Study focused on infants finds a distressing level of neglect

Data suggest drug abuse by mothers may have been the cause for reports of maltreatment.

Last update: April 3, 2008 - 7:36 PM

ATLANTA - About 1 in 50 infants in the United States have been neglected or abused, according to the first national study of the problem in that age group.

Nearly a third of the victims were one week old or younger when the maltreatment was reported, government researchers said Thursday.

Most of these cases involved neglect, not physical abuse.

In the case of the newborns, experts said that the data suggested drug abuse by the mother may have been the cause for reports of neglect but that they couldn't be certain.

The researchers counted more than 91,000 infant victims of abuse and neglect during the study period, Oct. 1, 2005, to Sept. 30, 2006. About 30,000 of those cases were newborns aged one week or younger. The information came from a database of cases verified by protective services agencies in 45 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

Other studies have looked at national child abuse and neglect cases, but this is believed to be the first to focus on infants, said study co-author Rebecca Leeb of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

"We certainly were distressed" by the study's results, said Ileana Arias, director of the CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. "It's a picture you don't want to imagine -- that this number of infants is being mistreated."

About 13 percent of the newborn cases were counted as physical abuse, meaning the large majority involved neglect. Federal officials define neglect as a failure to meet a child's basic needs, including housing, clothing, feeding and access to medical care.

The cases did not include new parents stumbling their way through breast-feeding or making other rookie mistakes. "Things like abandonment and newborn drug addiction would qualify as neglect, not things like parents learning how to be parents," Leeb said.

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