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Regrowing a Culture to Reduce Child Abuse
A quarter of a century ago, Ed Zigler's keynote address at the National Conference on Child Abuse and Neglect was entitled "Controlling Child Abuse in America: An Effort Doomed to Failure." Zigler got it right, asserts presenter Patrick Fagan, but for the wrong reasons. Zigler placed his hopes on an expanded welfare state as the key to reducing child abuse. However, the welfare state is a safety net designed to catch the fallout of family and community failure; it is not designed to grow strong families and communities. What we can do to prevent child abuse in the long run is to build family and community life that results in a reduction in abuse. The key to good family and community life is strong culture. This raises the question of the relationship between good social policy and the growing of good culture. This session will present proposals for strengthening culture in ways that could reduce the incidence of child maltreatment. Patrick Fagan has been the Fitzgerald Research Fellow in Family and Culture Issues at the Heritage Foundation for the past nine years. Prior to joining the Heritage Foundation, he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Social Services Policy at the Department of Health and Human Services in the first Bush Administration. Mr. Fagan specializes in synthesizing empirical findings in the social sciences that illustrate the relationship between patterns of family and religious life at the community level and the demands on government social services.
Patrick F. Fagan
William H.G. Fitzgerald
Research Fellow in Family
and Cultural Issues
The Heritage Foundation
Washington, DC