Fourth National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (NIS–4)

Endangered. Children in families of low SES were significantly more likelyto be endangered, but not yet harmed, by maltreatment. The incidence of endangermentfor children in families of low SES was 22.6 per 1,000 children, which is more than 6times the rate of 3.5 per 1,000 children whose families were not of low SES.5.3Differences in the Incidence of Maltreatment Related toFamily Structure and Living ArrangementThis section presents differences in the incidence of child maltreatmentrelated to the combination of family structure and parents’ living arrangement, includingthe number of parents in the household, their relationship to the child, and their marital orcohabitating status.The definition of parent follows that used by the U.S. Census Bureau, whichincludes birth parents, adoptive parents, and stepparents. Children may live with twoparents, one parent, or neither parent. In two-parent households, parents can be bothbiologically related to the child or one or both may have another legal parentalrelationship to the child (e.g., adoptive parent, step-parent). A child may have twounmarried cohabiting parents, biological or with other relationships to the child. A singleparent (of any relationship to the child) may or may not have a cohabiting partner. Thesevariations in family structure and living arrangement classified children into sixcategories: (1) living with two married biological parents, (2) living with other marriedparents (not both biological but both having a legal parental relationship to the child), (3)living with two unmarried parents (biological or other), (4) living with one parent whohad an unmarried partner (not the child’s parent) in the household, (5) living with oneparent who had no partner in the household, and (6) living with no parent. 67,6867The incidence rate calculations used population denominators derived from the 2005 and 2006 AnnualEstimates of the Population (U.S. Census Bureau, 2008a) and the 2007 March Supplement of the CurrentPopulation Survey (U.S. Census Bureau, 2008d). Combined information from these three sourcesindicated that, during the NIS–4 reference periods, an average of 44,799,000 children were living withtwo married biological parents; 5,152,000 children were living with other married parents; 2,192,000children were living with two unmarried parents; 2,081,000 children were living with one parent who hadan unmarried partner in the household, 16,962,000 children were living with one parent who had nopartner in the household, and 2,449,000 children were living with no parent. These groups represent 61%,7%, 3% 3%, 23% and 3% of the general child population in the United States, respectively.5–18