Although drug use is considered a risk factor for child maltreatment, very little work has examined how the drug environment may affect physical abuse and neglect by parents. Utilizing information from a telephone survey with 2,597 respondents from 43 cities with valid police data on narcotics incidents, we analyzed the relationship between drug use, drug availability, and child maltreatment using multilevel models. City-level rates of drug abuse and dependence were related to more frequent physical abuse. Parents who use drugs in areas with greater availability of drugs reported more physical abuse and physical neglect. Emotional support was protective of all types of maltreatment. While most child welfare interventions focus on reducing parental drug use in order to reduce child abuse, these findings suggest environmental prevention or neighborhood strengthening approaches designed to reduce the supply of illicit drugs may also reduce child abuse through multiple mechanisms.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 4. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 01 January 2023.
All research outputs
#10,865,617
of 33,738,238 outputs
Outputs from Child Maltreatment
#426
of 820 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#128,094
of 363,087 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Child Maltreatment
#4
of 9 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 33,738,238 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 67th percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 820 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 11.2. This one is in the 46th percentile – i.e., 46% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 363,087 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 64% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 9 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has scored higher than 5 of them.
