CHILD MALTREATMENT - A TEST OF SOCIOBIOLOGICAL THEORY

Five hypotheses regarding child maltreatment were derived from sociobi ological theory and tested using data on 69,119 families and 113,748 a bused children. It was predicted that: 1) nonbiological parents would engage in more severe types of abuse than would biological parents; 2) in two-biological-parent households, biological fathers would maltrea t their progeny more than would biological mothers; 3) biological pare nts would abuse their progeny while their children were very young, wh ereas nonbiological parents would not show a predictable age-related p attern of abuse; 4) when biological parents from poorer families abuse d their progeny, the victims would tend to be male, whereas when biolo gical parents from more affluent families abused their progeny, the vi ctims would tend to be female; and 5) children living with female rela tives who were past their reproductive prime would be at low risk for abuse. Only two of these hypotheses were supported: biological parents abused younger rather than older children, whereas nonbiological pare nts did not show a predictable age-related pattern of abuse; and femal e relatives past their reproductive prime tended to commit less severe types of abuse than did female relatives still reproductively capable .