 Incidences of sexual contacts of children: Impacts of family characteristics and family structure from a national samplePatrick Leung, Russell L. Curtis and Susan C. Mapp Children and Youth Services Review, 2010, vol. 32, issue 5, 650-656 Abstract: Objective This study analyzes the prevalence of child sexual touching before puberty (age 11 or younger) and its connection to family structure during adolescence.Method Data were analyzed from the National Health and Social Life Survey, a stratified random probability survey of 3432 non-institutionalized respondents who were 18 to 59Â years of age.Results A total of 566 respondents (16.5%) reported prepubertal sexual touching. The overall percentage differences between these "reported" respondents and the rest of the respondents by gender, race or socioeconomic status measures were not significant. The odds of being touched were 1.589 times higher when the child did not live with both parents at age 14 due to parental divorce, and 2.134 times higher due to institutionalization of one or both parents.Conclusions Policies should focus on supporting single mothers and parents who both work outside of the home to reduce the likelihood that children are left vulnerable and at risk of being sexually touched. Keywords: Child; sexual; abuse; prevalence; Sexual; touching; Single; mothers; Family; structure; Child; welfare; policy; National; Health; and; Social; Life; Survey (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:cysrev:v:32:y:2010:i:5:p:650-656 Access Statistics for this article Children and Youth Services Review is currently edited by Duncan Lindsey More articles in Children and Youth Services Review from Elsevier |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.