Sociological Approach To Child Abuse Essay

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Another important aspect that is mentioned in the chapter is the three theories of child maltreatment. These approaches help to provide researchers with a more thorough explanation and interpretation of abuser characteristics. The first of these approaches is the intra-individual theories, which views child maltreatment as the product of some internal weakness that is found to be present in the abuser. If researchers are able to positively identify instabilities present in child abusers, then their next step is to develop appropriate treatment plans. Steele and Pollock (1974) were some of the first researches who attempted to apply the psychiatric model to child abusers. The purpose of the psychiatric model is it tries to locate and treat personality disorders that might cause an individual to participate in child abuse. They analyzed sixty families over the next six years and their results revealed that individuals who abuse children do not possess only one type of diagnostic category. Rather, they ranged from all forms of mental disorders. One concern critics found with this approach is that much of the research is ex post facto, meaning it occurs once the act of …show more content…
This type of approach looks for events that are external to the individual, causing stress to arise within the family. Some of these burdens include unemployment, family size, and social isolation. Researcher Gil (1971) supports unemployment to play a role in child maltreatment when he reported that fifty percent of fathers abused their children when they were unemployed. The social stress model (Belsky, 1978) helps to provide researchers an explanation for parents’ lack of coping strategies. When parents are faced with stress, a common reaction for them is an overwhelming feeling of frustration and failure. It is this sense of lack of power and control that causes the parent to take out their frustration on their