Fathers and stepfathers involved in child abuse: A Meta analysis, /

Abstract

conducting a study on a topic such as fathers and stepfathers who commit child abuse can bring one to the realization that this is not a situation that "certain people" need to deal with. This is a problem that "society" must deal with because it does affect everyone. Children are often times labeled as "our nation's future" and situations that a child may come in contact with during his or her lifetime (good or bad) can have long-lasting effects on the future. Now, imagine that a child has been involved in some form of child abuse for a lengthy period of time. Information provided in this study suggest that when a child has become a victim of abuse, they take on the role of the abuser in adulthood. Child abuse is a vicious cycle that leaves nothing but devastation in its path. Fortunately, our society now has the courage to stand up and speak out against important issues directly related to children. Children, as well as adults, need to be informed (or need to be aware) that abuse of any kind cannot and should not be tolerated on any level. The intent in this research is to bring awareness towards a "specific group" of child abusers and provide information that will hopefully benefit and educate victims as well as potential victims. While gathering information for this research, it became apparent that the two "specific groups" studied--fathers and stepfathers who commit child abuse--had very similar backgrounds involving their own experiences as children with sexual abuse by a parent or stepparent. While this does not excuse the fact that these perpetrators themselves were sexually abused as children, it does shed some light on where the "root" of a crime of this magnitude stems from. It is true that children like to emulate their parents' behaviors, good or bad. It's a perpetual motion machine that makes it very difficult to point a finger and place blame on just one individual. These findings also indicate that the Caucasian population far outweighs any other race in this particular crime category. Although it was not discovered during this research why this is predominantly a crime committed by Caucasians, it was interesting to see the extreme differences in the percentages of white offenders versus other races studied in this research.