A Qualitative Study of Peer Abuse and Its Effects: Theoretical and Empirical Implications

Peer is an underestimated and neglected social problem (e.g., Besag, 1989; Roland Tattum Asher Pepler child abuse yielded 210 references from 1991 to 1993 alone, mainly parent related, and not a single one pertained to by age-mates. Most books on child-welfare policies fail to include (e.g., Costin, Bell, Rutter, 1982; Thomas Bornstein, 1985; Lerner, 1982; Lerner Morelli Ambert, 1992; Bradbury Patterson, 1986). The concepts of socialization and prevent us from focusing on the fact that children have important sociological attributes (Qvortrup, 1991) and perform social functions extending beyond their mere psychologization. Children have agency (Thorne, 1987) and, as Alanen (1990) points out, the triangle of childhood, family, and socialization, takes place within accepted notions of the other two, so that we can rarely even imagine novel relations between the three components (p. 15). However, contemporary developments on several fronts have allowed for the growing recognition of children's active roles and of the larger environment which ultimately has a great influence on children (Bronfenbrenner, 1987; McLanahan Skolnick, 1978, p. 331; Small Rubin & Ross, 1982). The importance of peers, however, has been neglected from the position of policy. Children are currently being socialized to recognize, resist, and report perpetrated by adults, but there is no parallel effort made with regard to abuse. Peer may be dismissed because it accords agency to children, rather than to adults only. It gives children a much more active role as social actors, taking children-as-abusers out of the usual purview of children-in-need-of-protection (Ennew, 1986). Peer does not fall within the current paradigms guiding child-welfare professionals. These paradigms largely focus on the family as a target for treatment and policing (Donzelot, 1979), and represent an extension of traditional socialization and developmental theories emphasizing the maternal role and the effect of parents on their children. …