The Cinderella Effect is the tendency for nongenetic children to be abused at high statistical rates compared to genetic parents raising genetic children. The main contributers to the research on the Cinderella Effect have been Daly/Wilson but there have been many others, just not as thorough or far-reaching.
There has been many criticisms to the work of Daly/Wilson about it being biased and unscientific, daly/wilson reply to that idiotic criticism here: psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/ … buller.pdf
Researchers looking into the cinderella effect have controlled for socioeconomic issues among a few other things to limit available confounding factors that marr results. The results speak very loudly/clearly and for themselves.
As Daly/Wilson mention themselves:
- Daly, Wilson
In an arguement with kriswest about whether this phenomonen actually exists or not she pointed out it wouldn’t just be ‘step-children’ and so the theory is wrong. If she had actually read the original article in the original post, about half-way through the authors, state that they are defining step-parent like this:
Daly, Wilson, Cinderella effect, the facts.
- Daly, Wilson, Cinderella effect, the facts.
So, we are talking about a greater than normal incident of nongenetic parents abusing or killing offspring which isn’t theres.
Canada isn’t the only country which displays these rates of abuse, england and wales between 77 and 1990, 117 children were beaten to death by genetic fathers, and 103 by step-fathers. Considering that only 1% of children were with step-fathers, and over 90% with real fathers, this difference in statistics is huge.
So, while one the real fathers killed more kids, theres many many many many more real fathers compared to step-fathers, once again showing this huge increased abuse rate. Lets put it this way; the abuse rates were almost the same, and one group is giant while the other is small.
Australian data shows the same trends, the united states see’s this huge representation of step-child abuse as well. A bunch of statistics on abuse of non genetic children can be found here: psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/ … 0facts.pdf
Anyway, the results of the cinderella effect are not an endorsement of child-abuse. The fact that we know step-parents/non genetic parents are a risk factor doesn’t let these people get off any easier in court, it doesn’t provide them an excuse for their actions. Its simply a fact that raises our awareness about abuse, giving us a platform on which to work to fix the abuse, to limit the abuse, to give people awareness that we as humans can unconsciously without realizing it, treat non genetic children worse than real children.
Kriswest thinks that all research uncovering real abuses and why those abuses happen (byproduct of natural adaptations to raise your own children in this case) is an endorsement of it. That it makes us evil/scummy to admit that parents have a tendency to treat their own genetic children * A LOT better.
Well she’s wrong and ignorant. The first place to stop these abuses is to recognize that they happen, not deny them.
- I made reference to males being able to detect kin based on facial resembelence.Specifically offspring. Thats an issue of how people DETECT their own children, which would come naturally into play if they’re abusing *NON CHILDREN.
if independent research to this child-abuse research shows that men treat children well/less well based on facial resembelence, we can assume with a great deal of confidence that the step children who look a lot like their step-fathers have less of a chance to be abused and vice versa.
The Cinderella effect exists.