{"id":1154,"date":"2026-06-07T05:06:05","date_gmt":"2026-06-07T05:06:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/americanmovershub.com\/?p=1154"},"modified":"2026-06-07T05:06:05","modified_gmt":"2026-06-07T05:06:05","slug":"child-abuse-and-neglect-are-intergenerational-problems-policies-to-protect-children-should-reflect-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/americanmovershub.com\/?p=1154","title":{"rendered":"Child abuse and neglect are intergenerational problems. Policies to protect children should reflect that"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Hurt people hurt people. Just because that phrase has become a mantra of therapeutic babble doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s not true. A study to be published soon in the National Bureau of Economic Research suggests we are significantly underestimating how much child abuse and neglect are intergenerational problems, and how much they can affect the likelihood of a family climbing out of poverty. <\/p>\n

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Led by Duke University economist Jason Baron, the authors use longitudinal data from California. They find that roughly 70-80% of children who have at least one substantiated report of maltreatment from Child Protective Services also have a parent with prior CPS contact. <\/p>\n

\u201cIndividuals with substantiated childhood maltreatment are significantly more likely to have children with substantiated maltreatment,\u201d they write. <\/p>\n

Is this simply because child abuse and neglect are more concentrated among impoverished families and those families are more likely to be \u201csurveilled\u201d? The study designs attempt to tease out the answer. <\/p>\n

One important finding is that children who were likely to be physically abused are more likely to have parents who experienced physical abuse, children who experienced sexual abuse are more likely to have parents who were sexually abused, and children who experienced neglect were more likely to have parents who experienced neglect. Also, \u201cindividuals who experienced maltreatment from a biological father are more likely to have children who experience maltreatment from a biological father, with similar patterns for biological mother and non-biological fathers.\u201d <\/p>\n

The authors conclude that \u201cthese patterns are difficult to reconcile with explanations based solely on persistent poverty, general disadvantage, or increased monitoring, which would be expected to raise overall CPS involvement rather than reproduce specific forms of harm and caregiver relationships.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another question is whether there is some genetic basis for this intergenerational maltreatment. This question may seem offensive, as if only a eugenicist would ask such a thing. But these days it is common to claim that some people have \u201cintergenerational trauma\u201d \u2014 which does not mean that grandparents abused their parents, and their parents abused them, but rather that their \u201cpeople\u201d experienced historical injustice and as a result the members of that people are more likely to be poor or use drugs or lack education and so forth.<\/p>\n

This theory has trickled down to the point where I recently heard from a couple of undergraduates in a seminar I was teaching that Black people have \u201ctrauma imprinted on their DNA\u201d because of \u201cslavery and Jim Crow.\u201d (The two could not point me to the specific place on the genetic code of African-Americans, nor could they tell me how this theory applied to, say, Jews who achieved economic success after the Holocaust.)<\/p>\n

The genetic explanation for intergenerational abuse does not seem to hold up in this study. The authors \u201cfind similar rates of transmission for individuals maltreated by non-biological caregivers, which is inconsistent with a purely genetic explanation.\u201d They conclude that overall the \u201cresults point to the transmission of caregiving behaviors and family dynamics shaped by lived experience.\u201d <\/p>\n

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What does this mean for policies around child maltreatment? For one thing, it means we should be concerned about an over-reliance on kin for foster care placements. Yes, of course, all things being equal, a child should live with his grandmother when the parents are unable or unwilling to care for them. But we cannot overlook the fact that the mother\u2019s problems may stem from abuse or neglect that she experienced at the hands of her own mother. <\/p>\n

Unfortunately, more and more states are creating different \u2014 that is, lower \u2014 standards for licensing kin for foster care in order to meet what are likely unreasonable goals for greater reliance on relatives. <\/p>\n

Connecticut recently announced it wanted to place as many as 70% of its foster children with kin. Pennsylvania lawmakers are about to introduce a bill that would create new standards and among the things that are not<\/i> automatic disqualifiers for granting foster licenses for kin are certain categories of homicide, kidnapping, incest and promoting prostitution of a minor. <\/p>\n

Our collective na\u00efvet\u00e9 about who is likely to perpetrate child abuse and neglect is mindboggling. As is our blindness to the massive effects of this scourge of maltreatment on society\u2019s most vulnerable. <\/p>\n

In their final analysis, the authors look at the rates of CPS involvement in a community with regard to economic mobility. Not surprisingly, they find a \u201ca strong negative correlation,\u201d that is \u201cneighborhoods with higher per-capita rates of CPS involvement exhibit considerably lower levels of upward income mobility for children born to low-income families.\u201d <\/p>\n

Moreover, they note that \u201cneighborhood rates of CPS involvement remain a leading correlate of low upward mobility after accounting for a set of socioeconomic characteristics, including many of the neighborhood factors previously shown to predict mobility,\u201d including labor market conditions, educational test scores and family structure (meaning single-parent households). <\/p>\n

Why don\u2019t we recognize the importance of something as obvious as child abuse and neglect in thinking about children\u2019s life outcomes? It\u2019s a disturbing thing to talk about, but it is also a difficult problem to solve. It\u2019s also hard to fix schools or mitigate poverty or shift the labor market, but these things are issues that legislators and community leaders already have ideas about how to solve. <\/p>\n

Stopping parents from mistreating their children is more complicated and taking them out of families where mistreatment can\u2019t be stopped is controversial. But keeping children safe may be the most effective way of giving them a promising future. <\/p>\n

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New research shows that maltreated children often have a caregiver with a similar background.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1153,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-perspective"],"yoast_head":"\nChild abuse and neglect are intergenerational problems. Policies to protect children should reflect that - American Movers Hub<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/americanmovershub.com\/?p=1154\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Child abuse and neglect are intergenerational problems. 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