The Protection of Children: State Intervention and Family Life

This reference work addresses the discrepancy between the number of officially validated instances of child abuse and incidence estimates obtained through social surveys. A major reason for this discrepancy is the rarity of allegations of maltreatment, which the authors explain through an examination of how clinical personnel confront, identify, investigate, and report instances of suspected child abuse. Topics include institutional framework and research design, the child as clinical and social object, the Rule of Optimism, the division of regulatory labor, coordinating intervention, the legalization of mistreatment, charges and defenses, social regulation, children's rights, and adults' liberties. Distributed by Ashgate. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.