Sen. Grothman: blame child abuse on non-married families

State senator aims to codify "nonmarital parenthood" as a "contributing factor" to child abuse and neglect

Amid debates on environmental deregulation, secret GOP emails, and the impending recall election against Gov. Scott Walker (and other Republican legislators), State Sen. Glenn Grothman circulated an email to his colleagues hoping to garner co-signers for a bill to address child abuse in our state.

A noble cause indeed -- in 2010 alone, there were nearly 40,000 reported cases of child abuse, and undoubtedly countless more that went unreported. Every day nationally, four children die as a result of abuse and neglect. The subject is nothing scoff at.

Yet Grothman's aims within this bill aren't to increase penalties on those that commit abuse on the weakest in our society. No, his plans call for something entirely different -- legally codifying non-married households as more likely to engage in abuse of children.

In an email sent to state lawmakers, Grothman lays it out there for all to see:

Under current law the board must distribute information about the problems and methods of preventing child abuse and neglect to the public and other interested organizations. They are required to include information to emphasize the role of fathers as the primary prevention of child abuse and neglect. This bill would require the Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Board to emphasize nonmarital parenthood as a contributing factor to child abuse and neglect. This relationship has been shown by many studies, including the National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (attached). This study is put together by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as a report to Congress on the issue. In this report it is clearly shown that unmarried parents, a single parent with a partner, or a single parent greatly increases the chances for abuse and neglect to children. This is an important aspect that the Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Board needs to address to keep current and future children safe in their homes.

Emphases added.

Click the image below to see part of the text of Grothman's bill. In it, Grothman lays out that the Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Board "shall emphasize nonmarital parenthood as a contributing factor to child abuse and neglect."


The bill would be quite contentious indeed -- according to the KIDS COUNT Data Center, nearly a third of all kids in Wisconsin live in single-parent households or households in which one adult is not their biological parent (excluding step-parents).

What's troubling is that Grothman's assessment is technically correct -- households with non-married parents typically do see greater instances of child abuse. But are these cases due to the fact that they're non-married households, or is there something else at play?

There are countless examples of single parents residing in our state that raise wonderful families. Clearly, a household with a single-parent or with living arrangements where one adult isn't the biological parent of a child residing there aren't inherently more violent or abusive -- other contributing factors are promoting abuse to spike within SOME households that drive those numbers up.

Those other factors include abuse of drugs and alcohol, as well as clinical depression, but notably also in households with high levels of income disparity. That is, in families where the overall incomes of single parents (or co-habitating adults where only one is a biological parent) are within poverty levels, you tend to see more cases of abuse occur.

Indeed, research from the previous National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect found that, "children from families with annual incomes below $15,000 were over 22 times more likely to experience maltreatment than children from families whose incomes exceeded $30,000. These children were also 18 times more likely to be sexually abused, almost 56 times more likely to be educationally neglected, and over 22 times more likely to be seriously injured."

The current incarnation of the NIS (the one Grothman cites himself in his email to legislators) also shows that "strong correlations between socioeconomic status and all categories of maltreatment are consistent with earlier NIS findings on household income."

These aren't just families living in single-parent or "non-traditional" households. Those figures come from research into all family living conditions, including married households. Poverty, it seems, plays a bigger role than anything else...even family structure.

But don't tell that to Glenn Grothman. His bill to tie non-married families to abuse has a clear agenda: promoting his ideal of "traditional" families, labeling those that exist outside that vision as troublemakers. His changes to the Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Board in no way address the issue of household economics, merely labeling single parents and families of co-habitating, non-married adults as inherently abusive, without any evidence to explain why.

That evidence, it seems, would run counter to Grothman's motivations. Grothman isn't concerned with ending abuse in families with low-income levels -- he's more concerned in promoting his "family values" beliefs, injecting it into the law without care for those involved.