Physical neglect as damaging to children’s social development as abuse

(Press-News.org) CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — While physical neglect is understudied compared to physical, sexual or emotional abuse, neglect is just as damaging to children’s social development, a new study indicates.

More than 9,150 individuals, nearly 41% of whom retrospectively reported some form of maltreatment before age 12 or reaching the sixth grade, were included in the study, published in the journal Child Abuse and Neglect. The project explored the impact of abuse or neglect on three dimensions of children’s structural peer relationships — whether maltreated youth were less social/more withdrawn, less popular with or avoided by their peers and how tightly knit or cohesive their social connections were.

 Experiencing any form of maltreatment negatively affected differing dimensions of children’s social development — but only physical neglect disrupted all three of them, according to sociology professors Christina Kamis, of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and co-author Molly Copeland, of the University of Notre Dame.

“Childhood adversity and maltreatment may disrupt the process of developing these peer relationships in early life, and we've shown in our prior work these skills are important for mental health and well-being over one’s lifetime,” Kamis said. “This is such a critical part of the life course, where children’s focus is shifting from parents to peers, and they are learning how to connect with other people. It prepares young people for romantic relationships and social relationships moving forward, so it has vast consequences.”

The sample population for the study was derived from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, also called Add Health, which initially surveyed more than 90,000 students in grades 7-12 across the U.S. in the 1990s and followed over 20,000 of the students in the main study into adulthood.

Nearly 10.3% of those included in the current study’s sample population retrospectively reported experiencing physical neglect, while 28.6% reported physical abuse, about 17.4% reported emotional abuse and more than 4.3% reported sexual abuse, proportions the researchers said were consistent with prior research using Add Health data. The majority of those in the current project who experienced abuse or neglect reported only one form of it.

Using in-school surveys, participants were asked to name up to five of their closest male and female friends at their school. Accordingly, participants’ sociality was measured by the number of peers they named as friends, while their popularity reflected the number of peers who listed them as a friend. The current study also assessed a novel perspective not often addressed by prior studies: youths’  social network cohesion, which reflected how tight knit or fragmented — i.e., scattered across various groups and lacking interconnections — their friend groups were.

Each child listed about four students as friends on average, and each of these children was listed as a friend by about four peers. However, those who experienced some form of abuse or neglect named fewer peers as friends, suggesting they were less social or were withdrawn, the researchers found.

“Maltreated children often feel shame and may have lower self-esteem and sense of belonging as a consequence of maltreatment, which precipitates withdrawal from their peers,” Kamis said. “Experiencing abuse or neglect may also cause children to anticipate rejection or victimization by their peers, making them less likely to reach out to others.”

In addition, those in the study who experienced abuse or neglect were less likely to be named as friends by others at their school, suggesting that they were less popular or avoided by other students.

“Maltreatment itself is stigmatized, and if it leaves a visible trace or is known to peers, it may cause peers to avoid these children,” Kamis said. “Maltreatment may also increase behaviors that reduce these children’s desirability as a friend, such as greater difficulty regulating their emotions, increased aggression or lower prosocial behavior.”

The researchers also found that maltreated adolescents were less likely to belong to tight-knit groups and more likely to have fragmented relationships that spanned multiple groups.

Cohesive, interconnected friend groups may sanction non-normative behaviors such as aggression or emotional dysregulation exhibited by maltreated peers, or reject these students, relegating them to fragmented friendships across the social environment, Kamis said.

Conversely, maltreatment may lead children to develop greater mistrust of other people or insecure attachment styles that make belonging to an interconnected group stressful, causing them to withdraw from close friend groups, she said.

Examining social effects by type of maltreatment, Kamis and Copeland found that experiencing sexual abuse predicted withdrawal, while emotional and physical abuse predicted avoidance by peers and fragmentation. Only physical neglect predicted negative effects on all three dimensions.

While Kamis said they were somewhat surprised by the ubiquitous effects of physical neglect, the finding makes sense because the manifestations of neglect affect how maltreated children see themselves as well as their peers’ perceptions of them.

“If you are not receiving proper housing, food and clothing, or you're not being bathed or taken care of at home, that can be visible to your peers and have stigma attached to it,” Kamis said. “The external manifestations of neglect may cause other children to avoid being friends with that child, while the shame the neglected child feels can also cause them to withdraw from others.”

Since children and adults who experience abuse or neglect are at greater risks of mental health problems and other threats to their well-being, Kamis advocates screening across the lifespan and providing support. “School can be a difficult arena for these children, so recognizing that they might need additional support developing friendships and breaking down some of the barriers with their peers is critical,” she said. “Missing the developmental benefits of peer networks may have a lasting impact on their ability to form social connections and experience greater well-being across their lifetimes.”

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