Child abandonment: The abandoned expression of abuse and neglect

Abstract

Professional concerned with early child development and care have focused their attention on the physical maltreatment of children while excluding abandonment from the definitional sphere of abuse and neglect. At the same time there has been little cross-cultural research on child abandonment, particularly in Third World countries. The short- and long-term effects of abandonment of the child, however, may be more crippling and difficult to reverse than those resulting from physical battering or emotional neglect. Our knowledge of abandonment to date is restricted to retrospective clinical descriptions of abandoned children and their families as well as anthropological records of abandonment. Close inspection of the few existing reports in certain Non-Western cultures reveals that the abandonment of children is not limited to Western (Euro-Americanl societies. Moreover, the incidence, expression, and probable causes of abandonment show extreme variance both within and between these cultural entities. Factors contributing to abandonment may include aspects of pre- and post-natal risk, child temperament characteristics, a low quality of attachment between mother and infant, lack of caregiving skills, personality attributes of the mother and father, marital dynamics, family stress and economic difficulty. We have much to learn about how to prevent abandonment by careful examination of those cultures in which the incidence of abandonment appears to be exceptionally low. Effective intervention and prevention may also be augmented by research oriented toward the detection of high-risk abandonmentprone families, areas, and sociocultural groups.