XIII World Meeting, International Society for Research on Aggression

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 29 KB
• Volume: 25
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0096-140X
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1098-2337(1999)25:1<52::aid-ab5>3.0.co;2-l

✦ Synopsis

Recent hospital-based epidemiological research (e.g. Sullivan & Knutson, 1998) has confirmed the putative link between child maltreatment and the presence of disabilities. Although that research provided suggestive evidence that disabilities could be seen as risk factors for maltreatment, limitations of the design and the archival nature of some data precluded strong inferences regarding the hypothesis that disability occasions risk for abuse. Within the Sullivan & Knutson sample was a small number of children with cleft lip and/ or palate that had experienced rather severe maltreatment. The experiences of those children in the context of the work by Barden, et al (1989) suggested that children with cleft lip and/or palate might be at risk for physical maltreatment. To test that hypothesis, a sample of young adult males who had been treated as children for bilateral or unilateral cleft-lip and/or palate at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics was recruited from within an ongoing longitudinal study. Using a reliable and valid measure of childhood disciplinary experiences, the cleft lip and palate subjects described their childhood. Although some subjects described exceeding punitive experiences, the overall pattern and range of scores did not deviate significantly from normative data obtained from the same geographical area. Thus, the findings do not support the hypothesis that children with cleft-lip and palate are uniquely at great risk for physical maltreatment.