Mental health articles

Caregiving of the father are related to sexual abuse Sociobiological theory suggests that early patterns of caregiving are related to the risk of abusing one's child. Parker and Parker (1986), who were the first to test this theory, compared incestuous fathers and stepfathers to controls matched on age. They found that incestuous fathers were significantly less likely to be involved in childcare during the first three years of the child's life and to be less likely to have been in the home during that time. To adjust for some of the methodological weaknesses of this study, Williams and Finkelhor (1995) later compared offending fathers and a closely matched control group on their involvement in caregiving. In this carefully constructed study, they found that after controlling for other possible explanations, fathers who were actively involved with their daughters during a portion of the first six years of their daughters’ lives were at lower risk to commit incest. The types of caregiving that provided the most dampening effect were nonbodily caregiving activities, as compared to bodily caregiving activities. They also found that predisposing risk factors such as a previous abuse history were independently related to greater risk to abuse. Thus, early caregiving was not a failsafe mechanism. Indeed, a small group of men engaged in early caregiving as a part of the grooming process for later victimization. Finally, they found that early caregiving was not related to a reduction in sexual arousal. This study offers weak but mixed support for the sociobiological explanation of incest. Early caregiving did appear to provide an inhibitory mechanism for incest, but only when other predisposing factors were not present. Further, in some cases children were actually at greater risk when their fathers were closely involved in early caregiving. Finally, the mechanism of inhibition (i.e., decreased sexual arousal) was not supported. Another indicator of support for the sociobiological theory is that children are at greater risk of abuse by stepfathers, who are typically less involved in early caregiving than biological fathers. Indeed, Russell (1986) found that children were seven times more likely to be abused by a stepfather than a biological father and that 17% of female children living with a stepfather prior to the age of 14 were abused by him prior to that age. Margolin and Craft (1989) also found that stepfathers and adoptive fathers were disproportionately likely to abuse their children. These studies suggest that sociobiological theory has some empirical support, although the specific mechanism for the increased risk is not yet clearly explicated.

Tags: sexual abuse