is not are varied by time. (Shull, 1999, p. 1665) Though it is clear that by right or not there ahs always been a level of neglect and or overt mistreatment of children that is beyond the pale and socially enforced, if not illegal. The illegalization of the issue in modern times has also change the outcomes of the situation and demanded a clearer look at why it is that some parents through act of omission or commission step beyond the lines of acceptable, supersede the love they feel for their children and the innate desire to protect their children and maltreat them to one degree or another and others simply do not.
             From the vantage point of the present, the public outcry against family violence is shockingly recent. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children was formed only in 1875 (nine years after the formation of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals), and the arousal of professional concern about battered children dates only to 1962 with the publication of Kempe's seminal article ( Kempe, Silverman, Steele, Broegemueller, & Silver, 1962; more pervasive professional concern is far more recent.) Spousal assault was made a crime in all states only in recent decades ( Harvard Law Review, 1993), and there still are no laws against spousal rape in some states ( Dietz, 1996). Professional concern about the children of battered women is less than two decades old, and sibling and elder abuse are just now beginning to receive clinical and research attention. (Emery & Laumann-Billings, 1998, p. 121)
             Among the theories that are utilized to explain this and to explain the endurance of the social phenomena, there are many, tough this work expressly develops two theories for further inquiry with regard to social change and social development in child maltreatment, ecology theory and social learning theory. These theories both rest on the underpinnings of the concept of that which we are shown as a child and as a...