The Unwanted Child ((This paper was first printed in the Int. Journal of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Medicine, Vol 9, 1997 No. 1. Correspondence may be sent to Dr. Verny at 36 Madison Avenue, Toronto, Ont., M5R 2S1, Canada.)

Studies of mothers who petitioned but were denied a legal medical abortion tell us a lot about the effects of prenatal rejection on children. Research from Finland, Sweden and Czechoslovakia is instructive in this respect. Blomberg (1980) observed that all the differences in the Swedish study were uniformly to the disadvantage of the unwanted children. In the Finnish study, which is still continuing, the incidence of infant mortality, cerebral palsy and mental retardation was significantly higher among the unwanted children than the controls (Myhrman 1986).

The Prague cohort (David, Dytrych, Matejcek, and Schuller 1988) follows the development of 2,290 children born in 1961-1963 to women twice denied abortion for the same pregnancy and pair-matched controls from age 9 through ages 21-23. All the differences noted were consistently in disfavor of the unwanted children. Over the years, these differences widened and many differences that had not been statistically significant at age 9 became so at age 16 or 21. The findings of the Prague study and also of the Scandinavian research support the hypothesis that children rejected prenatally will, more likely than controls, show developmental, psychological and social handicaps.

In a recently published paper (Bustan and Coker 1994), Ann Coker, epidemiologist from the University of South Carolina found that infants born of unwanted pregnancies are more than twice as likely to die within a month of being born than wanted children. The group studied were married, largely middle income women who were all receiving prenatal care.

A less extreme case of being born unwanted is the plight of children given up for adoption. Every study on adoptees shows that they are over-represented among children with behavior problems, and adult criminals and murderers. In fact, I have yet to find a serial killer or violent rapist who was a wanted child reared in a normal, loving family.

Across the land and all over the world too many children are dying after being beaten, tortured or shaken to death. The unspeakable horrors that are being inflicted on children of every age every hour of every day is barbaric. Those who are not killed are often crippled for life by neglect and physical, sexual and emotional abuse. The children who survive this process of abuse will repay the world and its inhabitants with rage and destruction.

The U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect (Rivera 1995), after a two and a half year nationwide study that included hearings in ten states, found a level of deadly abuse and neglect that is far greater than experts in the field had previously estimated.

The number of violent acts against young children in the U.S. constitutes a public health crisis, annually claiming the lives of at least 2,000 children and seriously injuring upwards of 140,000 others. Abuse and neglect in the home is a leading cause of death for young children in the U.S. outstripping deaths caused by accidental falls, choking on food, suffocation, drowning or residential fires. The vast majority of abused and neglected children are under four years old. In fact, the homicide rate among children in this age group has hit a 40-year high, a chilling trend similar in scope to the violence directed at teenagers from street gunfire.

The enumeration of violent acts is grim. What is even more disturbing is the failure of the child protective system. The report describes an alarming national environment of under-reported child abuse fatalities; inadequately trained social workers and medical professionals; inconsistent autopsy practices; and an American public that continues to regard child deaths as "rare curiosities." "When it comes to deaths of infants and small children at the hands of parents or caretakers, society has responded in a strangely muffled, seemingly disinterested way," states the panel.

It was only thirty years ago that a paper by Curtis (1963) first expressed the concern that abused or neglected children would become tomorrow's violent criminals and murders. Since then the notion of an intergenerational transmission of violence has become the premier developmental hypothesis in the field of abuse and neglect.

The scholarly literature on family violence has grown enormously. There is a consensus of opinion that the rate of abuse among individuals with a history of abuse is 30% which is approximately six times higher than the base rate for abuse in the general population (5%) (Parke and Collmer 1975). These studies also suggest the need to consider neglect as distinct from abuse, because in some reports (Rohrbect and Twentyman 1986) neglected children appear more dysfunctional than those abused.

In addition to studies of children directly victimized, the indirect effects on children observing family violence have also been investigated. Large-scale self-report surveys have found a modest, although fairly consistent, association between exposure to family violence and approval of violence or marital violence as an adult.

Owens and Strauss 1975; Kalmus 1984; Kratwski 1985). Studies of the children of battered women suggest that observing abuse or extreme marital discord may be as harmful to the development of the child as physical abuse (Wolfe et al. 1985; Jaffe et al. 1986).

There is no doubt that early child abuse and neglect place one at increased risk for delinquency, adult criminality and violent criminal behavior. However, a large portion of abused or neglected children do not succumb. In one study at Indiana University (Gamezy 1985) 26% of child abuse and neglect victims became juvenile offenders; 74% did not. Eleven percent had an arrest for a violent criminal act, 89% did not.

It is essential that we learn to understand and distinguish between factors that increase destructive and self-destructive behavior and factors that build strength and competence. What are the dispositional attributes and the mediating variables that act to buffer or protect children from misfortune? I shall address that question in a future paper.