Contributor: The dangerous myth that poverty is the cause of child abuse

Why does child abuse occur? A new public service announcement Said that most people think it is a “bad parent problem”, but the announcement suggests that “deep causes can be different from what you think”. This message from preventing children from the mistreatment of America explains that child abuse is the result of the lack of financial resources of families – a problem that can be resolved with a variety of universal family support programs.

If only it was so simple. Unfortunately, this statement distorts research, and this script (which is recited by a series of children’s narrators) will only contribute to the disinformation of the abuse of children who seems to guide public feeling and public policies.

According to American children, the “new campaign aims to break harmful stigma according to which children’s abuse is only the result of” bad parenting “and rather highlights the wider social, economic and environmental factors that contribute to family crises.” The children actors list the policies that would prevent abuses from occurring, including “affordable housing”, “access to health care”, “high -quality affordable child care”, “school programs and lunch programs” and “family leave paid”.

Yes, it looks like a list of progressive wishes – and this is the case. But it’s next to the point. The joyful children of advertising suggest that the prevention of child abuse depends on the maintenance of “families outside the crisis”, but the financial challenges encountered by parents who abuse and neglect their children are deeply linked to a network of other social problems, not just economic difficulties. The most common abuses of abuse are the parents Drugs and alcohol abuse,, serious mental illness,, domestic violence and the presence of unrelated men in a house. Offended parents have often grown up in abusive houses themselves. The framing of the advertisement also ignores the abuse that occurs in the houses of the middle class and easy.

These facts did not do much to dispel the false idea among certain criticisms that what child protection agencies call “negligence” is only poverty. In this story, children show up at school without a winter coat or have not eaten during the weekend or point out that their house has no heat. As the story arises, biased or uninformed teachers call for a children’s protection hotline, and unusual social workers consider negligent parents and withdraw their children.

In reality, when child protection is called, The problems are much more important that a simple lack of resources. And, above all, most of the families referred to child protection already receive a table of benefitsIncluding Medicaid, a free or reduced school lunch and food assistance. But the same things that prevent parents from maintaining employment or housing – in particular drug addiction and mental illness – often prevent them from engaging in services, while reducing their ability to protect and take care of their children.

Excessive simplification of the causes of children’s abuse will lead decision -makers to offer ineffective solutions. Even if providing families more financial resources would prevent certain cases of abuse, these policies have a huge cost while not responding to the risks encountered by our most vulnerable children.

Resources are limited and decision-makers must make choices: should we pay for school lunches for 72 million children per day or should we finance more and more trained child protection social workers? Should we finance affordable housing for everyone or should we provide more drug treatment options to parents suffering from dependence?

Assuming poverty is the real problem has even led certain jurisdictions like Washington, DC, to offer cash payments to families involved in the child protection system. When many of these parents have debilitating problems with drug addiction, what exactly do the civil servants imagine that the money will go?

Preventing America children has a budget of more than $ 10 million, including a current subsidy of $ 1.7 million from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It is completely suitable for defense groups to try to help families of poverty. But using federal funding to mislead the public to believe that housing assistance and free lunches are a remedy for children’s abuse is absurd and frankly dangerous.

Emily Putnam-Hornnstein is a professor at the UNC Chapel Hill social work school. Naomi Schaefer Riley is a principal researcher at the American Enterprise Institute. They lead interrupted lives, a project to document the deaths of child abuse.