Why does child maltreatment occur? Caregiver perspectives and analyses of neighborhood structural factors across twenty years

Research on caregivers' views of factors that contribute to child maltreatment and analyses of neighborhood structural factors offer opportunities for enhancing prevention and intervention efforts. This study compared explanations of the factors that contribute to child maltreatment in a neighborhood-based sample of adult caregivers at two-time points: 1995–1996 and 2014–2015 along with analyses of neighborhood structural conditions during the same period. The study sample consisted of two cross-sectional subsamples: 400 adult caregivers in 20 census tracts in Cleveland, Ohio from a 1995–1996 study, and 400 adult caregivers of the same 20 census tracts surveyed in 2014–2015. At each time point, residents were asked to rate how much each of 13 factors contributes to child abuse and neglect. Median regression analyses adjusted for individual and neighborhood characteristics showed that “lack of religion” decreased somewhat in importance over time, while that of “single parents” increased slightly. Otherwise, there was substantial consistency in caregivers' perceptions of factors contributing to maltreatment over the two study points. In terms of overall ranking, at each time point the most important contributors to child maltreatment were “drugs,” “alcohol,” and “psychological or emotional problems,” while the least important were “divorce,” “single parents,” and “lack of religion.” Differences in ratings of contributing factors were associated with individual and neighborhood characteristics, most consistently by participant race and age and by neighborhood maltreatment investigation rate. Despite these differences, for any maltreatment prevention or intervention effort using or planning to use maltreatment etiology in some way in its activities, etiology seems to represent a fairly stable platform for programming.