Monthly Archives: December 2013

Preventing Childhood Sexual Abuse

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Chances are that you or someone you know has been sexually abused. David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center, writes in the Future of Children that approximately 3% of children are likely victimized in a single year, and 25-40% of women and 8-13% of men report a history of sexual abuse. Many potentially negative consequences can result from this type of abuse; thus, prevention and treatment should be a matter of public policy.

What type of person sexually abuses a child? The answer might not be what you think. Finkelhor explains that only 14% of sexual abuse victims who come to law enforcement attention are victimized by a stranger, while 26% are victimized by a family member and 60% are abused by someone in the family’s social network. And it’s not just adults who perpetrate–about a third of abusers are juveniles. Also, only a small percentage of new offenders have a prior record. Luckily, many abusers are relatively low-risk for re-offending once caught.

Some of these figures might seem frightening to parents who feel a lack of control over their children’s safety. However, parents can use proactive strategies to protect their children, and if abuse happens, it should be reported promptly (regardless of who the perpetrator is) and followed immediately by professional treatment for victims. Having practiced social work with youth offenders and victims and their families, I understand it can sometimes be difficult to take the matter outside the family, but it really is in everyone’s best interest.

Policy makers have tried to alleviate the problem by focusing primarily on offender management (for example, registering sex offenders, conducting background employment checks, controlling where offenders can live, and imposing longer prison sentences) and school-based educational programs (for example, teaching children how to identify dangerous situations, refuse an abuser’s approach, and summon help). Surprisingly, there is little evidence to suggest that offender management prevents sexual abuse, despite its popularity. In addition to more research into these practices, Finkelhor recommends using law enforcement resources to catch more undetected offenders and concentrating intensive management efforts on those at highest risk to re-offend. School-based programs, on the other hand, have been shown to achieve some of their goals, but studies are inconclusive about whether these programs actually reduce victimization. For more information on how to prevent child abuse, see the Future of Children issue on Preventing Child Maltreatment.

How Parents Can Reduce Children’s Indirect Trauma from the News

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The Boston Marathon bombing, the Sandy Hook School shootings, the September 11 terrorist attacks. What thoughts and feelings come to mind at the mention of these events? That might depend on whether you were there, your personal connection to them, your age at the time, and your news media consumption during the tragedy.

I still remember my school day as an adolescent on September 11, watching non-stop news coverage, feeling despair, confusion, and deep concern for people I didn’t even know. Later, these feelings were coupled with hope and inspiration as I heard of profound heroism, all coming together to instill a deeper sense of patriotism and humanity. Yet it was a difficult time that we all had difficulty processing.

News reports of research describe how media exposure during times like these can be linked to acute stress, and sometimes has long-term effects. As Barbara J. Wilson explains in the Future of Children, children might be especially vulnerable to this effect. Continuous coverage of child abductions, war, terrorism, and even natural disasters make it difficult to protect children from disturbing news stories. Children may experience fear, anxiety, and trauma. And parents may not recognize that the symptoms their children manifest–such as physical aches, loss of appetite, nightmares, or clingy or aggressive behavior–are connected to media exposure.

What can parents do?

It depends on the child’s age, but all children benefit from limited media exposure and constructive conversations with a calm parent about what’s going on. Parents can promote coping strategies, such as exercise, emotional expression, or special play to help deal with frightening images in the media. Older children can be taught that the news overemphasizes crime and violence, and many terrible events, such as child kidnappings, occur infrequently in the real world. For younger children, it might be best to provide physical comfort and turn off the device. Permitting children under the age of eight to see graphic images in the news, even when the TV is on in the background, may present challenges, since it’s more difficult to explain these things to younger children. For more information, see the Future of Children issue on Children and Electronic Media.

Making Sense of International Comparisons of Students

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We are regularly exposed to news reports about the results of international tests, in which children’s scores in the United States lag behind those of their peers in many other nations in math, reading, and science. The results spur public debate as to why the nation’s educational system is “mediocre” or why test results could be meaningless altogether–for instance, China, with very high rankings, reports scores only from the wealthy cities of Shanghai and Hong Kong.

Is it even worth participating in these tests? What can they tell us, if anything, about America’s educational system and how to make it better?

In the Future of Children, Daniel Koretz weighs in with some answers. He stresses that these tests do not provide unambiguous information about the effectiveness of American high schools compared to those of other nations. For example, participant countries vary by year, making it difficult to compare U.S. students with an international average, and the varying curriculums and complex sampling designs also pose problems.

Despite their many limitations, Koretz argues there is value in these tests. In using the results, we should consider multiple tests rather than a single source. We should ignore small differences between countries and consider comparing the U.S. to nations that are similar, such as Australia or Canada, or that are particularly high-achieving. Perhaps the most important benefit of testing is the numerous hypotheses that result about what impedes or improves student performance, which can then be tested and evaluated.

While there are certainly more important indicators of student success (e.g., graduation rates, college degrees), test scores offer useful information, which should be considered but not relied on solely. To learn more about how to make sense of test scores and how to improve the educational system, see the Future of Children issue on America’s High Schools.