Child Abuse and the Social Environment Book

	List of Tables and Figures
	Foreword
	Acknowledgments
1	Introduction	1
	The Role of Environmental Forces	5
	The Application of the Ecological Method	6
2	Child Protection in the U.S.: A System in Crisis	10
3	Rival Theories and Previous Research	14
	Psychodynamic vs. Sociological Theory	14
	Adolescent Pregnancy and Illegitimate Birth	22
	Divorce and Marital Discord	24
	The Single-Parent Family	24
	Economic Status	25
	Education	30
4	Findings	31
	The Population at Risk	31
	Sparsely Populated Counties	32
	Characteristics of Abusive and Neglectful Families	33
	County Group Comparisons	34
	Environmental Variable Correlation with Child Maltreatment Rules	42
	Multiple Regression of Rates of Reported Child Maltreatment on Environmental Variables	43
	Discrimination of Risk	66
5	Discussion of Study Results	77
	Family Structure and the Ability to Provide	77
	The Influence of Adolescent Pregnancy	78
	Forms of Child Maltreatment	80
	Child Protection Laws, Interstate Variance	80
6	Recommendations	85
	Refocusing Service: A Comprehensive Stress Model	85
	Large-Scale Ecological Study	87
	Exploring Relations Among Rival Etiological Theories	89
	Increasing the Suitability of Public Data Sets for Comparative Analyses	91
7	Conclusion	94
	Appendix A	98
	References	114
	Index	135