Golden
Administrator
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/25/why-are-mothers-boyfriends-so-likely-to-kill.html
Why Are Mothers’ Boyfriends So Likely to Kill?
“Our daughter is dead. The guy that’s been living in my house murdered our daughter.”
The details of the harrowing “Baby Doe” case are still unfolding. As Susan Zalkind reported for The Daily Beast, there is no forensic evidence in the case at this point and the current allegations are based primarily on Rachelle Bond’s statements. McCarthy’s lawyer has disputed Bond’s account.
But as it unfurls, the case could reignite controversial conversations about child maltreatment and cohabitation. After nightmarish incidents like these, it is often said that a mother’s boyfriend poses the single greatest threat to a child’s well-being. In fact, months before Bella’s remains were even identified, as Heavy uncovered, former America’s Most Wanted host John Walsh speculated that this may be a case in which a mother and a “live-in boyfriend” killed the child and “disposed of the body.”
But is the saying true? Are these cases really so predictable? Or is the “mother’s boyfriend” claim the sort of baseless factoid that we circulate to make sense of the unspeakable acts of which McCarthy and Bond stand accused?
One of the most-frequently cited pieces of research on the subject is a 1992 article in Child Abuse and Neglect by Leslie Margolin. By conducting interviews with nearly 1,000 Iowa women and combing through data from the Iowa Department of Human Services, Margolin found that mother’s boyfriends were responsible for 64 percent of non-parental abuse in single-parent families, despite performing less than 2 percent of non-parental child care.
Faced with this discrepancy, Margolin tried to isolate certain variables to explain it away. Was it solely a function of their gender? No, other male caregivers did not abuse children at nearly the same rate. Was it due to the circumstance of not being biologically related to the child? In part, yes, as “male non-relatives were significantly more abusive than male relatives,” but that still did not account for all of their overrepresentation.
Margolin then analyzed the unique family dynamics created by the boyfriend’s presence in the family, hypothesizing that children’s perception of the boyfriend or his perception of himself as an illegitimate caregiver could lead him to believe that “her children will not listen to him unless force is threatened or used.”
Margolin also examined various intra-family “coalitions” that preceded the instances of abuse in the sample. Generally speaking, either the mother and boyfriend were allied against the child, or the boyfriend perceived himself as being threatened by a mother-child alliance. The most common situation in Margolin’s sample was when “the boyfriend interceded on the mother’s behalf by striking her child” in reaction to some perceived misbehavior.
Further research has since fleshed out Margolin’s 1992 findings about the dynamics of child abuse in cohabiting couples.
A 2001 study in Child Maltreatment found that “the presence of a non-biological father figure in the home should be considered a significant predictor of a future child maltreatment report.” In a sample of 644 mother-child pairs, the authors found no significant difference in maltreatment between mother-father households and single-mother households, but did find that children with a cohabiting “father surrogate” were “twice as likely to be reported for maltreatment after his entry into the home.”
Perhaps tellingly, Bond’s next-door neighbor stopped seeing Bella “around the same time” as a “new boyfriend” appeared, as The Boston Globe reported.
In 2002, a study in Pediatrics looked specifically at cases of fatal child maltreatment over a two-year time period in Missouri and found the risk of fatal maltreatment was not increased for children living with a single parent, but that it was raised eight times if they were living with unrelated adults, “primarily in households including biologically unrelated adult males and boyfriends of the child’s mother.”
______________________________________________________________________________
quoted some of the article, u can see more if u click the link. not a pleasant matter but child abuse is way too common n shouldn't be a hush hush topic.
Why Are Mothers’ Boyfriends So Likely to Kill?
“Our daughter is dead. The guy that’s been living in my house murdered our daughter.”
The details of the harrowing “Baby Doe” case are still unfolding. As Susan Zalkind reported for The Daily Beast, there is no forensic evidence in the case at this point and the current allegations are based primarily on Rachelle Bond’s statements. McCarthy’s lawyer has disputed Bond’s account.
But as it unfurls, the case could reignite controversial conversations about child maltreatment and cohabitation. After nightmarish incidents like these, it is often said that a mother’s boyfriend poses the single greatest threat to a child’s well-being. In fact, months before Bella’s remains were even identified, as Heavy uncovered, former America’s Most Wanted host John Walsh speculated that this may be a case in which a mother and a “live-in boyfriend” killed the child and “disposed of the body.”
But is the saying true? Are these cases really so predictable? Or is the “mother’s boyfriend” claim the sort of baseless factoid that we circulate to make sense of the unspeakable acts of which McCarthy and Bond stand accused?
One of the most-frequently cited pieces of research on the subject is a 1992 article in Child Abuse and Neglect by Leslie Margolin. By conducting interviews with nearly 1,000 Iowa women and combing through data from the Iowa Department of Human Services, Margolin found that mother’s boyfriends were responsible for 64 percent of non-parental abuse in single-parent families, despite performing less than 2 percent of non-parental child care.
Faced with this discrepancy, Margolin tried to isolate certain variables to explain it away. Was it solely a function of their gender? No, other male caregivers did not abuse children at nearly the same rate. Was it due to the circumstance of not being biologically related to the child? In part, yes, as “male non-relatives were significantly more abusive than male relatives,” but that still did not account for all of their overrepresentation.
Margolin then analyzed the unique family dynamics created by the boyfriend’s presence in the family, hypothesizing that children’s perception of the boyfriend or his perception of himself as an illegitimate caregiver could lead him to believe that “her children will not listen to him unless force is threatened or used.”
Margolin also examined various intra-family “coalitions” that preceded the instances of abuse in the sample. Generally speaking, either the mother and boyfriend were allied against the child, or the boyfriend perceived himself as being threatened by a mother-child alliance. The most common situation in Margolin’s sample was when “the boyfriend interceded on the mother’s behalf by striking her child” in reaction to some perceived misbehavior.
Further research has since fleshed out Margolin’s 1992 findings about the dynamics of child abuse in cohabiting couples.
A 2001 study in Child Maltreatment found that “the presence of a non-biological father figure in the home should be considered a significant predictor of a future child maltreatment report.” In a sample of 644 mother-child pairs, the authors found no significant difference in maltreatment between mother-father households and single-mother households, but did find that children with a cohabiting “father surrogate” were “twice as likely to be reported for maltreatment after his entry into the home.”
Perhaps tellingly, Bond’s next-door neighbor stopped seeing Bella “around the same time” as a “new boyfriend” appeared, as The Boston Globe reported.
In 2002, a study in Pediatrics looked specifically at cases of fatal child maltreatment over a two-year time period in Missouri and found the risk of fatal maltreatment was not increased for children living with a single parent, but that it was raised eight times if they were living with unrelated adults, “primarily in households including biologically unrelated adult males and boyfriends of the child’s mother.”
______________________________________________________________________________
quoted some of the article, u can see more if u click the link. not a pleasant matter but child abuse is way too common n shouldn't be a hush hush topic.
Last edited:
