The question of preventing child abuse has been on my mind often of late because once again here in New Mexico, where I live, there is another horrific abuse case that ended in a child's death. We are routinely ranked last or near-last in child well-being nationwide and I am the former producer of a public television show that looked at the many ramifications of that ranking. Many times we talked about preventing abuse. As we all know, prevention is far more effective than treating a problem and the linger effects of child abuse are also incredibly costly to all of us.

The good news is there are a lot of people working on this question from a variety of angles. Those range from new methods such as using algorithms to determine true risk levels in a home where children are, to one that taps traditional knowledge in an indigenous village where volunteers intervene with families before abuse starts. Therapists in Mexico are using cartoons to encourage children to open up about abuse and neglect so there is quicker intervention. Many advocates also find basic parental education from home visitors can short-circuit abuse, especially for parents whose children have mental or physical disabilities. And in New York, the city shifted its focus from foster care to maintaining family cohesion by providing supportive services so parents don't continue to abuse and kids don't grow up to be abusers as adults. 

I focused on parental education because I believe it's important to emphasize that there is no reason why we should all assume that being a good parent is some kind of inherent genetic skill that magically surfaces when a child arrives. And yet that's exactly one of the enduring, if unconscious, myths that pervades our society.