Approximately 879,000 cases of child abuse and neglect were documented in the United States in the year 2000, a rate of 12.2 per 1000 children, the first increase since 1993.

(Source: The Administration for Children and Families, U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, "Year 2000 Child Abuse and Neglect Findings Released," April 19, 2002, http://www.acf.dhhs.gov/news/press/2002/abuse.html.)

"You shall not afflict any widow or orphan [fatherless child].  If you afflict him at all, and if he does cry out to Me, I will surely hear his cry; and My anger will be kindled, and I will kill you with the sword, and your wives shall become widows and your children fatherless."

(Source: Exodus 22:22-23, New American Standard Bible, La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.)

In their fight against the abuse of mothers and their children, public officials in some countries may need to worry about intact families. But in the United States, it is the mothers and children not living in a traditional family who appear particularly vulnerable. In a recent study of battered mothers and children in Italy and the United States, researchers from both countries uncovered pronounced differences in family circumstances. 

Using data collected from women who had contacted battered women's agencies in both countries, the authors of the new study uncovered a sharp difference in marital status. "Nearly all the batterers in Italy . . . were present or former husbands," they remark, whereas in the United States "only 41% of the Anglo and 48% of the Mexican American women had ever been married to their abusive partners." 

Predictably, the difference in the marital status of the men abusing women in the two countries paralleled a difference in the paternity status of those who were also abusing these women's children: "Nearly all of the Italian [abusers] were biologically related to the target child (83%), in contrast to the [American] Anglos (48%) and Hispanics (41%)." In the American sample, in other words, less than half of the male abusers were related by blood to the children they were abusing.

The international team of researchers concedes the possibility that their findings might reflect "an idiosyncrasy of sampling." But perhaps, they suggest, "domestic violence is actually more common in unmarried couples in North America" than it is in married couples.

(Source: Laura Ann McCloskey et al., "A Comparative Study of Battered Women and Their Children in Italy and the United States," Journal of Family Violence 17.1[2002]: 53-74.)