Community characteristics, conservative ideology, and child abuse rates

Child Abuse & Neglect 41 (2015) 126–135

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Child Abuse & Neglect

Community characteristics, conservative ideology, and child abuse rates夽 Rebekah J. Breyer, David MacPhee ∗ Department of Human Development and Family Studies, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523-1570, USA

a r t i c l e

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Article history: Received 16 August 2014 Received in revised form 24 November 2014 Accepted 26 November 2014 Available online 15 December 2014 Keywords: Child abuse Religion Conservativism Community context

a b s t r a c t Authoritarian ideology, including religious conservativism, endorses obedience to authority and physical punishment of children. Although this association has been studied at the level of the family, little research has been conducted on whether conservativism in the broader community context correlates with the mistreatment of children. The purpose of this study was to determine whether this relation between conservativism and physical punishment of children extends to child abuse rates at the community level. Predictors included county-level religious and political conservativism and demographic variables. Political and religious conservativism covaried, and both were inversely related to child abuse rates. Population density was strongly related to rates of maltreatment and with demographic factors controlled, religious conservativism but not political conservativism continued to predict rates of child abuse. The results suggest that community factors related to social disorganization may be more important than religious or political affiliation in putting children at risk for maltreatment. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction Authoritarian child rearing can be defined as parents’ attempts to control children’s behavior in a way that often adheres to theologically motivated and absolute standards (Baumrind, 1991). These rigid standards of conduct and the bestowal of ultimate power to parents originated in Puritan Christianity, where the goal of socialization was to impose submission to parental authority (Kuczynski & Hildebrandt, 1997). As Wesley (1783/1973, pp. 59–60) preached, “A wise parent . . . should begin to break [children’s] will, the first moment it appears. In the whole art of Christian education there is nothing more important than this.” Thus, authoritarian parents not only endorse parental power and rigid obedience, they are more likely to use physical punishment to enforce these beliefs (for a review, see Kuczynski & Hildebrandt, 1997). Although the relation between corporal punishment and religiously based authoritarian ideology has been documented in multiple studies (Straus, 2001), relatively little research has been conducted on the association between child abuse and authoritarianism, represented in the current study by conservative religious and political affiliations. The purpose of this study is to begin to fill in this gap in the extant literature. Unique to this investigation is the use of county-level data, which may provide insights into how local social norms contribute to harsh child-rearing practices (Klevens & Whitaker, 2007).

夽 The child abuse data were provided by the National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect at Cornell University, and have been used with permission. The data were originally collected under the auspices of the Children’s Bureau, with funding provided by the Administration on Children, Youth and Families. The collector of the original data, the funder, NDACAN, and Cornell University bear no responsibility for the analyses or interpretations presented here. ∗ Corresponding author. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2014.11.019 0145-2134/© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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The research question that framed this study is: Do U.S. counties with higher rates of religious fundamentalism and political conservativism also have higher rates of child maltreatment?

Authoritarian Ideology and Punishment Many Christian religious fundamentalists believe that the Bible is a traditional source of moral justification to support their ideas on obedience and punishment (Straus, 2001). In particular, prominent evangelicals are vocal defenders of the rights of parents to be in control of their household, and to use physical punishment to curb children’s misbehavior and ensure obedience (Danso, Hunsberger, & Pratt, 1997; Dobson, 1992). Indeed, parents who value obedience on religious grounds are more likely to support and rely on corporal punishment (Ellison & Bartkowski, 1995; Mahoney, Pargament, Tarakeshwar, & Swank, 2001). Some studies have tried to pinpoint which American religious sects are more in favor of corporal punishment (e.g., Grasmick, Bursik, & Kimpel, 1991). Among the major religions in the United States, both conservative Protestants and Catholics value obedience to authority more than other Americans. However, conservative Protestants expect obedience and endorse spanking much more than Roman Catholics and mainline Protestants, even when religiosity and demographic variables are controlled (Ellison & Sherkat, 1993b; Gershoff, Miller, & Holden, 1999). As well, parents who more frequently attend church place greater emphasis on child obedience (Alwin, 1986). Such research on parents’ authoritarian ideology, which in the present study is viewed in the context of Christian fundamentalism, is important because it demonstrates an association between attitudes and subsequent use of corporal punishment (Vittrup, Holden, & Buck, 2006). Conservative, traditional views in other religions, however, are not as consistently associated with endorsement of obedience or spanking. For example, both Arab and ultra-Orthodox Jewish societies tend to be conservative and traditional yet they have lower rates of child maltreatment than other religious groups in Israel, perhaps because their collectivistic values emphasize sensitivity to others’ needs (Attar-Schwartz, Ben-Arieh, & Khoury-Kassabri, 2011). Giladi (2014) noted that although Islam is diverse in culture and has complex views of children, Islamic parents generally value the protection of children and are encouraged to be affectionate and compassionate with their offspring. In parallel with some Christian interpretations of the Bible, corporal punishment may be viewed as consistent with Islamic law, yet many Islamic scholars repudiate this form of punishment. Other studies also present a less consistent picture of the association between Christian religious affiliation and use of corporal punishment. For example, Ellison and Bradshaw (2009) found no relation between membership in a conservative Protestant denomination and attitudes toward corporal punishment. Other research has found fundamentalist Protestant fathers to be more affectionate and emotionally involved because of the high value placed on family (Bartkowski & Xu, 2000). More broadly, religiosity may be beneficial to the extent that parents are more consistent disciplinarians, couples experience less marital conflict, and family members are more affectionate (for a review, see Mahoney et al., 2001). In terms of values and moral principles, several authors have pointed out that organizations such as World Vision and religious leaders, regardless of faith, make significant contributions to social justice and protection of children’s rights (Bunge, 2014a, 2014b; Melton, 2010). One explanation for the contradictory findings related to religious denomination and parents’ use of punishment is that specific ideological beliefs are more potent than religious affiliation as predictors of rearing practices. For instance, Ellison and Bradshaw (2009) found that endorsement of specific aspects of conservative doctrine, such as biblical literalism and belief in Hell, predicted support for harsh punishment whereas membership in a conservative Protestant denomination did not. In addition, sociopolitical conservativism predicted attitudes toward punishment whereas affiliation with the Republican Party did not. In a nationally representative sample of parents, Jackson et al. (1999) found that conservative sociopolitical ideology was associated with attitudes that devalued children and greater endorsement as well as use of physical punishment. Rodriguez and Henderson (2010) found, in their study of religious orientation and abuse potential, that biblical literalism as well as social conformity were significantly related to scores on the Child Abuse Potential Inventory. These studies suggest that dogmatism or rigidity related to child obedience may be the “active ingredient” linking religious conservativism to corporal punishment or child abuse (also see Mahoney et al., 2001). To date, most extant research on authoritarian ideology or religious beliefs and child-rearing practices has focused on corporal punishment; rarely has physical abuse been examined (Mahoney et al., 2001). The present study attempts to fill this gap by examining whether religious and sociopolitical indices of conservativism are related to child abuse rates. For several reasons, one would expect the same variables to predict child abuse as predict corporal punishment. First, religious ideology, particularly biblical literalism, has been implicated as a risk factor for child abuse (Greven, 1990; Rodriguez & Henderson, 2010). Second, although corporal punishment and child abuse are not synonymous, it is well-recognized that both exist on a continuum of parent-child aggression (Straus, 2001; Whipple & Richey, 1997). In some cases, there is not a clear distinction between acceptable forms of physical punishment and physical abuse (Youssef, Attia, & Kamel, 1998) given that corporal punishment commonly includes not just spanking and slapping but also use of a rod and hair pulling (e.g., Zolotor, Theodore, Runyan, Chang, & Laskey, 2011), which may leave injuries that are diagnostic of physical abuse. Also, spanking can become abusive when parents’ emotional arousal is combined with the punishment (Gershoff et al., 1999), and for many families and in most cultures, parental warmth does not mitigate the harmful effects of corporal punishment on children (Lansford et al., 2014).

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Empirically, studies have found that parents who spank, compared to those who do not, are more likely to self-report physical abuse of their children (Zolotor, Theodore, Chang, Berkoff, & Runyan, 2008). The odds of child protection services (CPS) involvement are 33% greater for children who were spanked at age 1, compared to toddlers were not spanked (Lee, Grogan-Kaylor, & Berger, 2014). In a recent cluster analysis of two representative samples of several thousand families, those classified in the Abusive profile differed from those in the Harsh profile only in the fact that the former but not the latter group had committed at least one severe assault on a child within the last year (Dufour, Clément, Chamberland, & Dubeau, 2011). The Harsh and Abusive profiles had the same attributes in terms of domestic violence, psychological aggression, and use of corporal punishment, but differed only in the severity of the assaults. Studies such as these explain why a meta-analysis by Gershoff (2002) found a very strong relation between parental spanking and abuse of their children, d = .69.

The Social Context of Child Abuse The present study is grounded in an ecological model of child maltreatment that emphasizes macrosystemic influences on child abuse risk. These distal influences include cultural factors and social norms that are presumed to contribute to punishment and abuse by shaping parents’ beliefs about child behavior and discipline (Ellison, Musick, & Holden, 2011). For example, religious leaders and media messages may contribute to a normative climate that influences parental decisions about disciplinary practices (Ellison & Bradshaw, 2009). Subjective norms also are affected by personal history. When individuals experienced harsh punishment in childhood, which may be more likely in authoritarian families, they are less likely to consider such behaviors to be abusive (Bensley et al., 2004). In conservative communities, deviations from these social norms may be viewed as an unacceptable challenge to authority, consistent with authoritarian ideology (Feldman, 2003). Additional contextual factors related to child abuse risk include community demographics reflecting social disorganization, community resources, and environmental stressors (Coulton, Crampton, Irwin, Spilsbury, & Korbin, 2007). In an analysis of studies that document linkages between neighborhood characteristics and child abuse, Coulton et al. (2007) found that child maltreatment cases disproportionately occurred in disadvantaged areas. For example, social networks are weaker and abuse rates are higher in communities with high residential instability and limited social and economic capital (Coulton, Korbin, Su, & Chow, 1995; Garbarino, Bradshaw, & Kostelny, 2005; Korbin, 2003). Families with lower education levels are more at risk for child maltreatment: Compared to university graduates, parents with a high school education are three times more likely to use corporal punishment (Youssef et al., 1998) and are more likely to abuse their children (Sidebotham & Heron, 2006), even within high-risk samples (Kotch et al., 1995). Families with incomes below the poverty level are at more risk for child abuse than higher-income families (e.g., Berger, 2005), and indices of neighborhood economic disadvantage also are related to rates of child maltreatment (Coulton et al., 2007; Molnar, Buka, Brennan, Holton, & Earls, 2003). Families residing in inner-city neighborhoods are twice as likely to be investigated for maltreatment as rural families (Sabol, Coulton, & Polousky, 2004). As well, multiple studies find that minority populations are at greater risk for child abuse (e.g., Cappelleri, Eckenrode, & Powers, 1993; Keenan et al., 2003). Finally, single mother-headed households are at elevated risk for child abuse (Berger, 2005), with effects mediated by socioeconomic deprivation (Sidebotham & Heron, 2006). However, some studies find no association between family structure and use of physical punishment (Nobes & Smith, 2002). The current study contributes to the literature on community factors associated with abuse rates but it does not include family-level measures. Coulton et al. (2007) observed that few extant studies of community effects on maltreatment have conducted multilevel modeling and when they have, the explanatory power of community variables diminishes when family demographics and processes are included in the models. In Molnar et al.’s (2003) study, concentrated neighborhood disadvantage did account for significant variance in parent-child aggression, but not after family demographics were entered into the model. Pinderhughes, Nix, Foster, and Jones (2001) included multiple distal and proximal predictors in their study of child-rearing practices and found that although neighborhood poverty, poor public services, and danger were significant predictors of harsh punishment, substantially more of the variance was explained by child behavior. Thus, we anticipated that some between-community variance would be explained by contextual variables as well as indices of conservativism, but recognized that community-level variables do not capture all processes that contribute to child maltreatment. Also important to note is that the definition of community used in the present study differs from how the term is used in many previous studies. Prior research on structural and demographic correlates of harsh punishment (e.g., Pinderhughes et al., 2001) or child maltreatment (e.g., Coulton et al., 1995) typically has focused on neighborhoods as defined by census tracts, zip codes, and programmatic catchment areas (for a review, see Coulton et al., 2007). The present study, however, relied upon substantiated child abuse reports that were collected at the county level, given that child protection services are organized and provided by counties in most states. Although county-level data may provide insights into the mental health geography (Wolch & Philo, 2000) of child maltreatment, and thus can “more appropriately [be] thought of as part of the community or macrosystem context in the ecological model” (Coulton et al., 2007, p. 1122), it is also the case that county-level averages may mask important heterogeneity in proximal processes and populations. For example, McLeigh,

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McDonell, and Melton (2014) found that resource variations within a given county, especially those related to mobilization in low-resource communities, were associated with reduced risk of maltreatment. The Present Study The present study tested the hypothesis that abuse rates are higher in counties that are more religiously and politically conservative. This hypothesis is based on previous research findings that authoritarian ideology, particularly religious fundamentalism, is associated with greater use of physical punishment, and that use of corporal punishment is strongly associated with physical abuse. Several demographic variables are consistently related to physical abuse at the level of individual families as well as the community, particularly socioeconomic status, population density, residential stability (a proxy for access to dependable social support), and ethnicity. Several of these risk factors are also associated with conservative ideology, and so will be covaried in the analyses. For several reasons, neglect cases were not included in the analyses. First, theories more often associate authoritarian ideology with corporal punishment and physical abuse than with neglect, with the latter more often strongly associated with family income (e.g., Slack et al., 2011). Second, distinct subtypes of neglect have been identified, with these subtypes being related in different ways to ethnicity and community poverty (Jonson-Reid, Drake, & Zhou, 2013). We therefore opted for a more direct test of the role of authoritarian ideology in abuse by focusing on physical and emotional abuse, without including moderating variables in this study such as ethnicity and subtype of neglect. Method Sample Multiple data sets for the year 2000 were merged to create a county-level data file for this study. The initial data set consisted of all county-level reports of child maltreatment in the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) Child File (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2004). This data set included 20 states, most of which had limited county-level data on child abuse. Therefore, five states were selected from different geographic regions that had the highest number of counties available for analyses: Massachusetts (MA), Florida (FL), Texas (TX), North Carolina (NC), and Washington (WA). Two states in other regions of the U.S. – Colorado (CO; Kids Count, 2014) and Missouri (MO; Missouri Department of Social Services, 2014) – had sufficient county-level data from other sources to be included in the sample. These data on child abuse rates were then merged with county-level archival data from the year 2000 on religious and political conservativism as well as multiple demographic variables that served as covariates. The final sample included 313 counties from seven states. Compared to the overall U.S. population, the counties in these seven states were somewhat more likely to be White (81% vs. 75.1% U.S.), less educated (19.6% vs. 24.4% college degree or higher), and lower income ($36,752 vs. $42,148 median income), with fewer single-mother headed households (6.33% vs. 7.21% in the U.S.). The logit d effect sizes for all differences between the population and sample demographic values were small, d < .19, with the exception of median income. Measures Child Abuse Rate. The NCANDS Child File provided county-level child abuse rates for MA, NC, FL, TX, and WA. Data for Colorado and Missouri were not compiled by NCANDS so county-level aggregate child maltreatment rates were obtained from these states’ websites: Kids Count for CO and Missouri’s Department of Social Services. For this study, rates of substantiated child abuse were combined across physical abuse and psychological or emotional maltreatment. Religious Conservativism. Information on county-level religious affiliation was extracted from the American Religion Data Archive (ARDA, 2014), which listed 149 denominations in its 2000 data file. A detailed description of the data collection procedures is available in the ARDA website. Using Ellison and Sherkat’s (1993a) taxonomy, each denomination was categorized as conservative Protestant, mainline Protestant, Catholic, and others. Examples of conservative Protestants are Assembly of God, Nazarene, Pentecostal, Seventh Day Adventist, and Southern Baptist. In order to be consistent with the literature, all evangelical Protestant denominations were considered as conservative, and mainline Protestants and Catholics were classified as mainstream; “others” were excluded from the analyses. The percentage of individuals in each county reporting affiliation with a conservative religious denomination served as one predictor variable. Political Conservativism. The percentage votes for George W. Bush in the 2000 election, by county, was used to measure political conservativism. Data from the American University (2014) 2000 election results indicate a link between conservative issues and votes for Bush. For example, only 13% of self-described liberals but 81% of conservatives favored Bush. Of the gay and lesbian community, only 25% voted for Bush. Of those who believe abortion should be always illegal, 74% voted for Bush. Of all religions, 56% of Protestants, 47% of Catholics, and 19% of Jews voted for Bush; 63% who attended church more than

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weekly versus 32% who never attended church voted for Bush. Thus, voting patterns in the 2000 election mirror endorsement of conservative versus liberal political issues.

Covariates. Based on prior research reviewed earlier (e.g., Coulton et al., 2007), a number of demographic variables were included that are proxies for stress, support, or cultural norms that could confound relations between authoritarian ideology and child maltreatment. The demographic covariates for 2000 that were extracted from the U.S. Census Bureau (2014) website for each county in the sample included: (a) median household income, (b) percent with a high school education, (c) percent with a college degree or higher, (d) percent nonHispanic White, (e) percent of single mothers with children, (f) population, (g) population density, (h) population change in previous 10 years, and (i) residential stability. Table 1 presents a demographic profile of the states in the sample, based on aggregated data from the 313 counties in our sample versus state-level data from the Census Bureau. Discrepancies in the county versus state means are attributable to counties with smaller populations being excluded from NCANDS reporting, because of confidentiality concerns. One consequence is that the current sample overrepresents counties with higher levels of in- and out-migration as well as counties who are more religiously conservative. The bias in the sample toward more religiously conservative counties was corrected with the Deming method (see Williams & Cottle, 2011). One possible contributor to county-level variability in abuse rates is the resources devoted to CPS investigations and services. However, finding country-level data on child protection resources was difficult. After contacting CPS administrators in each of the seven states, data were provided only for Texas. For Texas, data were reported by region – but not county – for caseload per worker. No other information such as financial resources for each child protection department was provided. Both MA and CO indicated that they did not collect such information as of 2000. Florida collected information at the district but not county level. Given the incomplete data, child protection resources were omitted as control variables.

Preliminary Analyses In order to determine whether multicollinearity may pose a concern in the hierarchical regression analyses, bivariate correlations were computed among the covariates. As shown in Table 1, population and population density covaried strongly, and several variables related to counties’ socioeconomic status were intercorrelated with a median r = .58: median income, percentage of high school graduates and college graduates, population change, and residential stability. Data reduction was achieved by entering these seven covariates, which were first centered, into a principal components analysis with varimax rotation. The five variables related to socioeconomic status loaded on the first factor and the two variables related to population density loaded on the second factor. The two components were correlated r = .29. The percentage of motherheaded households was used as an indirect measure of stress (Herbst, 2012) and the percentage of nonHispanic Whites was used as a proxy for ethnic norms related to corporal punishment (see Pinderhughes, Dodge, Bates, Pettit, & Zelli, 2000). Next, analyses were conducted to detect issues related to heteroscedasticity. Child abuse rates were regressed onto the two predictors and four covariates. Cook’s D was used to identify high leverage data points, and residuals were used to identify multivariate outliers. Four counties had residuals of greater than 3.00 and so their values were downweighted (see Wilcox & Keselman, 2004) before computing the final hierarchical regression.

Results Pearson correlations were computed in order to provide a preliminary test of the hypothesis that counties that are more religiously and politically conservative have higher rates of child abuse. Contrary to the hypothesis, there was a small but significant inverse relation between child abuse rates and the two indicators of conservativism (see Table 1). These two correlations would still be significant at p < .01 with a Bonferroni correction for multiple tests. Multiple county-level demographic variables also were related to child abuse rates. Specifically, child abuse rates were higher in urban areas (see Table 1); the correlations involving measures of population density are considered large effect sizes. In contrast to previous research at the family level, counties with higher levels of income and education had higher rates of child abuse, although the effect sizes were small. However, other demographic predictors of abuse rates were consistent with the extant literature. Namely, child abuse rates were significantly lower in counties with greater residential stability and more nonHispanic White residents, and were significantly higher in counties with more mother-headed households. These bivarate correlations do not take into account the confounding of political and religious conservativism with many of the demographic factors. For instance, more conservative counties also are generally more rural and White as well as less educated and wealthy (see Table 1). Therefore, hierarchical multiple regression was used to assess how conservativism is related to child abuse rates, independent of indicators of human and social capital. Four demographic covariates were entered in the first step: the two principal components related to population density and socioeconomic status, the percent of the population that is nonHispanic White, and the percent single-parent households. As shown in Table 2, a large proportion of the variance in child abuse rates was explained by the demographic factors, with population density being the only significant predictor. In the second step, political and religious conservativism were entered separately given that Ellison and Bradshaw (2009) found them to account for unique variance in predicting corporal punishment. As a block, the two

Variable

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

.33 .24

.08 −.05 .66

.31 .19 .74 .76

.05 .10 .59 .38 .48

−.20 −.15 −.47 −.56 −.66 −.57

−.43 −.50 −.03 .26 −.14 −.07 .17

.36 .38 −.12 −.36 −.09 −.21 −.04 −.68

−.30 −.20 −.16 −.08 −.31 .05 .05 .26 −.23

−.12 −.12 −.21 −.12 −.27 −.01 .07 .14 .01 .45

.49 .56 .20 .06 .18 .00 −.17 −.33 .25 −.17 −.20

Mean (SD) County

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

Population Pop. density Median income HS graduate (%) College grad (%) Pop. change Res. stability White (%) Single parent (%) Voted for Bush (%) Cons. religion Abuse

.61

184,901 362.12 (580.90) 36,751 (9,264) 79.30 (7.82) 19.56 (10.10) 20.34 (21.92) 52.79 (7.48) 80.97 (17.54) 6.33 (1.97) 56.33 (10.86) 47.71 (23.55) 3.24 (3.28)

State 169,833 223.19 (272.26) 42,198 (5,621) 81.97 (4.43) 26.17 (5.04) 8.69 (4.34) 50.90 (4.59) 83.58 (5.17) 7.45 (.74) 48.92 (8.68) 6.17 (9.23) 2.21 (1.41)

Note: Pop. density, population density (persons per square mile); HS graduate, percentage of high school graduates; College grad, percentage with bachelors or higher; Pop. change, % change in population between 1990 and 2000; Res. stability, residential stability (% of population living in the same household from 1995 to 2000);White, percentage of White of nonHispanic origin; Cons. religion, percentage of conservative religion; Abuse, rate per thousand of substantiated abuse reports. For r > .11, p < .05. For r > .15, p < .01. For r > .18, p < .001.

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Table 1 Bivariate correlations among community demographics, political and religious conservativism, and abuse rates.

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Table 2 Results of hierarchical multiple regression predicting county-level child abuse rates. Predictor Step 1 Population density Socioeconomic status White (%) Single parent (%) Step 2 Political conservativism Religious conservativism 2 Radj = .356, F(6,306) = 32.81, p < .0001 * ** ***

b .563*** .075 −.054 .024

R2  .333***

.020* .103 −.157**

p < .05. p < .005. p < .0001.

measures of conservativism accounted for significant additional variance in child abuse rates, with religious conservativism being a moderate effect size and the indicator of political conservativism trending toward significance, p = .10. Discussion The purpose of this study was to determine if there is a relation between religious conservatism and rates of child abuse. Some prior research suggests that conservative Protestants more often expect their children to be obedient and are more predisposed to use physical punishment to enforce expectations (Ellison & Bartkowski, 1995; Straus, 2001). However, other studies have found no association between religious conservativism and corporal punishment (Ellison & Bradshaw, 2009) or have observed fundamentalism or religiosity to be associated with greater parental nurturance (Mahoney et al., 2001). Few of these studies have examined the link between conservativism and child abuse. This study attempted to address this gap in the literature by using county-level data from seven states. Small but statistically significant inverse relations were found between child abuse rates and attendance at religiously conservative denominations as well as with politically conservative voting patterns. These effects diminished when community demographic variables were controlled because population density accounted for most of the variance in child abuse rates. Conservative Ideology and Child Abuse Rates It was expected that authoritarian ideology would be manifest at the county level in a correlation between percentage of the population attending conservative Protestant churches and voting for the conservative Republican candidate in the 2000 presidential election. The large correlation that was observed between these two county-level variables is consistent with exit polls from the 2000 election showing that high percentages self-identified conservatives and frequent church attendees voted for George W. Bush. Other researchers have observed that sociopolitical and religious conservatism are intertwined because of their similar belief system (e.g., Danso et al., 1997; Lakoff, 2002). Some studies, however, suggest caution in treating affiliation with a religious denomination or political party as synonymous with an ideological belief system. Notably, Ellison and Bradshaw (2009) found that parents’ favorable attitudes toward harsh punishment were not predicted by their membership in a church or political party; rather, specific conservative beliefs were predictive. In a similar vein, large-sample surveys (e.g., Jackson et al., 1999) have found conservative sociopolitical ideology to be correlated with the type of authoritarian parenting that Dobson (1992) promulgates. These studies suggest that proxy measures of conservativism such as those used in the current study may be too far removed from the child-rearing beliefs that affect parents’ disciplinary decisions (Vittrup et al., 2006) to be very predictive of child abuse rates. Contrary to our hypothesis, bivariate analyses showed child abuse rates to be lower in counties that had higher levels of religious and political conservativism. This finding invites two interpretations. First, given that political conservatives are more likely to endorse traditional family values (Lakoff, 2002), religiously conservative counties may be more likely to hold social norms that entail emotional investment in children (Bartkowski & Xu, 2000) and respectful, affectionate relationships among family members (Mahoney et al., 2001). A second, more pragmatic interpretation is that the conservative counties in this sample also differed from other communities, sometimes markedly so, in their demographic makeup. Specifically, counties that were religiously and politically conservative were also less educated, lower income, more White, and more rural. Consistent with previous research on community risks for child maltreatment (e.g., Coulton et al., 2007), each of these demographic variables was associated with child abuse rates, findings that we consider next. Community Context and Child Abuse Rates Community demographics often are associated with abuse rates (Coulton et al., 2007; Garbarino et al., 2005), especially variables that reflect disadvantage and social disorganization. The current study replicated previous research in finding that counties with high rates of maltreatment were more often urban and nonWhite, had more single-parent families, and

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had less residential stability. Population density was especially predictive of county-level child abuse rates, which accords with other studies comparing maltreatment investigations in urban versus rural communities (e.g., Sabol et al., 2004). One explanation for this finding is that urban areas more often are marked by social disorganization (Sampson & Groves, 1989), which includes weaker social bonds to others and less inclination to intervene on behalf of the community’s welfare. As a result, urban communities with higher rates of poverty, mother-headed households, and population turnover – as in the current study – tend to have the highest maltreatment rates (Coulton et al., 1995). With transience in the neighborhood, there are fewer interactions with neighbors, less monitoring of behaviors, and less sharing of child care, all of which are related to maltreatment, even controlling for SES (Garbarino et al., 2005). Urban areas also may differ from rural communities in the resources available to prevent child abuse or to conduct investigations. Although we could find no studies that document such differences, research on health disparities more broadly suggests that rural areas are less well funded in terms of various types of health care (National Rural Health Association, 2013). Systematic data on community-level resources devoted to child protection and family support would need to be collected in order to address this issue. Relatedly, urban community members may also differ in their perceptions of maltreatment and willingness to report it (Coulton et al., 2007). Limitations Although this study has several strengths, notably the inclusion of multiple control variables in addition to the two measures of conservativism, several limitations temper the strength of our conclusions. First, only two states (CO and MO) had child abuse reports available for every county. Of the 20 states in the NCANDS data set, few had sufficient county-level data to include in the analyses and of these, the counties with reported child abuse rates had relatively large populations of no less than 33,000 people. Presumably, data from smaller counties were not reported in order to protect families’ confidentiality. Although the demographic profile across the 313 counties was fairly similar to the U.S. population, the counties in the sample were more religiously conservative than the average for their seven states. On the other hand, NCANDS county-level data were not available for the six, mostly Southern states that are heavily (25–34%) Baptist (ARDA, 2014). Thus, it cannot be concluded that this is a representative sample of U.S. counties, particularly rural counties that are more religiously conservative. Also problematic was the lack of information about resources devoted to child protection. Data on county-level funding for prevention and investigations, as well as caseloads, would be invaluable to assessing how community resources relate to child abuse rates. Pinderhughes et al. (2001) provided indirect evidence that such variables may be important, given that parents’ dissatisfaction with community resources was significantly correlated with harsh treatment of their children. More germane to the current study, child abuse rates are affected by the community resources devoted to child protection. Funding has not kept pace with the number of children reported to CPS (Courtney, 1998), which translates into higher caseloads and added stress for each caseworker, making investigations and prevention less effective (Faller, 1985). The limited resources to investigate child protection cases also may partly account for the disparity between rates of self-reported acts of maltreatment in surveys of families as opposed to rates of substantiated cases reported by CPS. In some general population surveys, the self-reported rates were 7–17% higher than official rates of child maltreatment (e.g., Radford, Corral, Bradley, & Fisher, 2013). Previous studies of authoritarian ideology and spanking, as well as between spanking and child abuse, have largely relied on self-reported information whereas the present study used substantiated cases of maltreatment as the outcome variable. For this reason as well as sampling bias, our results may underestimate the degree of association between religious conservativism and child maltreatment. Finally, as noted previously, proximal indicators of individual family dynamics were not included. As Coulton et al. (2007) found in their review of research on neighborhood characteristics and child abuse, when family-level demographics are included in multilevel models, community characteristics usually do not predict child maltreatment or parent-child aggression (Molnar et al., 2003), perhaps because family poverty and structure better capture stress and social isolation. In the absence of family-level information, selection effects that predispose families to reside in certain communities cannot be ruled out. Also, other family processes that contribute to child abuse may be important to include in models, such as parents’ own treatment in childhood, stress, perceptions of danger in the community, and child behavior (Pinderhughes et al., 2001). Critically, without information on families’ belief systems, we cannot determine how distal variables such as religious and political conservativism translate into biblical literalism and aspects of authoritarian ideology that may more directly affect corporal punishment and child maltreatment (Vittrup et al., 2006). Such information is essential to public health campaigns designed to convince the public of the value society places on children and to alter social norms that tolerate violence toward children (Klevens & Whitaker, 2007). Conclusion This study explored risk factors related to child maltreatment from a different perspective in that county-level data were used to assess whether religious and political conservativism were related to child abuse rates, net various demographic risk factors. Contrary to expectations, an inverse relation was obtained between the indicators of conservativism and child abuse rates, although this association diminished when community demographics were controlled. Of all demographic variables included in the model, population density was the only one that explained a unique and large amount of variance in child

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