PSYC233 Day 28

The problems of defining abuse & neglect & obtaining unbiased samples have led some researchers to ______. Explain.

focus on a far less common behavior (infanticide) as a way of circumventing these problems The argument goes as follows: 1) although not all cases of abuse come to the attention of the police or medical community, the vast majority of cases of infanticide, a form of homicide, are reported. 2) Law enforcement officers are eager to arrest and convict murderers, especially murderers of children. 3) Although there are many fewer cases of infanticide than of abuse, we have a more complete sample of infanticide cases and they are more thoroughly investigated. -Martin Daly and Margo Wilson, Canadian researchers who have done the most thorough analyses of infanticide, have argued that the better data that come from infanticide cases more than outweigh the disadvantage of smaller sample size. They also point out that the characteristics of adults who commit infanticide are exactly like those of adults who commit non-lethal forms of abuse. -Moreover, the characteristics of child-murder victims and the demographics of their families are much like those of abused children. Therefore, Daly and Wilson argue that we can generalize from our knowledge obtained from murder cases to the wider problem of child abuse. Conflation, at least in this case, is not a problem.

Evolution & adaptation are based on ______.

reproductive success

RRP is GREATEST in _____.

young, but mature individuals

What can we conclude about infanticide?

-A conditional parental strategy seems to be most adaptive -Consider these alternatives: -Rigid: parental to the bitter end -Rigid: abandon at first hint of problem -But conditions are multiple -Stress -Parent age -Offspring traits -Parent-offspring relatedness -Who ever said life was simple?

What type of studies can & have been conducted on infanticide? What is the subsequent research question?

-CORRELATIONAL. -What conditions seem to be *associated* with abuse & infanticide? (NOT caused) -HOWEVER, we will see that the correlated variables are ones that have been shown to have a causal connection to infanticide in animal species, so the chances are good that they have a causal connection in humans as well.

Defining abuse & neglect may be difficult; equally complicated is finding data on these illegal & socially reprehensible acts. Why?

-Child abuse researchers often depend on various public agencies for identification of potential subjects. -People often report individuals to the police if they suspect that the person is abusing or neglecting a child. -Many states require that health care providers report cases of child injury that might be the result of abuse. ****But not all cases are reported so we must be cautious in generalizing to all cases from those that are reported, because they may not be representative of the population of all abuse and neglect cases. -some researchers have actually obtained cases from self-reports of abuse. Some parents will confide with researchers that they have abused their child, or they will state that the other parent did so. (How to verify? Are they even representative?)

Rodents & humans facing stressful conditions: A deliberate, cost-benefit analysis?

-No! Remember the whole business of strategies driven by "emotional wisdom?" -All we need is some process that is correlated with age (and RRP) that affects the likelihood of abandonment. One candidate might be parental experience. If less experienced parents are more likely to respond to stress by abandoning their offspring, then the protection of residual reproductive potential would work out as described. Another possibility is that younger adults have a more vigorous stress response, which leads them to react to stressors faster than do older adults.

RRP is the same idea as _____. Describe this relationship.

-Same idea as *Residual Lifespan* -Very important in life insurance industry -Both: related to age, but in a complex way -Age-dependent mortality (most likely to die in first year of your life)

What are the implications of RRP?

-When subjected to significant stressors: -Younger parents have more to gain by stopping or reducing investment in current offspring -"Protects" future reproduction opportunities -Always probabilities, not certainties

In coming up with definitions for abuse & neglect, why might we need to worry about conflation?

1) For example, although physically injuring a child and sexual molestation of a child are both examples of abuse, they are also quite different in many ways. -Further, the individuals who commit one of these forms of abuse may not commit the other, and there may be different risk factors associated with each of them. -If we lump both together into a single category and then hope to better understand the underlying causes of abuse, their differences may tend to obscure what might otherwise be relatively clearcut patterns. 2) Another form of conflation has proven to be especially difficult: the relationship between the adult and the child. -Child welfare agencies and law enforcement officials often do not distinguish between biological and adoptive or "live-in" parents. (but, as we have seen, there are very different rates of abuse here)

How do we classify the risk factors for abuse & infanticide?

1) Parental & family risk factors (risk factors from the parent & the family condition) 2) Child-related risk factors (those of the children themselves)

The basic idea underlying residual reproductive potential (RRP) is really quite simple, but there is a subtlety that needs to be considered. Explain.

1) The simple aspect of RRP is that there is a finite period of time during which reproduction can occur, so an individual who has just arrived at the start of that period has more RRP than another, older individual who is closer to the "finish line," other things being equal. 2) If the younger individual is sickly, he or she may have lower RRP than an older but healthier individual. 3) Always remember that RRP is about the future, not the past. It doesn't matter whether an individual has already reproduced or not. What matters is how much time they have remaining. 4) Ironically, however, very young individuals have less RRP than older individuals who are just reaching reproductive maturity. -The reason for this is that some risk of mortality exists before an individual becomes reproductively mature. -Newborns experience a period of elevated mortality in all species. -In humans, the first year of life is the riskiest; mortality rates then decline until puberty, when an uptick in mortality occurs again. -Surviving long enough to get to the time when reproduction can commence is not a given. 5) As a consequence of early mortality, RRP is greatest in young adults, greater even than the RRP of a youngster.

Abuse & infanticide: Child-related risk factors

1) The youngest children are at greatest risk of injury and death at the hands of parents. -Children under the age of two years are especially vulnerable. 2) Children with various health problems are more likely to be abused or killed, and young children with birth defects, especially of the face such as cleft palate, are at greatest risk. -A variety of neurological defects lead to shrill, loud, and excessive crying, and put these babies at risk of aggressive outbursts from parents who are at their wits end from the incessant, high-intensity crying. Some of these infant neurological problems used to be diagnosed by the characteristics of the baby's cry. The best-known of these is the *cri-du-chat* (cry of the cat) *syndrome*, in which the baby cries with a horrible, unnerving sound, one that would test the patience of even the best parents.

Abuse & infanticide: Parental & family risk factors

1) Younger parents are more likely to abuse or kill their children than are older parents. -If younger and older parents experience equivalent stressful conditions, younger parents are more likely to abuse than older parents. -Most abuse is brought about by stressful conditions, such as we saw in lecture when rodent mothers were put on inadequate diets. Why do younger parents succumb to such conditions more? => *residual reproductive potential* (RRP) 2) Less-educated parents are more likely to be abusive, as are parents who have weak or non-existent social supports, such as friends, neighbors, or relatives who can lend a hand with childcare when needed. 3) Parents who have more children are more likely to be abusive or murderous than parents with fewer children. 4) In general, economic stress exacerbates abusive behavior. 5) Family instability also increases the risk of abusive treatment of children. -In class we discussed step-parents as being more prone to violence toward children than are natural/biological parents (although most step-parents do a very good job raising children). -Family instability is especially common among young, poor, and relatively uneducated women, who may have a baby by one man who then abandons them. The woman then proceeds to live with another man, who knows full well that he is not the father of her child. (revolving-door of live-in boyfriends, especially problematic for child safety)

Proximate & Ultimate Causes of infanticide in Leger's story about his daughter called "Gerbil Tails"

1. Proximate (immediate): food stress 2. Ultimate: -live to reproduce another day -Ancestral gerbils sometimes faced the same problem

C: A third condition: _____.

C: A third condition: Offspring traits -"Discriminative parental solicitude" -Discriminate: to treat differently -Treatment based on offspring traits -Examples: -1. "runt" vs. "normal" puppies -2. Wood rats & food deprivation -male pups discarded first (males consume more milk) -female pups discarded if needed -Sophie's choice

One more condition: _____.

D: One more condition: Kinship One more condition: Kinship -Daly & Wilson (1985) -Hamilton, Ontario, Canada -Surveyed households for family composition data -number & ages of children -parental status -(biological, adoptive, live-in) -Obtained legal records of abuse & infanticide cases for Hamilton ...BAR GRAPH, COMMUNITY VS. VICTIM, TYPE OF PARENT(S) COHABITING, 0-4 year olds -(2 natural parents = significantly less likely than community to be victim) -Young kids (less than 5 years old) are more likely to be killed/injured/neglected if living with an unrelated adult -Most infanticides & serious injuries are committed by men who are not the biological fathers of the victimized child. -kids most likely to be victimized when young, living with natural mother, & living with unrelated father figure -Caveats: -Stress is almost always present (often poor, young parents) -Most men in these circumstances control themselves

Where did the term "Discriminative Parental Solicitude" come from?

Daly & Wilson -They argue that natural selection has carefully evaluated parental skills in those species that have parental care. -And although it may go against our sense of fair play, natural selection has led to human parental psychologies that value some offspring over others, and the disfavored ones are more often those that are physically malformed, behaviorally less responsive than others, or which subject parents to undue stress.

Infanticide as a _______. What's the ______?

Infanticide as a conditional parental strategy A: What's the condition? -Usually, stress -But there are others -Stressors & human infanticide/abuse -Basically, too many demands, too few resources -Poverty & lack of social support -An animal model: Hamsters & cold stress -Recall: 2 types of conditional strategies -Developmental -Behavioral -Which one applies here? (Behavioral) B: Another condition: Parent age -Other things equal, younger parents are more likely to stop investing in offspring -Why? -*Residual reproductive potential*: "expected" number of remaining reproductive episodes in the lifespan

We've learned about Strategies. What kind of strategy do we think of infanticide as? (Give gerbil & human examples)

Infanticide as a conditional parental strategy -Gerbil's flexible parental behavior -Caregiving -Cannibalism -Human's flexible parental behavior -Caregiving -Neglect, abuse, or infanticide -Yes, even cannibalism

The Daly and Wilson studies described in class have drawn great attention world-wide, some of it critical. Give an important example of the criticism.

Temrin et al. (2000) did a study in Sweden very much like the one conducted by Daly and Wilson in Canada. -The Swedish researchers, however, did not find that step-parent families were more likely to commit infanticide than were families that had both biological parents present. -The numbers were very small, however, so sampling differences may have influenced the results. -They went on to point out the vastly different rates of infanticide in Canada and Sweden (Canada's is much higher). -Why the difference is so great is anybody's guess. Temrin suggested that Sweden's liberal policies regarding the availability of birth control and abortion means that Sweden has far fewer "unwanted or unplanned births" than does Canada; the U. S. has even more. -Sweden also has nearly the highest standard-of-living of all countries, so at least some of the risk factors associated with abuse may be lower there.

An animal example of Discriminative Parental Solicitude

The common grackle, which is quite common throughout Nebraska during the spring and summer -lays more eggs with female embryos early in the breeding season and gradually shifts to more male embryos as the season progresses. -Female chicks are a bit smaller at hatching and grow more slowly than males. -When food supplies are sparse, which is more likely to happen early in the season than later, grackle parents allocate it more to females than to males. If there is plenty of food, the parents provide according to the needs of the offspring, which is easily assessed by how vigorously they beg for food when the parent arrives at the nest with a beakful of bugs. -neglect of males because of the greater energetic demands on parents