I just found out that the Fourth National Incidence Study on Child Abuse and Neglect (NIS-4) was released in January. It weighs in at over 450 pages, so this is a lot of verbage and statistics to slog through. But never fear, dear reader, because I will tread where others fear to go.
So far, I'm not finding anything terribly new. Since women and mothers dominate as primary caretakers in most households, it's not big surprise to find that they are held accountable for any "omissions and/or failures in caretaking." So women represent the majority of persons charged with neglect. I've said as much before. Since there are few fathers who are assigned primary caretakers status, this is to be totally expected. As bad as neglect can, much of it is related to poverty, lack of affordable housing, lack of access to health care and the like, and does not necessarily imply a lack of responsible intentions.
Abuse, however, is just plain evil. Note that when we look at actual ABUSE (as opposed to neglect), MALES DOMINATE, just as we have documented numerous times in other studies. In fact, not only do males dominate, dads even have the edge on moms (54% vs. 51%), even though there are far fewer fathers who are involved in daily childrearing than moms. This isn't even calculating the relative risk of child abuse from fathers vs. mothers, which we may find a few hundred pages from now hidden someplace. Hopefully not too buried. And note that other unrelated males in the household have an even worse track record.
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/opre/abuse_neglect/natl_incid/nis4_report_congress_full_pdf_jan2010.pdfPages
pp. 14-15:
The predominant sex of perpetrators of abuse was different from that of neglect. Female perpetrators were more often responsible for neglect (86% of children neglected by females versus 38% by males). This finding is congruent with the fact that mothers (biological or other) tend to be the primary caretakers and are the primary persons held accountable for any omissions and/or failings in caretaking. In contrast, males more often were abusers (62% of children were abused by males versus 41% by females). The prevalence of male perpetrators was strongest in the category of sexual abuse, where 87% of children were abused by a male compared to only 11% by a female.
Among all abused children, those abused by their biological parents were about equally likely to have been abused by mothers as by fathers (51% and 54%, respectively), but those abused by nonbiological parents or parents’ partners, or by other, perpetrators were much more likely to be abused by males (74% or more by males versus 26% or less by females).
We'll be posting other results as we go through this, so stay tuned.