Preface; Part I. History And Denfinition: 1. Definitional issues in child maltreatment; 2. Physical child abuse in America: past, present, and future; 3. Pediatrics and child abuse; 4. Sexual abuse of children: causes and consequences; 5. The intergenerational transmission of child abuse; Part II. Parental And Contextual Influences On Maltreatment: 6. Lessons from child abuse: the determinants of parenting; 7. The antecedents of maltreatment: results of the Mother-Child Interaction Research Project; 8. Parental attributions as moderators of affective communication to children at risk for physical abuse; 9. Perceived similarities and disagreements about childrearing practices in abusive and nonabusive families; 10. Cognitive foundations for parental care; 11. Intergenerational continuities and discontinuities in serious parenting difficulties; 12. The construct of empathy and the phenomenon of physical maltreatment of children; Part III. The Developmental Consequences Of Child Maltreatment: 13. How research on child maltreatment has informed the study of child development: perspectives from developmental psychopathology; 14. Child maltreatment and attachment theory; 15. Patterns of maternal behaviour among infants at risk for abuse: relations with infant attachment behaviour and infant development at 12 months of age; 16. Finding order in disorganization: lessons from research on maltreated infants' attachments to their caregivers; 17. Peer relations in maltreated children; 18. The effects of maltreatment on development during early childhood: recent studies and their theoretical, clinical and policy implications; 19. Social cognition in maltreated children; 20. The effects of maltreatment on the development of young children; 21. Troubled youth, troubled families: the dynamics of adolescent maltreatment; 22. Child abuse, delinquency, and violent criminality; 23. The prevention of maltreatment; Name index; Subject index.