Family structure as a risk factor of child abuse

ABSTRACT

During the past several decades progressive shifts from the classic family unit of two biological parents and their children to a variety of parental living arrangements have occurred that assumed to be associated with a greater likelihood of child abuse. The purpose of present research was to see the prevalence of child abuse in different family structures of Pakistan. A directional hypothesis was put forward to study the above mentioned problem. Family structure would be directly associated with the incidence of child abuse. The research sample was comprised of two groups; 42 children from broken families and 38 children from intact families. The groups were matched on the child's age, family structure, school and socioeconomic background. Two interviews were conducted with parent and the child after getting their consent. The entire sample was collected from different English medium primary schools of Karachi. Frequencies and percentages of different variables were calculated