Dickerson Kelli L, Lindner Sonia, Scurich Nicholas, Quas Jodi A
1 Department of Psychology and Social Behavior, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA.
2 Department of Criminology, Law and Society, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA.
Child Maltreat. 2017 Aug;22(3):256-264. doi: 10.1177/1077559517709558. Epub 2017 May 26.
In order to identify victims of child neglect, social service workers rely heavily on referrals from concerned friends, neighbors, and others in the community. Little is known, however, about how lay individuals perceive child neglect and what factors influence their decision to make a referral. This study explored the effects of child, parent, and participant gender on laypersons' evaluations of child neglect. Participants read a case of neglect of a child by a custodial and absent parent and then rated the parents' culpability and intentionality and decided whether the parents' behavior met the legal definition of neglect. When evaluating the custodial parent, men but not women viewed fathers as more culpable than mothers for the neglect of their son and viewed mothers as somewhat more culpable for the neglect of their daughter. Men also perceived absent mothers as more intentionally harmful than absent fathers. Finally, both men and women were more likely to qualify parental behavior as legally neglectful when the genders of the custodial parent and child matched. Results, which suggest that gender bias may exist in laypersons' perceptions of child neglect and may influence their decisions to report, have implications for identification of and intervention for vulnerable children and families.
为了识别受忽视儿童，社会服务工作者严重依赖来自关切的朋友、邻居及社区其他人员的转介。然而，对于普通民众如何看待儿童忽视以及哪些因素影响他们做出转介的决定，我们知之甚少。本研究探讨了儿童、父母及参与者的性别对普通民众对儿童忽视评估的影响。参与者阅读了一个由监护父母和非监护父母忽视儿童的案例，然后对父母的罪责和故意性进行评分，并判定父母的行为是否符合忽视的法律定义。在评估监护父母时，男性（而非女性）认为，父亲对儿子的忽视比母亲更应受谴责，而母亲对女儿的忽视则更应受谴责。男性还认为非监护母亲比非监护父亲更具故意伤害性。最后，当监护父母和孩子的性别相匹配时，男性和女性都更有可能将父母的行为认定为法律上的忽视。研究结果表明，普通民众对儿童忽视的认知中可能存在性别偏见，并可能影响他们的报告决定，这对识别弱势儿童和家庭以及进行干预具有启示意义。
