Summary Paradigms and global perspectives
WEEK 1
Micha de Winter: Chapter 3, the modernity of child abuse
Highly developed countries: between 10 and 20% of all children maltreated/abused/neglected
individual level: parents disturbed, relational problems, themselves abused as children, drug addict,
incompetent early detection, psychological help, child-upbringing support.
- However: child abuse cannot be brought under control by these means alone.
- Broader context: how is it possible that all these onlookers remain unaware
Decrease in early death rise in living standards, hygiene, rise of social healthcare. But important
exception: modernization has not been able to put an end to child abuse and maltreatment within families.
- Peter Stearns' Argument: Modernization has not ended child abuse and may have even increased
it, despite improved governmental awareness and monitoring.
- Effectiveness of Social Control: In small rural communities, social control made abuse harder to
hide, whereas modern systems of monitoring are less effective.
- Changing Perspectives on Abuse: Modernity brought new standards for child-rearing, meaning
some traditional practices now seen as abuse were previously acceptable.
- Challenge to Classical Thesis: Stearns' view contrasts with authors like DeMause, Shorter, and
Stone, who argue that modernity increased compassion for children and reduced violence against
them.
- Pre-modern Affection for Children: Historians like Peeters and Pollock highlight that pre-modern
families also showed affection toward children, challenging the notion that modernity solely
improved child treatment.
- Doubt on Modern Impact: Despite modern legal protections for children, the continued prevalence
of child abuse raises doubts about whether changes in mentality have truly improved children's
treatment.
At risk policy
Dutch government: action plan to tackle child abuse
1- Abuse and neglect of children are mainly endogenous problems within the family: individual
psychological problems, problems in the relational sphere, inadequate ability to rear children.
a. Known that external factors can magnify the risk of child abuse. But this view: wider
social problems, responsibility of other policy areas.
2- Problems can best be identifies and solved by experts (monitored by the government).
At risk model: dysfunction is mainly seen as the outcome of individual risk factors and
pathologies.
o Professional help should be aimed at identifying individuals within a population who are
most liable to disease, problems/deviancy
o Professionals should be able to implement preventative measures as early as possible
o Falls on the psycho-social characteristics of children and parents: interventions are also
geared to these factors.
o Social context is incorporated; but interventions are directed at the micro-level
Child abuse and social context
, - Child abuse: often correlated with unfavorable social-economic circumstances (poverty,
unemployment, low educational background)
- Demographic factors: one-parent families, teenage mother, families that move frequently
greater risk
Factors (particular when they are combined): produce considerable tension and critical situations that can
eventually lead to abuse.
Such circumstances can never be seen as the immediate cause of abuse and neglect + cause and effect are
difficult to distinguish from one another.
- Drake & Pandey: poverty and child abuse some qualities which help people to achieve
economic success at the same time discourage the maltreatment of children: having a future
orientation, being able to delay gratification, higher educational achievement, the ability to control
anger and impulsiveness, good communication skills, being able to resist addictions
- Importance of the neighborhood: The social quality of the environment in which parents raise
their children is found to play an extremely important role with regard to abuse and neglect.
o Neighborhoods that protect children from harm are characterized by mutual support,
parental and community involvement, informal social control, mutual trust, shared values,
strong social policies, and good access to services.
Also protective for psycho-social problems
Neighborhood: social isolation, little social cohesion dangerous environment
for children
o Explanations and interventions require a wider perspective than the dyadic model of
victim and perpetrator
Social control theory of child abuse
Social influences that play a role in child abuse, also appear to correlate very closely with youth
criminality (neighborhood characteristics and juvenile delinquency).
- Social control (collective efficacy): strongly dependent on the social cohesion of a residential
area.
o No trust/solidarity not maintain norms of behavior on the streets (lack of social norms)
powerful predictor of violent criminality
Unlike Hirschi’s social control theory, which explains why individuals conform to societal norms, no such
theory exists for why most parents do not abuse their children. A possible equivalent theory might suggest
that parents integrated into their community, with strong social ties, are less likely to abuse their children
because they have more to lose socially. Conversely, parents with weaker ties may be less influenced by
societal expectations, making child maltreatment more likely.
- Interventions: aimed at strengthening social ties/integration of families in the neighborhood
Contextual interventions
- Current approaches prioritize identifying risk families and individual interventions, neglecting the
role of social risk factors. Broader contextual approaches that address environmental influences
receive little attention in policy and prevention efforts.
- Social networks are diminishing: people are less dependent on each other When a deficiency of
social ties are found to constitute an important risk factor for child abuse and neglect, part of the
, remedy lies in resisting further individualization, anonymity and isolation, especially in relation to
the upbringing of children.
o Blokland: importance of ‘public familiarity’: When people regularly meet each other in
their day-to-day environment, it leads to recognition; they are no longer anonymous to
each other, without necessarily having to know much about each other’s lives this
public familiarity has disappeared in neighborhoods.
Governments could and should invest more in the promotion of public familiarity
and the institutions of public space: strengthening te infrastructure for
socialization
o Professionals can also contribute to strengthening social ties: in institutions
o Important to look at the accessibility of agencies and institutions: The reduction in home
visits has resulted in the issue of families becoming difficult to access for support or
intervention.
o Experts struggle to interpret unclear signals of possible abuse in families they don't know,
leading to missed cases or wrongful accusations Re-investing in direct, personal
contact by professionals like district nurses and teachers could help prevent both child
abuse and professional errors.
Actively promoting a shared responsibility for children’s upbringing in the day-to-day
environment.
Problem: in both research and policy this choice is hardly ever made explicit, giving the false impression
that it is based on an objective, empirically grounded approach which stands in no need of any social
debate.
- Reduce the risk of child abuse vs privacy
The problem of child abuse can be better approached than is currently the case by keeping in sight the
psychological and social complexity of the phenomenon, and by making this complexity the starting point
of research, policy and interventions.
- Make normative aspects visible
Micha de Winter: Chapter 4, the educative civil society as remedy
Research demonstrates that the number and severity of psychological problems among children and
adolescents remains roughly the same. But: the demand for professional help has increased spectacularly.
Explanations
- Too many parents feel that they fall short, and therefore decide earlier and more often to seek the
help of a social worker of psychologist.
- + there is a great pressure from outside; when a child behaves differently at school problem
child, needing diagnosis
- Politicians also involved in child upbringing: reduce street nuisance, juvenile crime
- Conflicting messages: child-rearing should be enjoyable for parents but child-raising is a matter of
individual choice
Scientific control significant new source of anxiety and insecurity: ‘at risk society’: People are
increasingly preoccupied with the future and their security; anxiety about risks and the desire to avoid
them form an increasingly more important aspect of their lives.
- Individualization and globalization important social causes of this anxiety
, - Liquid fear: so little is certain in the modern world everything is constantly on motion and thus
fluid
- Thoughts of possible threats, on the other hand; people learned that they are themselves
responsible for shaping their lives
o Government can do little more than worn its citizens for the dangers population: there
develops a culture of angst and insecurity, which in turn spawns such phenomena as
hatred of foreigners, the development of inward-looking communities (‘neo-tribes’) and
finally excessive confidence in the power of prevention
General ‘angst’ parental insecurity
After WOII: bringing up children onerous responsibility with far-reaching consequences. Today:
upbringing of children more treated as a question of individual choice (pressure has become subtler and as
a result more coercive).
1970/80s: increasing dependence of parents on child-rearing experts began to be perceives as a problem:
‘normal’ problems linked into psychological problems.
- Proto-professionalization: people increasingly derive their self-esteem from the conceptual
framework by experts
- Experts: ‘specialist in indecision’ psychological knowledge is seldom unambiguous (eenzijdig)
Over the course of the twentieth century, parents increasingly sought the help of experts because the way
of life and living circumstances was drastically changing: industrialization/urbanization.
- Extended families small nuclear families
- Children: less needed for work; went to school, free time outside the family
New problems: parents held responsible when children behaved improperly in the public space (especially
mothers).
- Hyper-parenting: suggestion that every parent has the possibility ánd the duty to construct the
perfect child
o Begins early: new research techniques to follow foetal development through pregnancy
+ media: parents must bonding with their child
- Child protection industry: governments and experts have intruded more and more directly in the
upbringing of children on the assumption that many problems of children themselves, but also for
society as a whole, are created in the home.
Change in childcare and youth policy (recent years): aim earlier detection of risk factors in child-
upbringing and development.
- ‘alle kansen voor alle kinderen’: The main idea is that systematic research into the possible risk
factors for all children should create a situation where optimal developmental conditions and
results become a possibility for every child.
o Cooperation between professionals most important instrument
o ‘every child matters’: prevention must cover all children
o Preventive thinking: public health approach preventive interventions aimed at
population groups that are statistically at a greater risk
Problems with public health approach:
WEEK 1
Micha de Winter: Chapter 3, the modernity of child abuse
Highly developed countries: between 10 and 20% of all children maltreated/abused/neglected
individual level: parents disturbed, relational problems, themselves abused as children, drug addict,
incompetent early detection, psychological help, child-upbringing support.
- However: child abuse cannot be brought under control by these means alone.
- Broader context: how is it possible that all these onlookers remain unaware
Decrease in early death rise in living standards, hygiene, rise of social healthcare. But important
exception: modernization has not been able to put an end to child abuse and maltreatment within families.
- Peter Stearns' Argument: Modernization has not ended child abuse and may have even increased
it, despite improved governmental awareness and monitoring.
- Effectiveness of Social Control: In small rural communities, social control made abuse harder to
hide, whereas modern systems of monitoring are less effective.
- Changing Perspectives on Abuse: Modernity brought new standards for child-rearing, meaning
some traditional practices now seen as abuse were previously acceptable.
- Challenge to Classical Thesis: Stearns' view contrasts with authors like DeMause, Shorter, and
Stone, who argue that modernity increased compassion for children and reduced violence against
them.
- Pre-modern Affection for Children: Historians like Peeters and Pollock highlight that pre-modern
families also showed affection toward children, challenging the notion that modernity solely
improved child treatment.
- Doubt on Modern Impact: Despite modern legal protections for children, the continued prevalence
of child abuse raises doubts about whether changes in mentality have truly improved children's
treatment.
At risk policy
Dutch government: action plan to tackle child abuse
1- Abuse and neglect of children are mainly endogenous problems within the family: individual
psychological problems, problems in the relational sphere, inadequate ability to rear children.
a. Known that external factors can magnify the risk of child abuse. But this view: wider
social problems, responsibility of other policy areas.
2- Problems can best be identifies and solved by experts (monitored by the government).
At risk model: dysfunction is mainly seen as the outcome of individual risk factors and
pathologies.
o Professional help should be aimed at identifying individuals within a population who are
most liable to disease, problems/deviancy
o Professionals should be able to implement preventative measures as early as possible
o Falls on the psycho-social characteristics of children and parents: interventions are also
geared to these factors.
o Social context is incorporated; but interventions are directed at the micro-level
Child abuse and social context
, - Child abuse: often correlated with unfavorable social-economic circumstances (poverty,
unemployment, low educational background)
- Demographic factors: one-parent families, teenage mother, families that move frequently
greater risk
Factors (particular when they are combined): produce considerable tension and critical situations that can
eventually lead to abuse.
Such circumstances can never be seen as the immediate cause of abuse and neglect + cause and effect are
difficult to distinguish from one another.
- Drake & Pandey: poverty and child abuse some qualities which help people to achieve
economic success at the same time discourage the maltreatment of children: having a future
orientation, being able to delay gratification, higher educational achievement, the ability to control
anger and impulsiveness, good communication skills, being able to resist addictions
- Importance of the neighborhood: The social quality of the environment in which parents raise
their children is found to play an extremely important role with regard to abuse and neglect.
o Neighborhoods that protect children from harm are characterized by mutual support,
parental and community involvement, informal social control, mutual trust, shared values,
strong social policies, and good access to services.
Also protective for psycho-social problems
Neighborhood: social isolation, little social cohesion dangerous environment
for children
o Explanations and interventions require a wider perspective than the dyadic model of
victim and perpetrator
Social control theory of child abuse
Social influences that play a role in child abuse, also appear to correlate very closely with youth
criminality (neighborhood characteristics and juvenile delinquency).
- Social control (collective efficacy): strongly dependent on the social cohesion of a residential
area.
o No trust/solidarity not maintain norms of behavior on the streets (lack of social norms)
powerful predictor of violent criminality
Unlike Hirschi’s social control theory, which explains why individuals conform to societal norms, no such
theory exists for why most parents do not abuse their children. A possible equivalent theory might suggest
that parents integrated into their community, with strong social ties, are less likely to abuse their children
because they have more to lose socially. Conversely, parents with weaker ties may be less influenced by
societal expectations, making child maltreatment more likely.
- Interventions: aimed at strengthening social ties/integration of families in the neighborhood
Contextual interventions
- Current approaches prioritize identifying risk families and individual interventions, neglecting the
role of social risk factors. Broader contextual approaches that address environmental influences
receive little attention in policy and prevention efforts.
- Social networks are diminishing: people are less dependent on each other When a deficiency of
social ties are found to constitute an important risk factor for child abuse and neglect, part of the
, remedy lies in resisting further individualization, anonymity and isolation, especially in relation to
the upbringing of children.
o Blokland: importance of ‘public familiarity’: When people regularly meet each other in
their day-to-day environment, it leads to recognition; they are no longer anonymous to
each other, without necessarily having to know much about each other’s lives this
public familiarity has disappeared in neighborhoods.
Governments could and should invest more in the promotion of public familiarity
and the institutions of public space: strengthening te infrastructure for
socialization
o Professionals can also contribute to strengthening social ties: in institutions
o Important to look at the accessibility of agencies and institutions: The reduction in home
visits has resulted in the issue of families becoming difficult to access for support or
intervention.
o Experts struggle to interpret unclear signals of possible abuse in families they don't know,
leading to missed cases or wrongful accusations Re-investing in direct, personal
contact by professionals like district nurses and teachers could help prevent both child
abuse and professional errors.
Actively promoting a shared responsibility for children’s upbringing in the day-to-day
environment.
Problem: in both research and policy this choice is hardly ever made explicit, giving the false impression
that it is based on an objective, empirically grounded approach which stands in no need of any social
debate.
- Reduce the risk of child abuse vs privacy
The problem of child abuse can be better approached than is currently the case by keeping in sight the
psychological and social complexity of the phenomenon, and by making this complexity the starting point
of research, policy and interventions.
- Make normative aspects visible
Micha de Winter: Chapter 4, the educative civil society as remedy
Research demonstrates that the number and severity of psychological problems among children and
adolescents remains roughly the same. But: the demand for professional help has increased spectacularly.
Explanations
- Too many parents feel that they fall short, and therefore decide earlier and more often to seek the
help of a social worker of psychologist.
- + there is a great pressure from outside; when a child behaves differently at school problem
child, needing diagnosis
- Politicians also involved in child upbringing: reduce street nuisance, juvenile crime
- Conflicting messages: child-rearing should be enjoyable for parents but child-raising is a matter of
individual choice
Scientific control significant new source of anxiety and insecurity: ‘at risk society’: People are
increasingly preoccupied with the future and their security; anxiety about risks and the desire to avoid
them form an increasingly more important aspect of their lives.
- Individualization and globalization important social causes of this anxiety
, - Liquid fear: so little is certain in the modern world everything is constantly on motion and thus
fluid
- Thoughts of possible threats, on the other hand; people learned that they are themselves
responsible for shaping their lives
o Government can do little more than worn its citizens for the dangers population: there
develops a culture of angst and insecurity, which in turn spawns such phenomena as
hatred of foreigners, the development of inward-looking communities (‘neo-tribes’) and
finally excessive confidence in the power of prevention
General ‘angst’ parental insecurity
After WOII: bringing up children onerous responsibility with far-reaching consequences. Today:
upbringing of children more treated as a question of individual choice (pressure has become subtler and as
a result more coercive).
1970/80s: increasing dependence of parents on child-rearing experts began to be perceives as a problem:
‘normal’ problems linked into psychological problems.
- Proto-professionalization: people increasingly derive their self-esteem from the conceptual
framework by experts
- Experts: ‘specialist in indecision’ psychological knowledge is seldom unambiguous (eenzijdig)
Over the course of the twentieth century, parents increasingly sought the help of experts because the way
of life and living circumstances was drastically changing: industrialization/urbanization.
- Extended families small nuclear families
- Children: less needed for work; went to school, free time outside the family
New problems: parents held responsible when children behaved improperly in the public space (especially
mothers).
- Hyper-parenting: suggestion that every parent has the possibility ánd the duty to construct the
perfect child
o Begins early: new research techniques to follow foetal development through pregnancy
+ media: parents must bonding with their child
- Child protection industry: governments and experts have intruded more and more directly in the
upbringing of children on the assumption that many problems of children themselves, but also for
society as a whole, are created in the home.
Change in childcare and youth policy (recent years): aim earlier detection of risk factors in child-
upbringing and development.
- ‘alle kansen voor alle kinderen’: The main idea is that systematic research into the possible risk
factors for all children should create a situation where optimal developmental conditions and
results become a possibility for every child.
o Cooperation between professionals most important instrument
o ‘every child matters’: prevention must cover all children
o Preventive thinking: public health approach preventive interventions aimed at
population groups that are statistically at a greater risk
Problems with public health approach:
