Abstract
During the past several decades progressive shifts from the classic family unit of two biological parents and their children to a variety of parental living arrangements have occurred that assumed to be associated with a greater likelihood of child abuse. The purpose of present research was to see the prevalence of child abuse in different family structures of Pakistan. A directional hypothesis was put forward to study the above mentioned problem. Family structure would be directly associated with the incidence of child abuse.
The research sample was comprised of two groups; 42 children from broken families and 38 children from intact families. The groups were matched on the child's age, family structure, school and socioeconomic background. Two interviews were conducted with parent and the child after getting their consent. The entire sample was collected from different English medium primary schools of Karachi. Frequencies and percentages of different variables were calculated.
The Mean score (1.7) of incidence of child abuse was greater in broken families than the mean score (1.2) of intact family. Majority of the children from broken family had poor relationship with their parents as compared to children from intact families. Majority (47.62%) from broken families reported physical abuse while 52.63% children from intact families reported emotional abuse.