A percentage of child deaths officially coded as sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) or accidental death might be more appropriately labelled as a child abuse or neglect death had there been a more comprehensive investigation. McCurdy and Daro (1994) reviewed national data for the United States and found that a high percentage of children who are listed a shaving accidental death or SIDS were involved with their local Child Protection agency for abuse or neglect prior to their death, suggesting the possibility of child abuse or neglect playing a role in the child’s death.
South all et al. (1997), using covert video recordings in hospitals, found that33 out of 39 cases of life-threatening health problems in the study’s children were caused by covert behaviour by the child’s mother. The covert videos showed mothers suffocating infants, poisoning children and so on when hospital personnel were out of the room.
Had the children not been in a hospital, they might have died and the cause of death been listed as accidental or SIDS. An important corollary to this study was that these 33 children had a total of 41 siblings, 11 of whom had allegedly died of SIDS. After being apprehended in the above video-recording cases, nine of the parents of the 11 ‘SIDS’ cases admitted to either suffocating or poisoning these children.
The motivation to abuse or neglect a child is not easily apparent. Theorists have suggested multiple motivations and causes, including mental illness, social learning from one’s own abused childhood, evolutionary pressures (such as step-parenting), anger management problems and antisocial abuse of power. While all of these show a degree of relevance in child abuse, none appear to fully explain it.