My gut feeling is that these studies prove very little about child abuse, and a great deal about the difficulty of drawing reliable information from statistics.
federal statistics clearly show that women are the perpetrators of almost 61 percent of child abuse. Women are the perpetrators of 55.3 percent of physical abuse, 71.9 percent of neglect, 78.3 percent of medical neglect, and 57
percent of emotional abuse.
How do we factor in the fact that women have a lot more exposure to children than men do? I have a feeling that if you could correct for this variable (which is probably not possible) you would change the equation a good deal.
If a single mother neglects a kid, does that go into the 71.9% of neglect cases perpetrated by women? Don't we count the neglect of the guy who wasn't there?
white men are more likely to sexually abuse than men of color.
Nothing against men of color, but I'd bet a good deal that men of color are more likely to abuse children of color, and white men are more likely to abuse white children, and that reporting rates are a good deal higher among whites than they are among those of color. Again, I'd bet that if you could account for the variables, that equation would turn out just about even.
Statistics are revealing, but oftentimes they reveal more about the people using them than about anything else. Any time statistical analysis goes beyond a very narrow canvas, it's good to be very cautious. |
