I found out today that a lot of “men’s rights” groups are claiming that “most child abuse is committed by women,” and citing a study by the American Humane Association (the folks who made sure no live bugs were squished during Men In Black!) I tracked this to its source, and here is the actual statement by AHA:
Although females are more often identified as perpetrators than males in nonfatal child abuse and neglect, NCANDS and the U.S. Advisory Board found that males (often enraged or extremely stressed fathers or male caretakers) are the perpetrators in 57% of child abuse-and neglect-related fatalities (U.S. Advisory Board, 1995).
First deception, these guys aren’t talking about “child abuse” –they are lumping in “child abuse” cases with about an equal number of “neglect” cases. Second deception, neither abuse nor neglect includes failures by the non-custodial parent, such as failure to pay child support.
*Abuse categories: risk of harm, sexual abuse, physical abuse, and emotional abuse, and death. Neglect categories: environmental neglect, lack of health care, blatant disregard, and lack of supervision. That is, abandonment by the father and failure to provide child support don’t fit into either category.
According to a US 1999 Census report custodial parents include 2 million fathers and 11 million mothers. Only custodial parents show up in the statistics for neglect.
Therefore, just by the US census numbers, you’d expect women to commit 5.5 times as much “neglect” as men because that’s about the ratio of custodial mothers to custodial fathers.
Let’s look at some real numbers. Illinois FY2000 published statistics on abuse-plus-neglect–about 50% of cases fell into each category–showing 9,022 males and 11,577 females guilty of abuse-or-neglect. Let’s say roughly 10,000 (of the 20,599 total) committed “neglect.” Since only a parent with custody can “neglect,” using the US census ratio 5.5 to 1, only about 1,500 of those 10,000 “neglecters” were men and the other 8,500 were women. Subtract the “neglecters” from the total and you are left with about 7,500 men and 3,000 women. These are the people committing real “child abuse” as opposed to “neglect.”
So I sure don’t think it is fair to say most child abuse is committed by women. And I’d like to say more about “neglect.”
Back to the US census report: Of 11 million mothers with custody, only 2.1 million got child support to the full court-approved amount. To my way of thinking, that leaves 9 million mothers raising kids with inadequate financial help from absent fathers. If you divide the corresponding 9 million absent dads among 50 states, let’s say 200,000 such fathers live in IL. Let’s compare these 200,000 absent IL fathers to our estimated 8,500 IL mothers guilty of “neglect.” So you see, I don’t really even think it’s fair to say most child neglect is committed by women either.
Disclaimer/revelation/whatever: My point is not that men are evil abusers and child deserters. There are many millions of lovable, loving dads, and I know lots of them. My point is that before you start throwing misleading statistics at some gender not your own, you should remember that all genders live in glass houses.
Yeah, and especially don’t throw them at my gender!