its existence. This stimulated interest in the broader cross-cultural record (Hrdy, 1999; Korbin, 1981; Levinson, 1989; Scheper-Hughes, 1987; Scheper-Hughes & Sargent, 1998).
Definitions
Definitional ambiguity has been a major stumbling block in child abuse and neglect research and practice. There has been considerable difficulty in formulating valid and...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Cicchetti, D., & Lynch, M. (1993). Toward an ecological/transactional model of community violence and child maltreatment: Consequences for children’s development. Psychiatry, 56, 96–118.
Handwerker, H. P. (2001). Child abuse and the balance of power in parental relationships: An evolved domain-independent mental mechanism that accounts for behavioral variation. American Journal of Human Biology, 13, 679–689.
Hrdy, S. B. (1999). Mother nature. A history of mothers, infants, and natural selection. New York: Pantheon Books.
Kempe, C. H., Silverman, F. N., Droegmueller, W., & Silver, H. K. (1962). The battered child syndrome. Journal of the American Medical Association, 181, 17–24.
Korbin, J. (Ed.) (1981). Child abuse and neglect: Cross-cultural perspectives. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Korbin, J. (1987a). Child maltreatment in cross-cultural perspective: Vulnerable children and circumstances. In R. Gelles & J. Lancaster (Eds.), Child abuse and neglect: Biosocial dimensions (pp. 31–55). Chicago: Aldine.
Korbin, J. E. (1997). Culture and child maltreatment. In M. E. Helfer, R. Kempe, & R. Krugman (Eds.), The battered child (5th ed., pp. 29–48). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Korbin, J. E. (1998). “Good mothers,” “babykillers,” and fatal child maltreatment. In N. Scheper-Hughes & C. Sargent (Eds.), Small wars: The cultural politics of childhood (pp. 253–276). Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Levinson, D. (1989). Family violence in cross-cultural perspective. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
National Research Council (1993). Understanding child abuse and neglect. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
Rohner, R. (1986). The warmth dimension: Foundations of parental acceptance-rejection theory. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Scheper-Hughes, N. (Ed.). (1987). Child survival. Anthropological perspectives on the treatment and maltreatment of children. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: D. Reidel.
Scheper-Hughes, N., & Sargent, C. (Eds.). (1998). Small wars: The cultural politics of childhood. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Scrimshaw, S. (1983). Infanticide as deliberate fertility regulation. In R. Lee & R. Bulatao (Eds.), Determinants of fertility in developing countries: A summary of knowledge (pp. 714–731). New York: Academic Press.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2004 Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers
About this entry
Cite this entry
E., J. (2004). Child Abuse and Neglect. In: Ember, C.R., Ember, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Medical Anthropology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-29905-X_35
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-29905-X_35
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-0-306-47754-6
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-29905-1
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive