Families, Mimetic Rivalry, and Disabilities

Conference on Violence and ReligionJuly 1, 2010

Margaret F. BrinigNotre Dame Law School

Integrating Religious and Professional Lives

• Story of my case as public defender. • Why would anyone abuse a child, particularly

a disabled one? • These situations are not Home Game: An

Accidental Guide to Fatherhood where you might feel like “throwing the kid off the balcony,” but you don’t.

The secular solutions: partial truth

Focus on offender: parental abuse as a child (acceptable way to behave- Sue’s story), involvement with alcohol and drugs, or when child interrupts intimate violence

Biology, especially when “stepparents” are involved, perhaps explains abuse of a child unlikely to “meaningfully contribute to society” or abuse of any child by a stepparent.

The whole topic’s discouraging and tends to be left by law schools to other disciplines (or there’s a focus on parents’ rights).

Guardianship of Phillip B.

• One of the best known law cases involving medical decision-making for minors involves a Down Syndrome child who was institutionalized and refused life-saving heart surgery by his wealthy parents.– “I have to think of my other boys…”

• Guardianship of Phillip B. appeared in media stories in the late 1970s

The puzzle solved: Integration

• The book group in Iowa: I Saw Satan Fall Like Lightning

• Mimetic theory explains not only why disabled children are so often targets of abuse, but also why ADHD children, creative and attractive, frequently become victims.

• It offers some possible help, both in terms of predicting repeated abuse and suggesting what to promote in families.

Mimesis in families

• Mimesis, or imitation, is natural and good. It is the way we learn, especially about relationships.– Col. 3:14/ Above all, put on love that is the bond

of perfection• We learn how to trust based upon our

parents’ unconditional love for us, their love for each other, and their love for God (the way we first glimpse God’s love for us)

Marriage and Adoption

• Marriage and adoption, two legal relationships, protect the bond of love mentioned in the passage from Colossians. Marriage, of course, is God given, and the Christian Bible also says we are adopted heirs of God (Rom. 8).

What happens in crisis?

• Like society, the subject of most work following Girard, families encounter crises- infertility, unemployment, illness. Goals individuals or the family may have are blocked.

• For some families, this creates mimetic rivalry—there’s a tendency to turn on each other and then fly apart. Mimetic desire mediates—something isn’t desired because of its ultimate benefits but because the rival wants it.

Incomplete institutions: stepparents

• In stepfamilies, there is competition for the pure, unconditional affection that already existed between the biological parent and child.

• There may also be a tendency, as there is for cohabiting relationships, for more of an exchange relationship, in which participants seek immediate rewards. Mimetic crisis factually is more likely in “blended” families and families in which adults are cohabiting.

Legal relationships and mimetic crisis

• The law formalizes and protects institutions were mimetic crisis is less likely, and privileges them. For once rivalrous behavior begins there is no real outlet without dissolution of the relationship (and even this may not be possible).

More abuse in Southern US?

Percent of Youth 4-17 ever diagnosed with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: National Survey of Children's Health, 2003

Top ten states for incidence of child maltreatment, 2008

New York 4,413,414 155,509 259,687 83,502 3.52

Florida 4,043,560 154,951 343,836 53,484 3.83

Missouri 1,424,830 54,635 79,623 7,235 3.83District of Columbia 113,720 4,506 11,166 2,757 3.96

Montana 219,498 8,699 14,477 1,886 3.96

Arkansas 700,537 27,846 57,986 9,847 3.97

Oklahoma 899,507 35,870 64,287 13,173 3.99

Tennessee 1,471,486 62,183 101,435 16,059 4.23

Kentucky 1,003,973 48,600 77,221 18,778 4.84

West Virginia 387,381 21,962 49,357 7,109 5.67

Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Statistics and Research, Child Maltreatment 2007 annual.

Ten jurisdictions with highest rates of child maltreatment, 2007

Maltreatment in ADHD population

Type of Abuse ADHD (n=140) Comparison (n=88) Total (N=228)

Physical 3 1 4Neglect 4 0 4Sexual 10 2 12Witnesseddomestic violence 1 1 2

Combination 2 0 2Total 20 4 24

A.M. Briscoe-Smith, S.P. Hinshaw / Child Abuse & Neglect 30 (2006) 1239–1255, at 1247 & Table 2.

Linn County, Iowa

• Within population of abused children, 25.5% had been diagnosed with or were suspected of having ADHD

• In Iowa as a whole, for 1997-99 (the years of the Hartley study), only 5.5% of the population had been diagnosed with or were suspected of having ADHD.

Source of data: The Co-Occurrence of Child Maltreatment and Domestic Violence: Examining both Neglect and Child Physical Abuse, Child Maltreatment 7 (4)(2002):349

Variable Unstandardized Coefficients Standardized Coefficients

B Standard Error Beta t Statistical significance

Constant -6.96E-03 .218 -.032 .975

Indicators of problems in bio parents

-.148 .126 -.132 -1.176 .244

Adoptive parents’ divorce

-.335 .303 -.124 -1.103 .274

Importance of religion

.193 .089 .248 2.174 .034

Did parties cohabit

8.841E-02 .033 .310 2.713 .009

Is respondent employed?

7.317E-02 .051 .160 1.449 .153

Spousal violence?

-1.89E-02 .037 -.057 -.514 .609

Were adoptive parents told?

-.140 .067 -.229 -2099 .040

From Iowa Adoption Study: Adopted Child’s Divorce R2 (adj.) =.224

Source of data: Iowa Adoption Study, Department of Psychiatry, University of Iowa, Iowa City.

Unstandardized Coefficients

Standardized Coefficient

Variable B Std. Error Beta t Sig.

(constant) 15.10 .368 41.052 .000

Adoptive parents divorced

.387 .514 .051 .754 .452

Marital status

-8.28E-02 .069 -.081 -1.194 .234

Respondent cohabiting?

9.778E-03 .071 .010 .138 .890

Grades -.439 .106 -.287 -4.143 .000

Indicators of problems in bio parents

-.766 .256 -.205 -2.996 .003

From Iowa Adoption Study: Adopted child’s years of education, R2 (adj.) = .123

Source of data: Iowa Adoption Study, Department of Psychiatry, University of Iowa, Iowa City.

Selective Abuse in FamiliesVariable Name

(1) Probit- Dependent Neglect (20)

(2) Probit- Dependent Neglect (20)

(3) Probit- Dependent Neglect (20)

(4) Probit-Dependent Abuse (67)

(5)Probit-Dependent Abuse (67)

(6) Probit- Dependent Abuse (67)

Disabled 1.5265(5.4183)**

1.5491 (5.2232)**

1.5475(5.0856)**

0.47821 (1.9692)**

0.70448 (2.6852)**

0.71907 (2.7368)**

Step -0.84276 (-2.0000)**

-0.92744(-2.0939)**

0.85623 (4.1169)**

0.76962 (3.7296)**

Child’s Age 0.00089910(0.030849)

0.053656 (2.6773)**

Child’s Sex -0.48651(-1.6362)

0.47935 (2.4460)**

Sex*Age -0.029092 (-1.0143)

0.078756 (4.4157)**

Constant -1.7637(-10.309)**

-1.5212 (-7.4356)**(-9.0270)**

-1.4129(-4.6141)**

-0.55662 (-5.6298)**

-1.1987 (-7.4458)**

-1.5257 (-6.1623)**

Elasticity Disabled/Step

0.94735 0.89470/-0.13360

0.87783/-0.14435

0.90838E-01 0.10988/0.30416

0.11861/ 0.26089

N 212 212 212 212 212 212

R2 (Maddala) 0.1322 0.1574 0.1641 0.1804E-01 0.1595 0.1327

From Margaret F. Brinig and F.H. Buckley, “Parental Rights and the Ugly Duckling,” Journal of Law and Family Studies 1, no. 1, 1999

Why are ADHD children abused?

• The root cause lies with other problems in their families, particularly rivalrous behavior among spouses, causes them to be treated as scapegoats, especially because dealing with them (and their schools) causes family stress. This stress is exacerbated in poor families.

• When there’s an unrelated adult in the household, they may be rivals because they monopolize parental time and are often beautiful and creative as well as difficult.

• However, research shows that ADHD didn’t predict family environmental characteristics. It’s not causal.

How religion helps (secular and religious views)

• Family oriented networks grounded in religious congregations may provide churchgoing parents with helpful models of married life, social and economic support. Married couples with more external support have lower levels of marital conflict.

A special case

• For African-Americans, wives but not husbands tend to receive social support from their children or the black church community. In these, the husband therefore needed more affirmation of their love. Many black families are not aided by formal marriage.

From a Girardian perspective…

• But more importantly, religion gives the ultimate solution because, by definition, for the believer, God is the Person we are to imitate and, by definition, we admire and venerate God rather than envy and rival God.

How can lessons from the religion and violence literature help resolve the child abuse puzzle?

• Helpful mimetics: children learn about relationships—to God, romantic partners and their own children, in the main from their parents.

• To the extent that families center on religion, the mimetics are less likely to become rivalrous. This counsels for at least strengthening the support of religious institutions.

25

Bio mom only

(***)

Never m

arried

(***

)

Married

, divo

rced, n

ever

remarr

ied (n

s)

Stepdad

(***)

warmth (1

-5) (***

)

child re

ligious a

ttendan

ce (**

*)0.00

2.00

4.00

6.00

8.00

10.00

12.00

Total Behavior Problems

LowHigh

*** statistically significant at p < .001

Total behavioral problems. Based on PSID and CDS public use data sets, 1997 and 2002.Can Law Shape the Development of Unconditional Love in Children? In Best Love of the Child (with Steven L. Nock), Timothy P. Jackson, ed., Eerdman’s, forthcoming 2010.

Total Behavior Problems

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

time received (0-72) importance of religion

Beh

avio

r Pro

blem

Inde

x

Value Low

Value High

External behavioral problems with relative effects of grandmother time and importance of religion to mothers (black children). Based on PSID and CDS public use data set, 1997 and 2002.

Legal implications for intervention in families

• Abuse + parental alcohol or drug abuse• Abuse + boyfriend/girlfriend/stepparent (non-

adoptive) in the home• Abuse + child is disabled (widen abuse to

non-provision of medical care), especially if ADHD

• Serious abuse of another sibling• Abuse of the other parent