Sir, - As someone researching the area of children and adolescents at risk for the past number of years I feel it important to point out a number of issues in academic research that John Waters (Opinion, November 11th) appears to be either unaware of, or selective of, in what he chooses to cite as established fact. He adds significantly to the myth of the female abuser while potentially deflecting much-needed attention away from the male. This is extremely dangerous.
Waters writes about child abuse by mothers as being the "final taboo", but research was conducted into child maltreatment as far back as 1946 and Kempe et al published their very influential study of "battered child syndrome" in 1962. Contrary to his article, child abuse by mothers is neither "unthinkable" nor "unsayable" and there have been a significant number of studies in this area completed in the last two decades.
What is under-theorised, certainly, is the uneasy coexistence between woman abuse and child abuse - phenomena largely ignored until the 1960s and 1970s. I would like to cite some research from the US (where Waters locates his version of the truth) which may be of interest here.
Stark and Flitcraft (1988) found that 45 per cent of the mothers of children in hospital for suspected abuse themselves had medical histories suggestive of woman abuse. This study is supported by McKibben et al's study (1991) in which 59.4 per cent of mothers of abused children had medical histories indicative of abuse by their male partners. The Child Welfare Administration Fatality Review Panel in New York City in 1993 stated that 39.8 per cent of the mothers of children who died in suspicious circumstances were battered by their male partners.
A seminal study completed in the UK over two decades ago, in 1975, concluded that 37 per cent of battered women had, in turn, abused their own children and the Giles-Sims 1985 study suggested that 56 per cent of battered women used violence against their own children.
So, to the crux of Water's article. What needs to be discussed in much more detail in Ireland is the socio-economic and psychological characteristics of families in which child abuse occurs - not an emphasis on blame. We are certainly no more enlightened here than in other countries. Children moved centre stage because the issue of child abuse and neglect was forced out into the open by a highly politicised and radicalised social climate during the 1980s and 1990s. My own belief is that child abuse occurs for a number of reasons - most fundamentally, because the perpretrator (male or female) lacks the resources (emotional, psychological, social, political and economic) to seek other possible means of expression and resorts to violence instead. As men are chiefly responsible for abuse, they should be taught to express themselves in a manner that embraces mutuality and reciprocity from the earliest point of socialisation. They should also be directly confronted with their abuse of power and control and take full responsibility for their actions. This is the approach favoured by the group Men Overcoming Violence in Ireland and it is one I support.
I fail to understand how Mr Waters could be so misinformed in his analysis. He writes about the myths of the "Good Mother" and the "Bad Man" in Ireland. There is an agenda in his writing which, methinks, could be summed up in his view that he is a "man more sinned against than sinning" in his social analysis.
Women do abuse children. No-one involved in academic research would deny this fact. A central difficulty with this subject is that abuse is seen through different coloured lenses. John Waters rightly states that this influences child protection and welfare staff to varying degrees. However, whether he likes to admit it or not, over 10 years ago we were made aware that an abusive man is six times more likely than a woman to abuse a child (Giles-Sims, 1985). Another piece of research (Straus, 1983) suggested that a man already abusing his female partner had a 50 per cent chance of also abusing his children. Think about that. - Yours, etc.,
From C. Niall McElwee
Senior Lecturer, Applied Social Studies Programmes, Waterford Institute of Technology, Waterford.