Parenting in the 21st century - F4J - children without their fathers

“ …… But beyond the psychological abuse (which is indeed a legitimate concept when it concerns children, in contrast with grown women) is the physical and sexual violence to which children in single mother homes are exposed more than any others. The divorce revolution has been accompanied by an increase in child abuse so massive that it may be said to constitute a virtual reign of terror against children. In the seven years 1986-1993, between two federal studies, physical abuse of children nearly doubled, sexual abuse more than doubled, “and emotional abuse, physical neglect, and emotional neglect were all more than two and one-half times” their level in 1986. The estimated number of “seriously injured” children “essentially quadrupled” in this short period.^[1]

As we have seen, this too is invariably attributed on fathers – in the absence of any evidence they are responsible and contrary to substantial evidence that they are not – by a divorce industry eager to justify unilateral and involuntary divorce. Yet there is no evidence that the child abuse epidemic has anything to do with fathers except insofar as they are not present to protect their children or that allegations made against fathers during divorce proceedings are anything other than a smokescreen to disguise the real abusers. Though any country with a million substantiated cases of child abuse annually has a serious problem, an additional 2 million reports are never substantiated. ^[2] Most of these unsubstantiated reports are made in the course of divorce proceedings. A variety of studies has found that 75 to 80 percent of allegations of child abuse made during divorce (95 per cent of which are made by women) are “completely false.”^[3]

Contrary to what still seems to be popular belief, it is not fathers but mothers – especially single mothers – who are by far the most likely to injure and kill their children. According to a major study recently released by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in 1998, women aged twenty to forty-nine are almost twice as likely as men to be perpetrators of child maltreatment: “almost two-thirds were females,” the report states, and other studies have reached similar conclusions.^[4] Given that “male” perpetrators are not usually fathers but much more likely to be boyfriends and stepfathers, fathers emerge as the least likely child abusers.

While fathers are often thought to be more likely to commit sexual as opposed to physical child abuse, this is much less common than severe physical abuse and much more likely to be perpetrated by boyfriends and stepfathers. “Children are seven times more likely to be badly beaten by their parents than they are to be sexually abused by them,” according to a 2000 study by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC). The NSPCC found that father-daughter incest is “rare, occurring in less than 4 in 1,000 children,” and that three-fourths of incest perpetrators are brothers and stepbrothers rather than fathers.^[5] Likewise, a University of Iowa study found that “father caretakers” were almost four times as likely as biological fathers to sexually abuse children, and another study found that a pre-schooler not living with both biological parents is forty times more likely to be sexually abused.^[6] Ralph Underwager, who has written extensively on the subject for academic journals has estimated that roughly 2.5 percent of parents who are accused of sexual abuse are likely to be guilty.^[7]

On the other hand, the most dangerous place for a child is the home of a single mother. The HHS studies confirmed the already well-established fact that children in single-parent households are at much higher risk for physical violence and sexual molestation than those living in two-parent homes.^[8] A British study found children are up to 33 times more likely to be abused when a live-in boyfriend or stepfather is present than in an intact family.^[9] “Contrary to public perception,” write researchers Patrick Fagan and Dorothy Hanks, “research shows that the most likely physical abuser of a young child will be that child’s mother, not a male in the household..”^[10] Mothers accounted for 55% of child murders according to a 1994 Justice Department report (1,100 out of 2,000, with fathers committing 130).^[11] “The person who is least likely to abuse a child is a married father,” notes Canadian Senator Anne C. Cools. “The person who is most likely is a single, unmarried mother.”^[12] Maggie Gallagher sums up the reality in her 1996 book ‘The Abolition of Marriage’: “The person most likely to abuse a child physically is a single mother. The person most likely to abuse a child sexually is the mother's boyfriend or second husband. . . . Divorce, though usually portrayed as a protection against domestic violence, is far more frequently a contributing cause.” ^[13]

Murder especially seems to be an acute danger for children living in single mother homes. The Third National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect from HHS found that “women (the majority of whom are natural mothers) murder children 31.6 times more often than do natural fathers.”

Other findings from the same study, often disguised with euphemism, include:

It would appear we are confronted here with a major cause of child death. Homicide is already acknowledged to be the single largest killer of infants (22.6%) – surpassing “accidental” suffocation, motor vehicle accidents, fire, drowning, choking, “other unintentional injuries,” and “injuries of undetermined intent” – according to a study at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at the National Institutes of Health.^[15] The study found that infants were more likely to die from injuries if their mothers were young and unmarried.

Even this may understate the extent of the killing, since studies generally base homicide figures on convictions (and mothers are seldom convicted) and take “accidental” and “unintentional” deaths at face value. Yet many researchers believe that what is diagnosed as “Sudden Infant Death Syndrome” (SIDS) may often be murder. Professor Sir Roy Meadow, a specialist at St James University Hospital, Leeds, says “doctors and coroners have in some cases overlooked signs of bleeding, broken bones, and foreign bodies blocking the airway because they were under pressure to resolve unexplained cases swiftly and without controversy,” according to “The Independent”, which tries to sanitize the phenomenon with the word “parents” before revealing the truth.

His view is based on a study of the records of 81 children judged by criminal and family courts to have been killed by their parents. In 49 cases, the children had initially been certified as dying from SIDS and a further 29 were classified as dying from other natural causes. The mother was responsible for the death – usually smothering – in more than 80 per cent of cases. In 24 of the families, more than one child had died and in five of them, three children had died.

The acceptance of so many children dying of unknown causes was characterized by Sir Roy as a “national scandal.” “If one out of every 1,000 21-year-olds died suddenly and unexpectedly without an identifiable cause there would be a national outcry.”^[16]

A simultaneous study reached similar conclusions. Michael Green, from Sheffield University's Department of Forensic Pathology, writes in the British Medical Journal that up to 40 per cent of babies registered as ‘cot deaths’ may have been killed by their parents or another adult. Dr. Green, a leading pediatric pathologist, goes so far as to suggest that SIDS be abolished as a legitimate attribution for cause of death.^[17]

In the US, some allege that the number of child murders could be twice as high as official statistics indicate, owing to a willingness to attribute many cases to SIDS.^[18] SIDS was considered a genetic affliction that ran in families, based on an influential 1972 article in ‘Pediatrics’ magazine by Dr. Alfred Steinschneider. For years Steinschneider’s article prevented coroners and doctors “across North America from entertaining suspicions when multiple babies perished in a family,” writes Patricia Pearson. But twenty-two years later the housewife he used as the case study confessed to smothering all five of her children.^[19] The number of young children who die in the US at the hands of parents or other caregivers is underreported by nearly 60 percent, according to a team of researchers writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association. ^[20]

Yet mothers are seldom punished for injuring or killing their children; in fact they are almost immune from punishment. “Even child killers can get sympathy if they can claim victimization by a male,” writes Cathy Young, who quotes one feminist activist as saying, “When a woman [is] so alone that she wants to kill herself and her children, it’s not her fault.” ^[21] In July 1999 Marie Noe of Philadelphia, who admitted to murdering eight of her children, was sentenced to probation. Even the “Washington Post”, usually sentimental when it comes to anything involving mothers, found this too much. “A serial killer pleads guilty to eight murders and is sentenced to 20 years' probation.”

^[1] Andrea J. Sedlak and Diane D. Broadhurst, Executive Summary of the Third National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (Washington, DC: US Department of Health and Human Services, National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, September 1996), pp. v, 3-4.

^[2] Child Maltreatment 1996: Reports from the States to the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1998), p. xi.

^[3] Parke and Brott, Throwaway Dads, p. 39; Holida Wakefield and Ralph Underwager, “Sexual Abuse Allegations in Divorce and Custody Disputes,” Behavioral Sciences and the Law 9 (1991), pp. 451-468; Holida Wakefield and Ralph Underwager, “Personality Characteristics of Parents Making False Accusations of Sexual Abuse in Custody Cases,” Issues in Child Abuse Accusations, vol. 2, no. 3 (Summer 1990), pp. 121-136.

^[4] Child Maltreatment 1996, pp. xi-xii.

^[5] Child Maltreatment in the United Kingdom: A Study of the Prevalence of Child Abuse and Neglect (London, 2000). Major findings are available at http://www.nspcc.org.uk/scripts/showprj.pl?prj=1004; accessed 9 November 2001.

^[6] Leslie Margolin and John L. Craft, “Child Sexual Abuse by Caretakers,” Family Relations 38 (1989); Martin Daly and Margo Wilson, “Child Abuse and Other Rises of Not Living with Both Parents,” Journal of Ethnology and Sociobiology 6 (1985). Both cited in Maggie Gallagher, The Abolition of Marriage (Washington, DC: Regnery, 1996), p. 36, notes 25 and 26.

^[7] Quoted in Sanford L. Braver with Diane O’Connell, Divorced Dads: Shattering the Myths (New York: Tarcher/ Putnam, 1998), p. 210.

^[8] Sedlak and Broadhurst, Executive Summary of NIS-3, p. 8.

^[9] Robert Whelan, Broken Homes and Battered Children: A Study of the Relationship between Child Abuse and Family Type (London: Family Education Trust, 1993). Whelan based his study on figures from the NSPCC, whose most recent report (cited in the previous note) reached similar conclusions that “violent acts towards children are more likely to be meted out by mothers than fathers.” Following Whelan’s study the British government stopped compiling figures on these subjects. “It's impossible now to find out about the relative risks of biological and non-biological parents because Whitehall no longer wants them to be collected,” he said. Melanie Phillips, “The Darkest Secret of Child Sex Abuse,” Sunday Times, 26 November 2000.

^[10] Patrick Fagan and Dorothy Hanks, The Child Abuse Crisis: The Disintegration of Marriage, Family, and the American Community (Washington, DC: Heritage Foundation “Backgrounder,” 3 June 1997), p. 16.

^[11] Murder in Families (Washington, DC: US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, July 1994; Bureau of Justice Statistics Publications Catalog 1994-95, NCJ 143498), pp. 5-6.

^[12] Quoted in the National Post, 19 December 1998.

^[13] Gallagher, Abolition of Marriage, pp. 36-37. The literature is surveyed in David Popenoe, Life Without Father (New York: Free Press, 1996), chap. 2.

^[14] The Third National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (Washington, DC: Department of Health and Human Services, September 1996).

^[15] Ruth A. Brenner, Mary D. Overpeck, Ann C. Trumble, Rebecca DerSimonian, and Heinz Berendes, “Deaths Attributable to Injuries in Infants, United States, 1983-1991, Pediatrics, vol. 103, no. 5 (May 1999), pp. 968-74.

^[16] The Independent, 6 January 1999; also quoted in the Daily Telegraph, 9 January 1999, and other British newspapers.

^[17] M.A. Green, “Time to Put ‘Cot Death’ to Bed?” British Medical Journal, 319 (11 Sept 1999), pp. 697-700.

^[18] See US Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect, A Nation’s Shame: Fatal Child Abuse and Neglect in the United States (Washington, DC: US Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, 1995).

^[19] Pearson, When She Was Bad, p. 110.

^[20] Marcia E. Herman-Giddens, et al., “Underascertainment of Child Abuse Mortality in the United States,” Journal of the American Medical Association, vol. 282, no. 5 (4 August 1999), pp. 463-467.

^[21] Young, Ceasefire, pp. 102, 104.

^[22] Washington Post, editorial, 2 July 1999.