A profile of violence toward children: a national study

Abstract

This paper presents a profile of violence toward children in the United States, based on the results from the Second National Family Violence Survey. A national probability sample of 6,002 households was surveyed by telephone in 1985, of which 3,232 households had at least one child under 18 years old living at home. Minor violence, or physical punishment, was most common among mothers, caretakers 18 to 37 years old, fathers who were unemployed, caretakers with blue-collar occupations, households with two to four children at home, and among caretakers who used alcohol and other drugs, male children, and children 3 to 6 years old. The highest rates of abusive violence occurred in families located in the East, families whose annual income was below the poverty line, families where the father was unemployed, families where the caretakers held blue-collar jobs, families with four or more children, caretakers who used drugs at least once, male children, and children 3 to 6 years old. Logistic regressions were done to examine the predictive value of these variables.