Making an Issue of Child Abuse: Political Agenda Setting for Social Problems

by Barbara J. Nelson

In this absorbing story of how child abuse grew from a small, private-sector charity concern into a multimillion-dollar social welfare issue, Barbara Nelson provides important new perspectives on the process of public agenda setting. Using extensive personal interviews and detailed archival research, she reconstructs an invaluable history of child abuse policy in America. She shows how the mass media presented child abuse to the public, how government agencies acted and interacted, and how state and national legislatures were spurred to strong action on this issue. Nelson examines prevailing theories about agenda setting and introduces a new conceptual framework for understanding how a social issue becomes part of the public agenda. This issue of child abuse, she argues, clearly reveals the scope and limitations of social change initiated through interest-group politics. Unfortunately, the process that transforms an issue into a popular cause, Nelson concludes, brings about programs that ultimately address only the symptoms and not the roots of such social problems.

184 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1984

Reviews

[Kirsten · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great case study of political agenda setting and an excellent history of the origins of modern child law in the U.S. I have taught child abuse law and felt I knew it well, but still learned some new things about how these laws came into being.