Child Abuseand Neglect,Vol. 3, pp. 213 - 225.

Pergamon Press Ltd., 1979. Printed in Great Britain.

FAMILY PATTERNS AND CHILD ABUSE

IN A NATIONALLY REPRESENTATIVE AMERICAN SAHPLE*

Nut-ray A. Straus
University of New Hampshire, Durham, N.H. 03824, USA

ABSTRACT

Data on 1,146 families with a child age 3 through 17 at home are presented.
Child abuse information was obtained for a randomly selected child in each
family. Child abuse was defined as an attack by a parent involving punching,
kicking, biting, hitting with an object, “beating up,@ or using a knife or
gun. Over 14 out of every 100 American children 3-17 are subjected to
abusive violence each year. These figures are at least 26 times greater than
those of the National Center For Child Abuse and Neglect. Even so, for
reasons outlined in the paper, they are underestimates. Families in which
child abuse occurred are compared with other families. The results suggest
that child abuse is brought about by the very nature of the society and its
family system. This has profound implications for the prevention and
treatment of child abuse. Although psychotherapy may be appropriate in some
cases, a more fundamental approach lies in such things as a more equal
sharing of the burdens of child care, replacement of physical punishment with
non-violent methods of child care and training, eliminating the stresses and
insecurity which now characterize our economic system, and strengthening the
ties of individual families to the extended family and the community.

What can cause a parent to punch, kick, bite, burn, or stab a child? The
causes are complex in at least two ways.

First, there seem to be a multitude of factors, each of which increases the

probability of a violent physical attack on a child. At the same time no one
of these factors accounts for a very large proportion of the cases of child
abuse. For example, this paper will show that men uho hit their uives are
much more likely to abuse a child than are other men. Still, most men who
hit their wives do & attack a child violently enough for it to be
considered child abuse by contemporary standards.

*This paper is part of the Family Violence Research Program at the University
of New Hampshire. The Program is supported by NIMH grants T32 HH15161 and
1827557, and by the University of New Hampshire. A list of Program
publications is available on request.

I am grateful to Sieglinde Fizz for the care and skill with which she
arranged the computer typesetting of this article, to Shari Hagar for the
same qualities in her work on the innumberable computer runs for the
statistical analysis, and to Arnold Linsky for insightful comments and
suggestions on an earlier draft.

213
214 M. A. Straus

A seoond complication making it difficult to pinpoint the causes of child

abuse is that these factors do not operate in isolation from each other.
Rather, it is likely that certain combinations of factors are much more
potent than either of the factors by themselves; and also much more potent
than one might imagine by just adding together the effects of each of the two
factors. For example, unemployment is associated with ohild abuse, as is a
history of hitting one's wife. Let us say that each of these factors
increases the chances of a child being abused by 75%. But the combination of
unemployment and a prior history of having hit one's wife may increase the
probability of child abuse by 300 or 400% rather than 150%. In short, there
are likely to be nexplosive combinations.N Combinations like that are what
statisticians call "interaction effects."

Both of these complicating factors must be kept in mind when evaluating what
has been written about the causes of child abuse because neither is usually
considered. Instead, there is a tendency to focus on one or two factors as
though they offered the key to explaining this baffling phenomenon. Even
when several factors are considered, the effects of the "interactive
combinationsi* of these factors is not. These criticism also apply to this
paper. I am stating them at the beginning to alert readers to the
limitations of what is to be presented.

To be more specific, the data to be presented relate 25 different factors to

child abuse. One might therefore think that the first criticism--ignoring
the multiplicity of causal factors--has been met. But that is not the case
because all of the factors to be discussed are, broadly speaking, social
variables. That is, they describe the social characteristics and social
interactions of parents and children. Not considered are the psychological
characteristics of the parents, for example, their mental health,
aggressiveness, anxiety, rigidity, etc. Such psychological characteristics
may well be part of the explanation for child abuse. The research to be
described, however, ignores psychological vaiiables, not because they are
unimportant, but because this research was designed to find out about the
social causes of child abuse.

The second criticism of child abuse research--that it has by and large

ignored the consequences of different gombinations of factors --also applies
to this paper. However, this is a limitation which will be corrected in the
next stage of the research. What is presented here are the results of the
work we have so far been able to do.

SAMPLE AND METHOD

The data come from interview8 with a nationally representative sample of

1,146 American families who have a child age 3 through 17 at home. A
limitation of the sample is that one and two year olds--a high risk age--are
omitted. This was because of other purposes of the study required older
children. Further details on the sampling method and on the reasons for
limiting the study to children between 3 and 17 are given elsewhere (Straus,
Gelles, and Steinmetz, 1979). In any case, the absence of children under age
three is one of several factors which suggest that the child abuse incidence
rates to be reported are underestimates.

Interviews were conducted with the father in a random half of the families,
and with the mother in the other half of the families. In each family, the
data on physical violence was obtained for only one child, and only for the
parent who was interviewed. When there was more than one child, the
"referent child" for the study was selected by a random number table.

The interview covered a great many aspects of family pattern8 and life
circumstances. It included the Conflict Tactics Scales (Straus, 1979). The
items in those scales which pertain to severe violence by the parent toward
the referent child were combined to form a Child Abuse Index. These are all
the items which refer to violence more severe than pushing, shoving,
slapping, and throwing things. Specifically, the list consists of whether,
 Family Patterns and Child Abuse 215

during the 12 months up to the interview, the Parent had ever kicked, bit,
punched, hit mith an object, beaten up the child, or used a knife or gun (in
the sense of having actually tried to stab or shoot the child). A parent who
did any of these things was counted as having abused the child.

The rates of child abuse revealed by this method are truly astounding. Each
year, over 14 out of every TOO American parents of a child 3 through 17 is
violent enough to a child to be included in our Child Abuse Index. Thfs
means that of the 46 million children of this age group in the United States,
approximately six and a half million are abused each year.

Tt, might be objected that this index uses too lax a definition of child abuse
because one of the items is “hitting with an object.” For some parents that
could be the traditional strap or paddle rather than an out of control
assault. So we reoomputed the index leaving out the data on hitting with
objeots. The rates drop sharply to “only” three or four out of every hundred
Parents) and to an estimate of 1.7 million children per year.

The data just presented might overstate the amount of child abuse because a
family is included if even one isolated incident of abusive violence occurred
during the year. On the other hand, these rates may understate the extent to
which children are severely assaulted by their parents because the figures do
not take into account how often such assaults occurred. The answer to this
question is that ff one assault occurred, several were likely. In fact, a
single inrfdent occurred in only six percent of the child abuse cases. Mean
number of assaults per year was 10.5 and the median 4.5.

It is obvious that the incidence of child abuse obtained by this method is

many times that estimated by the U.S. National Center on Child Abuse and
Neglect tNCCAN>. They have Published figures indicating approximately a
million children per year are abused. However, that includes neglect, sexual
abuse, and psychological abuse. The physical abuse figure they report is
apporoximately 250,000. What accounts for the difference between that
quarter af a million and our figure of almost tuo million? There are two
main reasons:

(1) THE NCCAN figures are based on incidents which come to official
attention. This leaves out the vast number of cases in which physical abuse
is suspected and not reported, as well as the equally vast number of cases in
which a child is injured but there is no suspicion of abuse.

(21 Probably the most important reason why our rates are so much higher is
that our data is based on violent acts carried out, rather than on injuries
produced. Fortunately, children are resilient. Many is the child who has
been thrown against a wall and who simply bounces off with at most a bruise.
Only the relatively rare instances fn which a concussion occurs stand even a
chance of being suspected of parental abuse.

fn describing the sample, I said that the omission of children in the high
abuse risk age of birth to age three is one of several factors which make
even our very high rates of child abuse an underestimate. There are several
other factors whioh push in the same direction. The second such factor is
that these are self-reports by parents to a stranger doing a survey. Not
every parent who had punched or kicked a child is going to admit that In such
an interview. Third) the Conflict Tactics Scales include only a limited list
Of all the possible abusive acts. For example, we omitted burning a child,
wiping out the child’s mouth with soap or more noxious substances, and sexual
abuse. Fourth, we interviewed either the father or the mother and have data
only on that person’s abuse of the child, But most children have two parents
and therefore twice the risk --or at least a higher risk --of being abused than
our figures show. A fifth factor making these underestimates is that our
data are based on children living with two parents. The two parents need not
be the child’s natural parents. However, the omission of children living in
216 M. A. Straus

one-parent households may lead to underestimating because there are reasons

to think that child abuse is greater under the strain of trying to raise
children xfthout the aid of a partner.

I will start this examination of the social caumea of child abuse with tuo of
the most elementary but also two of the most important characteristics which
are associated with child abuser sex and socioeconomic status.

It is widely known that women are less violent than men. The3 assault and
murder rates of women are a fraction of the rates for men. But in the family
it is different. Using our index of child abuse, the rate for men is 10.1
per hundred childred whereas the rate for women is 75% greater: 17.7 per
hundred children.

I have started with the sfmple fact of the sex of the parent to emphasize the
importance of social factors as compared to psychological factors in
understanding child abuse. These, after all, are the same women who, outside
the family, are much less violent than men. So the reasons underlying their
much greater violence toward their own children is unlikely to be anything in
tile personality or other mental. charaoteristics of women as compared to men.
Rather, the reasans start with the simple fact that husbands and wives do not
have equal responsibility for care of children. The way our type of society
is organized r child care is the responsibility of women, So women are simply
exposed more to both the joys and the trials and tribulations of oaring for
children--they experience more time "at risk,* Moreover, since our sample of
chtldren did not inolude any infants, it is even more clear that this is a
matter of culturally determined rules and arrangements. Fathers are just as
capable-- biologically, even if not by training-- of caring for children of
this age.

*Time at risk,* however is not the whole story, The factors underlying the
much greater frequency of child abuse by mothers go well beyond that. At
least tuo other factors need to be considered. First, it is that mothers who
tend to be blamed if the child misbehaves or does not achieve what is
expected of children at a given age, Since all children misbehave, and since
standards of achievement are ambfguous, almost afl mothers tend to feel
anxiety, frustration, and guilt about their ahildren and their adequacy as
mothers. This is not because women are any more anxiety prooe than men, but
because society sets up a situation in which a high level of anxiety and
frustration is just about inevitable.

A third factor which might account for the higher chil.d abuse rate of women
is that the unequal division of labor and the responsibility for the child's
conduct is not a voluntary choice. These are roles assigned to women by long
historical tradition, and on which most husbands insist. It is no problem
for those women who wish to focus their lives on the role of mother and
housewife. Rut in a society where other opportunities beckon, millions of
women feel blocked and frustrated by the fact that they--not their
husbands--will have the overwhelmlng responsibility for the children.

Most of us are so imbued with the cuI.turai ideology of women as mothers and
housewives that it may be diffioul.t. to see the argument just presented.
There is neither the space nor the evidence to prove tbe point. But there is
a way of getting at this issue indirectly. Ye can compare mothers who are
full time housewives with mothers uho are also employed outside the home.

From one point of view, the highest rate of child abuse should be among women
who have paid employment in addition to their work as mothers and
housekeepers. This is because the research shows that such women continue to
have the major burden of housekeeping and child care. They therefore carry a
 Family Patterns and Child Abuse 217

double burden. The opposite point of view is also plausible. Women who have
jobs outside the home may have a Jower rate of child abuse because the hours
the child spends at a nursery or with a baby-sitter reduces their time at
risk, because they can escape the stress and frustration of being employed
full time in a role which is not of their own chOOBing, and because being
employed for vages gives b?0Slen mm power in the family and control over
their own lives.

The results of this study clearly support the secand line of reasoning. The
child abuse rate for women who are full time housewives is half again higher
than the rate for women who, in addition to their responsibilities as
housekeeper and mother, also have a job outside the home f'15.T versus lO.3).
One can also see that the ohild abuse rate for women with paid employment is
almost identical to the rate far men (tO.ff.*l

Socioecow StatuR

One should not be misled by the above it-it.0 thinking of the workplace as
heaven. HiLliOIlS af men and nomen work at boring, demeaning, and underpaid
work. But far women, even these jobs may be a lesser evil than the confines
of the type of family typical aF industrial societies. Even inadequate wages
oan help alleviate the economic stress faced by working class families. For
men I however, we uilf, See that the situetion is quite different,

Child is found at all social levels, from paupers to rayalty.

abuse But that
iS not same
the 8s saying that the rates are equal at aLI social Levels.
Officially reported cases of child abuse are tRUC!h higher among the poor.
Perhaps this is beoause the poor must use public rather than private medical
facilities and because the police and other officials are quicker to make
charges against the poor?

Our data do not depend on official reports. Yet they reveal. a child abuse
rate in families where the husband is a manual worker which is 41% higher
than for families in which the husband is a white-collar uorker (16.4 versus
11,6). blthaugh this is a substantial difference, it is a much smaller
difference than is typical when officially reported child abuse sates are
used to compare social classes, ThUS, part of the social class difference in
officially reported ohild abuse does seem to be the resuit of biases in the
system of reporting, At the ssme time, the data also suggest that there is a
considerably higher rate of actual child abuse in families in which the
husband is a manual worker.

There are
many factors which could produce the higher rate of chifd abuse
found in
manual worker families v One such factor is the stress of
maintaining a family on a low or sometimes entirely inadequate income. That
this is one of the underlying factors is indicated by the child abuse rate
for families with incomes under $6,000 a year. It is 62% greater than for
other families f21.1 versus 13.4). The same pattern of higher rates low
income families applies to abuse by the f’ather (15.6 versus 9.6) and abuse by
mothers (24.4 versus 16.7).

Of course, it is not just the absolute level of poverty which matters,

important as that 1~~ Rlso entering the situation is the meaning of income
as a symbol. of personal worth, Anyone uith a family income of under $6,000
fn the USA in 1976, in effect received with each paycheck a reminder that he
or she ia not worth very much. The child abuse rate for husbands who were
dissatisfied with their standard of l.iving was 61j greater than the rate for
other husbands (IQ,& versus 8.9); and for wives who were not satisfied with
their standard of living the rate was 71s greater than for other wives (22.3

1. This could be a spurious relationship, reflecting the confounding of

employment wf th such things as better education. That possibility will- be
checked in a future analysis.
218 M. A. Straus

versus 12.6).

Then there is the frustration imposed by an unstable economic system.

Families in uhich the husband was unemployed at the time of the survey have a
child abuse rate that is 62% greater than other families (22.5 versus 13.9).
A similar high rate of child abuse is associated with part-time employment of
the husband (27.3 versus 14.1).

Finally, there are a number of factors on which we do not have data but are
likely to enter the picture. Uorking class parents are known to be more
authoritarian with their children, to have greater faith in physical
punishment as a means of child rearing, and a lesser understanding of child
psychology. In addition, low income areas of American cities have much
higher rates of violence outside the family. Each of these in their own way
are conditions making for parental violence.

FAMILY STRUCTURE &Q CHILD ABUSE

Some analysts of child abuse, for example David Gil (1975) write as though
the direct and indirect effects of an unjust and unstable economic system,
and its associated oppression of women and minorities, fully explain the
paradox of child abuse. Unfortunately, the etiology of child abuse is far
more complicated. One can see this from a comparison of child abuse in Black
and in white families. Blacks are one of the most economically and socially
oppressed groups in American society. Yet both this study and some studies
of officially reported child abuse (Billingsley, 1969; Young, 1963) show
that Blacks do n_8fihave a significantly higher rate of child abuse than
whites. Blacks in this sample have a rate of 15.7, which is only 11% greater
than the white rate of 74.1. One reason why Blacks have a rate of child
abuse that is much lower than expected on the basis of their low income, high
unemployment, and rejection by the rest of the society, seems to be the aid
and support, especially in the care of children, provided by Black extended
families (Cazenave and Straus, 1978).

Cazenave and Straus's findings about Black extended families points to the
structure of the family as another important set of factors leading to or
insulating parents from child abuse: the patterns of interaction within the
family.

Years Married

An indirect indicator of the effect of family patterns is the duration of the

marriage. The early years of a marriage carry the highest risk of child
abuse: those married less than 10 years have a rate of 20.3 compared to 11.5
for other couples. A number of factors could account for this. (1) It could
be the greater experience with children which comes over time. (2) It could
be just the greater tendency toward violence of the young since the
difference between the child abuse rate of those age 30 or under versus older
parents (27.2 versus 12.1) is similar to the difference between those married
less than ten years and other couples. (3) The lower child abuse rate for
marriages of 10 or more years could simply reflect a greater tendency for the
most violent marriages to be terminated by divorce or separation. (41
Finally, the higher rate could reflect the fact that very young children are
more frequent victims of abuse.*2 Each of these possibilities will be
checked in the next phase of the research.

2. However, in this sample, we found a bimodal distribution, with high

incidence of child abuse in both our youngest group (age 3-4) and among the
15 to 17 year olds. Moreover, another indication that age of the child is
not the only factor is that k.fe-beating and husband-beating is also most
frequent among those married less than 10 years.
 Family Patterns and Child Abuse 219

Uife Conflict

A more direct indicator of the patterns of interaction in the family is the

amount of conflict between husband and wife. To measure the extent of such
conflict we obtained information on how often the couple disagreed on five
issues: money, sex, social activities, housekeeping and maintenance, and
children. Couples with more than the average amount of conflict have a
higher incidence of child abuse. The effect is moderate for wives: a 28%
greater rate (20.0 versus 15.6 for those low in conflict). For husbands, a
high level of conflict with a wife is associated with a 79% greater rate of
child abuse (12.7 versus 7.1).

Verbal Abuse ti Phvsical Abuse

Even more important are the tactics used when a couple has a conflict. Some
family therapists argue that the best tactic is to let go and not repress
one's anger. "Don't be afraid to be a real shrew, a real bitch. Tell them
where your really at. Let it be total, vicious, exaggerated, hyperbole..."
as one advocate of this approach put it (Howard, 1970:54). Venting one's
anger in this way is claimed to provide a release from the tension of a
dispute, and therefore helps avoid physical aggression. On the contrary, the
research evidence shows that the more husbands and wives are verbally
aggressive to each other the higher the rate of violence (Straus, 1974). The
main reason for this is that verbal aggression, no matter how emotionally
satisfying it may be, does not come to grips with the substance of the
dispute. Rather, it creates additional animosity which makes it even more
difficult to deal with the original source of the conflict.

Exactly the same results were found in this study for the relation between
verbal aggression and child abuse. Parents who were verbally aggressive to
the referent child.3 have a child abuse rate which is six times that of other
parents (21.0 versus 3.6).

It could be argued that the verbal aggression is a consequence rather than a

cause of this high rate of violence. A child has been slapped, and then
either slaps back or kicks, or insults the parent. The parent then verbally
assaults the child. No doubt that does happen. But such a sequence does not
explain another finding: that the rate of child abuse is also higher for
parents who are verbally agressive to each other. Husbands who were verbally
aggressive to their wives have a child abuse rate of 17.3 compared to 6.3 for
other husbands: and wives who were verbally aggressive to their husband have
a child abuse rate of 17.9 compared to 4.5 for other wives. All of this
suggests that verbal aggression is a relatively stable pattern in such
families and, as just suggested, it is a mode of relating which interferes
with dealing with the actual issues, creates additional problems, and often
sets in motion an escalating cycle of events which ends in physical violence.

Number f Children

We expected the rate of child abuse to increase with each additional child.
It turns out that there is a 42% greater incidence of child abuse among
couples with two or more children at home as compared to those with only one
child at home (15.1 versus 10.6). However, the rate for those with three or
more children is not greater than the rate for those with two children. Just
why a second child seems to be a critical threshold after which further
children make little difference is an issue which will be studied in the next
phase of the research.

3. As measured by the Verbal Aggression scale of the Conflict Tactics Scales

(Straus, 1979). This includes such things as insults, sulking, venting anger
by smashing things and slamming doors, and cutting remarks.
220 M. A. Straus

VIOLENCE & & &Q.D& aE RELATING

One of the clearest finding8 to emerge from the Family Violence Research
Program, as well as from the findings of the study reported in this paper, is
that violence in one sphere of life is related to violence in other sphere8
of life (Straus, 1977). Early in life, most of us receive a kind of basic
training in violence in the form of physical punishment. Mommy slaps an
infant’s hand to teach the child not to put dirty things in his or her mouth.
But this also teaches the child that love and violence go together.
Moreover, it does more than establish the empirical fact that those uho love
you are those who hit you. Ironically, it also teaches that the use of
viol.ence within the family is morally right.

In some families slapping a child is replaced by non-violent forms of

punishment, and by the use of reasoning and negotiation. If this happens,
what is learned in infancy and early childhood can be replaced by non-violent
modes of dealing with others-- though the earlier pattern8 may still emerge in
extreme conditions. But when the use of physical punishment continues into
the early teen ages, and when children observe their parents being violent to
each other (as is the experience of millions of American children), the
chances are great that the use of physical force will become a regular part
of the way such people interact with others (Gelles and Straus, 1975, 1978;
Owens and Straus, 1975).

Physical Punishment a Training f9r Chile Abuse

The ideas expressed in the previous two paragraphs are based on plausible
reasoning, and on the results of our pilot studies. To what extent are they
supported by the data for this nationally representative sample of parents?
To find out we asked the parents how much their own parents had used physical
punishment when they were 13 or older. Those who said their mother had used
physical punishment twice or more a year had a child abuse rate of 18.5,
which is 57% greater than the rate for parents who experienced less physical
punishment (11.8). Physical punishment by the father% of the parents in this
sample made less difference: the child abuse rate for those whose father8
punished them two or more times was 16.7, compared to 13.2 for other parents.

An interesting additional finding is that the effect8 of physical punishment

are greater when the sex of the parents we intervieued is considered. There
seems to be a greater effect if the physical punishment was done by the
parent of the opposite sex. Men who were punished by their mother8 have a
child abuse rate that is double that of other men (14.2 versus 7.41, whereas
for women, physical punishment by their mother is associated with a child
abuse rate that is Ilonly” 52% greater (23.0 versus 15.1). The reverse is the
case for men who had been punished by their fathers. They have a child abuse
rate which is **onlyif 31% greater than other men (11.8 versus 9.0); whereas
women who had been physically punished by their father8 have a rate which is
53% greater than other women (24.2 versus 15.lf.

Observing Parent;! Fight &. Training For Child Abuse

The data just presented suggest that children learn to be violent to others
by being the victim8 of violence by their parents. Ironically, the learning
effect is probably enhanced because, by and large, parental violence is done
out of concern for the child and for other morally desirable ends. Parents
also teach violence to their children in number of other ways, for example,
by teaching boys to "stand up and fight like a man" (Stark and McEvoy, 1970),
and by example through violence towards each other.

More than one out Of ten of the parents in this sample (11.5%) could remember
at least one instance when they saw their own parents hitting each other.
 Family Patterns and Child Abuse 221

The effects of observing one's father hit one's mother are greater than
effects of observing one’s mother hit one’s father. Being the child of a
father who hi& && yif_e is associated with a 39% greater rate of child abuse
compared to DS!l whose fathers did not hit their wives (13.3 versus 9.7).
However, being the daughter of a father who hit his wife is associated with
only a slightly greater rate of child abuse (19.7 versus 17.4). On the other
hand, being the daughter of a mother &.Q u m husband is associated with a
substantially higher incidence of child abuse as compared to the abuse rates
of other women (24.4 versus 17.2). The greater effect of father's violence
to his wife on sons, and of mother's violence to her husband on daughters,
suggests that violence by a parent of the same sex as the child provides the
strongest role-model.*4

Husband-Wife Violence and ChilQ Abuse

Now let us turn to another way in which the principle that child abuse tends
to be associated with violence in other spheres of family life. In this
case, the question is whether couples who hit each other, also tend to abuse
their children. The answer is an emphatic nye8.n

In families where the husband had hit his wife during the year of the survey,
even if the violence was restricted to slaps, pushes, and throwing things,
the incidence of child abuse was 129% greater than in other families (28.0
versus 12.2). If the violence was more severe, the difference was even
greater: Almost a third of the couples (31.9%) in which there was an
incident of wife-beating also abused a child that year. If it is the wife
who hits the husband, this is associated with a 120% greater incidence of
child abuse (27.7 versus 12.6). But surprisingly, if the wife was very
violent, this did not produce the same further increase in child abuse as
occurred when the husband went beyond "ordinary" pushing, slapping, and
throwing things.

;LSPLATIOI m !U& &.U COMMUNXrY

Earlier in this paper I referred to the important role played by the extended
family among American Blacks. The same process seems to be a work for the
entire sample, but the differences in child abuse rates between couples with
weak ties to the community and other couples is not as large as for Black
families, and fewer whites than Blacks have such ties. Taking the sample as
a whole, parents who lived in the neighborhood for a relatively short period
(0 to 3 years) have a 54% higher rate of child abuse (18.5 versus 12.03).

An even larger difference in child abuse was found using an index of

participation in organizations such as clubs, lodges, unions, church groups,
etc. One point was given for each such group belonged to, and one point for
each meeting of such a group attended in a month. Those who neither belonged
to or attended such meetings have a child abuse rate which is 723 greater
than for parents with a score of one or more (19.9 versus 11.6).

Since long residence and involvement in organizations tends to be assoicated

with being more settled in life, the same comparison was computed for those
married less than ten years and for those married ten or more years. For the
younger group, their generally high rate of child abuse reduced the effect of
residental stability and organizational involvement. Among couples married
10 or more years, the differences between those with and without the social
ties which come from being a long term resident, or from being involved in
organizations, is similar to but larger than the differences for the sample

4. However, as indicated in an earlier section, the opposite seems to be the

case in respect to which parent's physical punishment is most associated with
child abuse.
222 M. A. Straus

as a whole. Both these data and the results of other studies (see the review
in Maden and Wrench, 1977; Smith, 1975) all point to a strong association
between child abuse and sccial isolation.

ecHlrDAsUsE CHECK m

Up to this point, each of the factors associated with child abuse has been
considered separately from the others. This is clearly inadequate. These
factors do not exist in isolation. Some overlap with the others, and the
existence of certain combinations may be particularly important. As a first
approach to at least partly overcoming these limitations, a child abuse
checklist score was computed.

TABLE 1 Characteristics Included ~JJ Child

Abuse Checklist

Characteristic Associated With Child Abuse

L Jmwortant fer Child Abuse u Either Parent

Was verbally aggressive to the child

(insulted, smashed things etc.)

B- Imoortant for Chil& Abuse Py Fathers

Married less than ten years

Wife is a full-time housewife
Husband was physically punished at age 13+ by mother
Lived in neighborhood less than two years
Above average conflict between husband and wife
No participation in organized groups
Grew up in family where mother hit father
Two or more children at home

L Important far Child Abuse & Mothers

Husband was physically violent to wife

Husband dissatisfied with standard of living
Husband a manual worker
Husband was verbally aggressive to wife
Wife was physically punished at age 13+ by father
Wife age 30 or under
Wife a manual worker

The procedure started with a wdiscriminant analysis" using the SPSS program
DISCRIMINANT (Nie f& j&L, 1975). This identified 16 of the variables
described in this paper as the most useful in distinguishing between abusing
parents and other parents, and which do not significantly overlap with each
oTher. These 16 variables are listed in Table 1.

Each couple was then given a score by assigning a point for any of the 16
variables on which their characteristics matched that of the abusing parents.
A couple could therefore have a score ranging from 0 (none of the factors is
present) to 76 fall of the factors present).
 Family Patterns and Child Abuse 223

50.0 . . . :....:....:....:....:....:....:....:. . . .:...

40.0 _

Child
l .

Abuse l

30.0 1 -
Rate

Per
l

100 20.0 _

Children

l
Age
10.0 _ -
3-17 l

...l ...........................................

o-2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 lO+
Score on Child Abuse Checklist

Fig.1. Incidence of child abuse by score on child abuse checklist

Figure 1 clearly shows the powerful relationship between the combination of

these factors and the incidence of child abuse. Couples with scores of 0 to
2 were entirely free of child abuse. The incidence of child abuse climbs
steadily from there on, reaching a rate of 33 per hundred children in
families characterized by 10 or more of these factors.

The social factors identified in this research obviously are strongly

associated with child abuse. The incidence of abuse for those unfortunate
enough to be characterized by all the elements of the syndrome is staggering.
But even among this group of parents, two thirds did a abuse a child. This
fact should serve as a caution against attempting to use the Child Abuse
Checklist as a means of locating high risk parents in order to provide
services which might prevent child abuse.

Tempting as is that possibility, any potential gains in preventing child

abuse have to be weighed against the costs and potential dangers. One large
cost is the creation of an intrusive system of family surveillance. A
potential danger lies in the consequence of falsely labeling millions of
partners as “potential abusers” or “high risk parents.”

The fact that the child abuse rate for parents with scores of ten or more is
“only” 33 per hundred children also indicates that we still have a long way
to go in pinpointing the causes of child abuse. As suggested in the
introduction, there is an obvious need to include data on the psychological
characteristics of the parents u the characteristics of the child. If such
characteristics were included, and if we were to use more adequate methods of
taking account of the unique combinations of factors, it might be possible to
account for even more of the cases of child abuse. But even limiting the
study to purely social factors, and using the simple methodology which there
has so far been time to apply, it is clear that we have been able to isolate
many of the factors associated with child abuse.
224 M. A. Straus

This paper reports the incidence of physical abuse for a nationally

representative sample of American families with a child age 3 through 17 at
home. The rate of 14 per 100 children is vastly higher than previous
estimates. This difference reflects the fact that the present study was not
dependent on officially reported instances of abuse, and the fact that
*'abuse" was defined by the nature of the violent acts carried out, rather
than by the nature of the injury produced.

The main part of the paper examined social factors which might account for
the extremely high incidence of chi1.l abuse. The findings suggest that the
causes of child abuse can be found in (but are not limited to) the follouing
factors: (1) The structure of the contemporary American family, for example,
the practice of placing almost the whole burden on child care on mothers.
This is a main reason why women have a much higher rate of child abuse than
men, despite lower rates of violence outside the family. (2) The economic
and psychological stress created by poverty and an unstable economic system.
Illustrative of this is the finding of a higher incidence of child abuse
among manual workers and among the unemployed. (3) Isolation from the help
and social control which occurs when a family is embedded in a network of kin
and community. This is illustrated by the finding that short term residents
of a neighborhood have a higher incidence of child abuse when compared to
longer established residents. (4) Unintended but powerful training in the
use of violence as a means of teaching and resolving conflicts. Parents who
had been physically punished abuse their children much more often, as do
parents who engage in physical fights with each other, Parents who saw their
parents hit each other have a much higher rate of child abuse than other
parents.

Overall, the results of this study suggest that child abuse is brought about
by the very nature of the society and its family system. This has profound
implications for the prevention and treatment of child abuse. Although
psychotherapy may be appropriate in some cases, a more fundamental approach
lies in such things as a more equal sharing of the burdens of child care,
replacement of physical punishment with non-violent methods of child care and
training, eliminating the stresses and insecurity which now characterize our
economic system, and strengthening the ties of individual families to the
extended family and the community.

Considerable caution is needed in respect to these suggestions concerning

prevention and treatment. First, there is an ideological bias on my part,
for example, in suggesting greater sharing of child care and equality between
husband and wife. I do not think it affected the data analysis, but that
possibility is present. Second, the findings reflect the situation in the
USA at a particular point in history. The findings could be quite different
in another society or at a previous point in American society. An example is
the higher rate of child abuse by mothers who are full time housewives. This
could reflect such things as feelings of inadequacy generated by the growing
expectation that everyone--wives as well as husbands --should be in the paid
labor force. A generation or two ago the situation was reversed. Then the
adequacy and psycholgoclal normality of the "career woman" who did not stay
home with her children was questioned and gave rise to feelings of doubt and
insecurity on the part of women with full time jobs.

Although this research revealed an extremely high rate of child abuse in a

cross section of American families, the findings also offer hope for the
future. This is because the changes which are needed to reduce the level of
abuse of children coincide with changes already in progress, or with changes
in the family and society advocated on other grounds.
 Family Patterns and Child Abuse 225

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