Educational Research - the Ethics and Aesthetics of Statistics

4 Child Maltreatment in the Last 50 Years 51
as “possible ‘psychopathic or sociopathic characters’” (Kempe, Silverman, Steele,
Droegemuller, & Silver, 1962; Jenny, 2008).
Meanwhile, psychological abuse also became part of the phenomenon of
child maltreatment. In 1956 the Dutch psychologist and child protection specialist
B. Clemens Schröner published a pioneering book on psychological child
abuse. Kempe and his colleagues soon followed, generating a broader concept that
included nutritional and emotional abuse (Clemens Schröner, 1956; Helfer,1974,
p. 37). Finkelhor and his colleagues went even further. They developed a concept
consisting of many elements, including the categories of (1) Physical assaults, bullying
and teasing, (2) Sexual Victimisation, (3) Child Maltreatment, (4) Property
Victimisations and (5) Witnessed and Indirect Victimisations. This expansion of the
definition was no doubt of influence on the alarming percentages of victimisation
among American children and youth (Finkelhor et al., 2005, p. 1297). The process
of expansion intensified in the context of studies, such as those by Straus and
Savage. These researchers came to alarming conclusions, namely that “half of the
students experienced at least one of the eight neglectful behaviors as children, and
about 12% experienced a pervasive pattern of neglect as indicated by three or more
of the eight neglectful behaviors measured”. They also concluded that “high rates
of neglectful behavior in both developed and underdeveloped countries and among
a privileged sector of those countries” are normal. These conclusions resulted in
the assertion that “helping parents avoid neglectful behavior could make a further
contribution to the primary prevention of all types of family violence”. It is striking
how different their definition is from Kempe’s. For Straus and Savage, neglectful
behaviour encompasses not helping with homework, not comforting a child who
is upset, not helping when the child had problems, not making sure the child goes
to school, not helping the child to do its best, not giving the child enough clothes
to keep it warm, not keeping the child clean and not caring if the child gets into
trouble at school. The “most frequent neglectful behavior was ‘not helping with
homework’”. This behaviour was, according to this study, reported by 29% of the
students, although the “percentage of parents in the 33 sites who did not help with
homework ranged from 10% to 73%” (Straus & Savage, table 3, 2005).
As a result, a great number of definitions of child abuse have been proposed. They
can be “arranged in a continuum from very narrow to rather broad”. With the narrow
definitions generally focused on physical abuse or on sexual abuse, the broadest
definitions are related to the optimal development of the child. So, in the 1970s
the Child Welfare League of America defined child abuse as “the denial of ‘normal
experiences’ that produce feelings of being loved, wanted, secure and worthy”
(Zigler & Hall, 1990, p. 45). The definitions are also, according to Giovannoni, characterised
by vagueness. Moreover, they are amorphous and ambiguous. Professional
groups, such as medical doctors, social workers and lawyers use them in different
ways (Giovannoni, 1990, pp. 10–16).
This continuum of different definitions, used together with different research
methods, resulted in another continuum, that of prevalence figures. The diverging
figures of the recently published Dutch prevalence studies with prevalence figures
from 107,200 to 160,700 are no exception to the rule. Previous observations of the