Children: The Battering Parent

Not many youngsters get through their early years without a spanking. But what monstrous parents would burn an infant's flesh with cigarettes? Immerse a baby in a sink of scalding water? Break its bones—in one instance, 17 times? These all too familiar examples appear in the growing body of literature concerned with what is known as the "Battered Child Syndrome." The phrase was coined eight years ago by Dr. C. Henry Kempe, chairman of the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, during a pioneer investigation of child beating and its causes. Kempe and other...

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