Child abuse and other risks of not living with both parents

This study was undertaken to quantify various risks to children as a function of the identity of the person(s) in loco parentis. The household circumtances of children in Hamilton (a midsized Canadian city) were surveyed by telephone, and combined with information on child abuse victims, runaways, and juvenile offenders, to arrive at victimization rates according to age and household type.Both abuse and police apprehension were least likely for children living with two natural parents. Preschoolers living with one natural and one stepparent were 40 times more likely to become child abuse cases than were like-aged children living with two natural parents. Whereas abuse risk was significantly higher for children living with a stepparent than for those with a single parent, the reverse was true of the risk of apprehension for criminal offenses.Several variables were examined as possible confounds of household composition. Socioeconomic status, family size, and maternal age at the child's birth were all predictors of abuse risk, but these factors differed little or not at all between natural-parent and stepparent families and could not account for the stepparent-abuse association. As predicted from Darwinian considerations, stepparents themselves evidently constitute a risk factor for child abuse.