ABSTRACT
Infanticide, as a method of culling out unwanted or undesired children, is a practice that has been and continues to be practiced widely. Infanticide was routinely practiced in ancient Greece, Rome, Arabia, and China. Child labor is an example of culturally sanctioned child maltreatment that continues today in many parts of the world. In the nineteenth and the early part of the twentieth century, children in the United States labored on farms as well as factories, restaurants, and mines. The term maltreatment is preferable to the more commonly used term child abuse because it includes both acts of commission and acts of omission. Three other major forms of maltreatment have been recognized to be widespread: sexual abuse, neglect, and psychological maltreatment. Four major theories of parental maltreatment of children have been dominant. These theories are the psychiatric model, the sociological model, the social interaction model, and the ecological model.
