The New York Times explains how–in the same family–some children can be cared for while others are severely abused.
Lydia Polgreen writes (excerpt):
Richard J. Gelles, dean of the school of social work at the University of Pennsylvania, said the extreme level of abuse alleged in the Jackson case indicated that the boys were unwanted while the girls enjoyed a better relationship with their parents.
“Where there is extreme neglect or extreme abuse that borders on fatal, those children tend to be unwanted, unrelated or of ambiguous parenting,” he said. “Caregivers treat kids more harshly who are not their own biological kids, or who are untimely, unwanted or have fairly significant developmental or physical disabilities.”
Such disabilities can lead parents to abuse a child even though the other children in the home are relatively well cared for, Dr. Gelles said.
Sometimes a parent will abuse a child because of a perceived personality flaw — the child is too meek or too willful — or sometimes for no reason at all, said Gail B. Nayowith, executive director of Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York.
“It is a very complicated thing,” she said. “It is not necessarily a birth order thing, or necessarily a gender thing. It is usually about whether a child’s temperament and a caregiver’s temperament are in sync.”