Child Abuse: An Attribution Perspective

Child abuse poses significant challenges for scientists and practitioners. For one thing, the willful harming of an innocent child is a painful image that understandably evokes intense emotions. The resulting diversity of strongly held views about the nature of the problem and what to do about it can, and too often does, lead to polarization among professionals who share the common goal of responding optimally to the problem. In this context, the articles in this special section do yeoman service to the field, recognizing, as they do, that there is no substitute for developing a strong empirical foundation to address this important social problem. The focus on children’s attributions for abuse is particularly laudable as there is some evidence that children’s responses to stressful events (e.g., interparental conflict) is mediated by their appraisals of the events (e.g., Grych, Fincham, Jouriles, & McDonald, 2000). However, the challenge of researching attributions in this field is emphasized by the fact that investigation of abuse allegations and receipt of services may alter the very phenomenon investigated. The sensitivity shown to this problem in the articles is exemplary; Kolko, Brown, and Berliner (2002, this issue) collected their data within 2 to 3 weeks of intake at Child Protective Services (CPS) and Feiring, Taska, and Chen (2002, this issue) did so within 8 weeks of abuse discovery. As attribution research is extended into yet another substantive area of inquiry, a further challenge arises. What does one make of the enormous body of literature on attribution that continues to grow at the rate of about 350 articles per annum (1990-2000; mean = 364.2, range = 291-536)? Does the study of children’s attributions for abuse take the course followed by researchers on close relationships, who did not build on existing research when they began to study attributions? Or can this voluminous literature inform the study of children’s attributions for abuse? The remainder of this commentary offers some observations pertinent to the last question before pointing out features of these articles that augur well for the future development of this field of inquiry.