Citation

Hooper CA. Soc. Hist. Med. 1989; 2(3): 356-364.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1989, Society for the Social History of Medicine, Publisher Oxford University Press)

DOI

10.1093/shm/2.3.356

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

By far the most significant change in the field of child abuse over the last few years, has been the rediscovery of child sexual abuse and the questions it has raised about gender, sexuality, and the politics of the family. When Nigel Parton's book, The Politics of Child Abuse' was published in 1985, sexual abuse merited only one mention and child abuse by and large meant physical abuse and neglect. Parton's examination of the links between child abuse and poverty challenged the dominant 'disease model' of child abuse as the result of individual psychopathology, but families were treated largely as unproblematic units.

The response to child abuse in the UK is still primarily debated in the language of diagnosis and treatment, reflecting the dominance of the medical profession over the field since the 1960s. The six books listed above are valuable in helping to counter the unproblematic status of scientific neutrality this accords the concept, for they place child abuse within the context of its changing and variable social meanings and the structural inequalities of gender and class which shape interactions within families and forms of state intervention Together they add important new insights to our understanding of the historically and culturally specific roots of current definitions of abuse and of the wider political context in which children, parents, and legal, medical and child protection professionals interact.

Language: en