Cinderella effect
3407787
220036516
2008-06-18T00:00:59Z
Viriditas
101805
/* References */ fmt refs
The '''Cinderella effect''' is a term used by [[psychologists]] to describe the high incidence of stepchildren being abused, neglected or murdered, or otherwise mistreated at the hands of their stepparents at significantly higher rates than their genetic counterparts. It takes its name from the [[fairytale]] character [[Cinderella]], who in the story was cruelly mistreated by her stepmother and stepsisters.
==Research==
In the early 1970s, a theory arose on the connection between stepparents and child maltreatment. "In 1973, forensic psychiatrist P. D. Scott had summarized information on a sample of 'fatal battered-baby cases’ perpetrated in anger (…) fifteen of the twenty-nine killers – fifty-two per cent – were stepfathers."<ref name="Daly_Wilson_33">Daly & Wilson 1998, p. 33</ref> Although initially there was no analysis of this raw data, empirical evidence has since been collected on what is now called the '''Cinderella effect''' through official records, reports and census. Years of research have confirmed the [[hypothesis]] that stepchildren are significantly more likely to be abused in terms "from baby batterings (''sic'') to sexual molestation of older children" to murder.<ref name="Daly_Wilson_30">Daly & Wilson 1998, p. 30</ref> Studies have concluded that "stepchildren in [[Canada]], [[Great Britain]], and the [[United States]] indeed incur greatly elevated risk of child maltreatment of various sorts, especially lethal beatings".<ref name="Daly_Wilson_01_288">Daly & Wilson 2001, p. 288</ref>
For over 30 years, data has been collected regarding the validity of the Cinderella effect with all the evidence proving a direct relationship between step-relationships and abuse. All such evidence on [[child abuse]] and [[homicide]] "is derived entirely from official reports of child abuse or from clinical data."<ref name="Gelles_Harrop_79">Gelles & Harrop 1991, p. 79</ref> In Chicago, police homicide records show that "115 children under 5 years of age were killed by their putative fathers in 1965 through 1990, while 63 were killed by stepfathers (…) and because very few babies reside with substitute fathers, the numbers imply greatly elevated risk to such children."<ref name="Daly_Wilson_96_78">Daly & Wilson 1996, p. 78</ref> The most powerful evidence in support of the Cinderella effect is the proof that when abusive parents have both step and genetic children, they generally spare their own children. In such families, stepchildren were exclusively targeted 9 out of 10 times in one study and in 19 of 22 in another.<ref name="Daly_Wilson_05"/> This discrimination towards stepchildren is unusual due to "the following additional facts: (1) when child abuse is detected, it is often found that all the children in the home have been victimized; and (2) stepchildren are almost always the eldest children in the home whereas the general (…) tendency in families of uniform parentage is for the youngest to be most frequent victims."<ref name="Daly_Wilson_01_288"/> The Cinderella effect explains this discrimination of abuse among stepchildren.
==Daly and Wilson==
The most profound data on the idea of stepchild mistreatment has been collected and interpreted by psychologists [[Martin Daly]] and [[Margo Wilson]], who study with an emphasis in Neuroscience and Behavior at [[McMaster University]]. Their first measure of the validity of the Cinderella effect was based on data from the [[American Humane Association]] (AHA), an archive of child abuse reports in the United States holding over twenty thousand reports.<ref name="Daly_Wilson_26">Daly & Wilson 1998, p. 26</ref> These records led Wilson and Daly to conclude that "a child under three years of age who lived with one genetic parent and one step-parent in the United States in 1976 was about seven times more likely (…) to become a validated child-abuse case in the AHA records than one who dwelt with two genetic parents."<ref name="Daly_Wilson_27">Daly & Wilson 1998, p. 27</ref> Records in Great Britain were also examined and found that children were beat by stepfathers at a rate of 100 times more than genetic fathers.<ref name="Daly_Wilson_05"/> Overall, their findings prove that children residing with stepparents had a higher risk of abuse even when socio-economic factors were considered.
==Explanations==
The Cinderella effect may be best explained through [[evolutionary psychology]]. Its origin and evolution into the role of human behavior is a direct effect of the [[Darwinian]] theory of [[natural selection]] as explained by Daly and Wilson. According to theory, "research concerning animal social behaviour provide a rationale for expecting parents to be discriminative in their care and affection, and more specifically, to discriminate in favour of their own young".<ref name="Daly_Wilson_8">Daly & Wilson 1998, p. 8</ref> Natural selection measures an organisms success by its reproductive ability, explaining why parents invest their resources in their genetic children. This evolved rationale is why parents have developed the desire to protect their own young for investment in their own fitness and to ensure "genetic posterity (inclusive fitness)".<ref name="Daly_Wilson_39">Daly & Wilson 1998, p. 39</ref>
As an evolved species, humans follow "the assumption that any evolutionarily successful organism must balance its allocation of time, energy, risk, and other resources to itself-its own growth and maintenance."<ref name="Burgess_Drais_374">Burgess & Drais 1999, p. 374</ref> Therefore, in the position of step parent, one cannot be expected to care for their non-genetic children out of [[altruism]] because they are earning no reproductive benefits. One would therefore expect greater parental responsiveness towards one's own offspring than towards unrelated children, and this will result in more positive outcomes and fewer negative outcomes towards one's own children than towards other children that one is expected to invest in (i.e. stepchildren). "If child abuse is a behavioral response influenced by natural selection, then it is more likely to occur when there are reduced inclusive fitness payoffs owing to uncertain or low relatedness."<ref name="Burgess_Drais_376">Burgess & Drais 1999, p. 376</ref> Due to these adaptations from natural selection, child abuse is more likely to be committed by step-parents than genetic parents - both are expected to invest heavily in the children, but genetic parents will have greater child-specific parental love that promotes positive caretaking and inhibits maltreatment.
It is sometimes argued that this evolutionary psychological account does not explain why the majority of step-parents don't abuse their partners' children, or why a significant minority of genetic parents do abuse their own offspring. However, there argument is based on a misunderstanding: the evolutionary psychological account is that (all else equal) parents will love their own children more than other people's children - it does not argue that step-parents will "want" to abuse their partner's children, or that genetic parenthood is absolute proof against abuse. Under this account, step-parental care is seen as "mating effort" towards the genetic parent, such that most interactions between step-parent and stepchildren will be generally positive or at least neutral, just usually not as positive as interactions between the genetic parent and the child would be.<ref name="Daly_Wilson_98">Daly & Wilson 1998</ref>
==Critical studies==
Since the introduction of the theory of the Cinderella effect, many psychologists have criticized and collected information, intending to refute the claim that stepparents and abuse in children are directly related. In one such study, [[John Harrop]] administered a survey via telephone, asking participants "whether they had 'slapped’ certain family members (considered one by one) within the last year, had 'punched’ them, and had 'used a knife or gun on’ them and so forth, when they had a disagreement or were angry with them’."<ref name="Daly_Wilson_51">Daly & Wilson 1998, p. 51</ref> For this particular study, although the survey revealed that "the 117 stepparents who did not hang up (…) were no more likely to profess that they had assaulted the children under their care than were genetic parents",<ref name="Daly_Wilson_51"/> the data is biased since those who do assault are unlikely to admit it or participate in such an interview via telephone.
==Alternative explanations==
There are many skeptics who disregard the Cinderella effect, convinced that step-relationships are not a direct cause of elevated abuse among children. One alternative explanation is that "a high incidence of abusive stepfamilies could, in principle, be a spurious result of biased detection or reporting."<ref name="Daly_Wilson_01_288"/> Evidence against this shows that when higher criteria is required in the analysis of records, the risk for stepparents to be the perpetrators increases, contrary to skeptics' beliefs. Others say that economic backgrounds could be an underlying cause and "one might hypothesize that the stress of poverty cause the poor to be especially likely to abuse and kill their children and also to experience high rates of divorce and remarriage, making steprelationship (''sic'') an incidental correlate of abuse."<ref name="Daly_Wilson_05"/> Although studies show that poverty increases the chances of child abuse, further analysis shows it has little connection to step-relationships.<ref name="Daly_Wilson_05">Daly & Wilson, 2005</ref>
==Notes==
{{reflist|2}}
==References==
*{{cite journal
| last = Burgess
| first = Robert L.
| authorlink =
| coauthors = Alicia A. Drais
| title = Beyond the "Cinderella Effect: Life History Theory and Child Maltreatment
| journal = Human Nature
| volume = 10
| issue = 4
| pages = 373–95
| publisher = [[Springer Science+Business Media|Springer]]
| location = New York
| date = Dec 1999
| issn = 1936-4776
| doi = 10.1007/s12110-999-1008-7
| accessdate =
}}
*{{cite journal
| last = Daly
| first = Martin
| authorlink = Martin Daly
| coauthors = [[Margo Wilson]]
| title = An Assessment of Some Proposed Exceptions to the Phenomenon of Nepotistic Discrimination Against Stepchildren
| journal = Annales Zoological Fennici
| volume = 38
| issue = 3–4
| pages = 287–96
| publisher = Finnish Zoological and Botanical Publishing Board
| location = Helsinki
| date = Sep 10, 2001
| issn = 0003-455X
| url = http://www.sekj.org/PDF/anz38-free/anz38-287p.pdf
| accessdate =
}}
*{{cite book
| last = Daly
| first = Martin
| authorlink =
| coauthors = Margo Wilson
| title = The Truth About Cinderella: a Darwinian View of Parental Love
| publisher = [[Yale University Press]]
| date = 1998
| location = New Haven
| edition =
| isbn = 0300080298
}}
*{{cite journal
| last = Daly
| first = Martin
| authorlink =
| coauthors = Margo Wilson
| title = Violence Against Stepchildren
| journal = Current Directions in Psychological Science
| volume = 5
| issue = 3
| pages = 77–81
| publisher = [[Association for Psychological Science]]
| date = June 1996
| doi = 10.1111/1467-8721.ep10772793
| url = http://psych.mcmaster.ca/dalywilson/violence_against_stepchildren.pdf
| accessdate =
}}
*{{cite journal
| last = Gelles
| first = Richard J.
| authorlink =
| coauthors = John W. Harrop
| title = The Risk of Abusive Violence Among Children with Nongenetic Caretakers
| journal = Family Relations
| volume = 40
| issue = 1
| pages = 78-83
| publisher = National Council on Family Relations
| date = Jan. 1991
| doi =
| url =
| accessdate =
}}
[[Category:Child abuse]]
[[Category:Evolutionary psychology]]
[[Category:Psychological theories]]