A Brief History of Identifying Child Maltreatment

Abstract

In the 1800s, childhood and adulthood were not considered separate phases of life, and the absence of harsh guidance was considered to be child maltreatment. Now, childhood and adulthood are acknowledged as qualitatively different life phases, and government agencies aim to protect children against the harshest treatment. Despite this progress, there is still a lack of agreement on child maltreatment definitions. Different definitions are used for different purposes (e.g., across legal, medical, and research settings), within settings (e.g., different legal definitions across states, different definitions across studies), and across generations. Efforts toward greater agreement are likely to advance our understanding and prevention of child maltreatment. This chapter describes the history of our awareness of the destructive effects of child maltreatment, how we separate child maltreatment from “normal” parenting, and how we conceptualize and define different types of maltreatment.