Is Child Abuse Really Rising During The Pandemic?

As the coronavirus pandemic continues to overtake America, dozens of headlines are suggesting that social distancing and lockdowns could be causing a surge in child abuse.

Here’s the theory: Americans are losing their jobs at a rate unseen since the Great Depression, intensifying the strains on low-income families at risk of abusing or neglecting their children. During months of closed schools and shelter-in-place orders, such parents have also been tasked with full-time child care, a recipe for conflict in the home. Meanwhile, investigators and reporters of child maltreatment, such as teachers, are trying to monitor kids’ safety over Zoom, which is hardly adequate if their abuser is hovering just off-screen.

This all makes intuitive sense. And there is frightening reporting that at some hospitals, there have been more cases than usual of the most severe types of child abuse—including head injuries—in recent months, causing profound concern.

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For most Americans, it is nothing short of horrific to think of even a single child being so injured by his or her own parents or family members as to require emergency medical treatment.

Yet family advocates, child welfare about the over-policing of Black and brown people, it is mostly poor families of color who will be increasingly policed and stigmatized as a result of such hypothesizing.