More than a third of U.S. children and teens up to age 17 have been the victims of physical assault, primarily at the hands of siblings and peers, a new study reveals.
Researchers say that's the finding of the National Survey of Children's Exposure to Violence, a survey conducted every few years since 2008.
"Children are the most victimized segment of the population," says David Finkelhor of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire in Durham.
"The full burden of this tends to be missed because many national crime indicators either do not include the experience of all children or don't look at the big picture and include all the kinds of violence to which children are exposed," says Finkelhor, lead author of the study published in JAMA Pediatrics.
Assaults are most likely to come from people you spend the most time with, he explains, which for children are siblings, schoolmates and parents.
Almost 22 percent of assaults reported in the survey between 2013 and 2014 involved siblings, the researchers reported, and almost 16 percent involved age-related peers.
The rates of violence experienced by children appear to be stable compared with survey results from 2011, an indication that certain kinds of assaults may be decreasing, but "the problem is that there is still way too much," Finkelhor says.
The telephone survey, which collected data on around 4,000 children age 17 or younger, asked questions about child maltreatment, abuse by peers and siblings, sexual assault, conventional crime, indirect exposure to violence or witnessing violence committed against others, and Internet violence. Caregivers answered questions for children younger than 10.
Abuse and violence experienced in childhood are significant factors in a number of society's most serious health and social problems, Finkelhor says, and have been linked to adult drug abuse, criminal behavior, suicide and mental illness.
Sibling abuse is a particular problem, he suggests, because it is often discounted.
"We don't think of it as 'assault;' we think that's just how siblings are," he notes.
Single episodes of aggression from siblings might in themselves not be particularly consequential, he says, but over time they have a cumulative, negative effect.
Previous research has identified sibling victimization as a leading cause of trauma and distress experienced during childhood, he points out.
He urges parents not to accept aggression and violence as an unavoidable, benign part of growing up, calling it instead "one of the main perils of childhood."
