Article Critiques: Child Abuse

ARTICLE CRITIQUED FROM A FUNCTIONALIST PERSPECTIVE

Arbetter, S. (1995, November). Family violence: When we hurt the ones we love. Current Health 2, 22(3), 6-12.

The functionalist, or social systems, approach to the explanation of social behavior focuses on the organizational structure of social life (social construction) while the interactionist paradigm focuses on social life as a process of interactions among individuals within a social system (Babbie, 1992). The major difference between these models is the significance accorded in them to social influence. The social constructionist model accords the greatest level of importance to social influence. This functionalist theoretical paradigm holds that individual behavior is a function of the way a society is put togetherùbecause of the structure, specific behaviors are promoted or facilitated (Babbie, 1992). The functionalist approach to psychological inquiry, thus, focuses on actual behavior as opposed to the structural emphasis on mental processes.

The social constructionist model posits that biological sensations have no causative role in the creation of

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nces of the use of violence against defenseless children. Again, one implication of this analysis is that, as greater levels of real freedom, equality, and choice are made available to adult males within the wider society, the need on the part of these males to impose tyrannical rule within their family and household structures abates. A second implication of the attribution of perceived powerlessness as a primary cause of violent behavior within American society is that child abuse should be either absent or far less prevalent within families and households in the higher socioeconomic levels of society than within those families and households in society's lower socioeconomic levels. This implication generally is supportable because, although child abuse is not absent within the higher socioeconomic levels, the prevalence of child abuse is substantially lower within the higher socioeconomic levels of society. ARTICLE CRITIQUED FROM A MARXIST PERSPECTIVE Article Identification Danziger, S. K., & Danziger, S. (1993, Winter). Child poverty and public policy: toward a comprehensive antipoverty agenda. Daedalus, 122(1), 57-84. Marxist Perspective Marxist philosophy holds further that dialectical thinking must be a rational ex
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Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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