Child maltreatment is a complex, insidious problem that, although predominant in impoverished families (Pelton, 1978), cuts across all sectors of society. The American Association for Protecting Children (1986) tallied 1,727,000 reports of suspected child maltreatment in 1984. Forty-two percent of these reports were substantiated. A national survey reported that 10.7 percent of parents admitted to having perpetrated a “severe violent act” against their child in the previous year (Straus and Gelles, 1986) and prevalence rates of sexual abuse have been estimated to be as high as 62 percent for girls and 31 percent for boys (Dubowitz, 1986). The economic and human costs of maltreatment in American society are astronomical. It is likely that billions of dollars are spent in treatment and social service costs and lost in lessened productivity for a generation of maltreated children (Dubowitz, 1986). The human costs are a litany of psychological tragedies. Maltreated children suffer from poor peer relations, cognitive deficits, and low self esteem among other problems; moreover, they tend to be more aggressive than their peers, as well as having behavior problems and psychopathology (see Aber and Cicchetti, 1984, for a review). The emotional damage due to maltreatment may last a lifetime.

History documents that the problem of child maltreatment has existed since the beginning of civilization (Aries, 1962; Radbill, 1968; Ross, 1980). Unfortunately, our understanding of the etiology, intergenerational transmission, and developmental sequelae of this pervasive social problem largely has been the result of relatively recent systematic inquiry.