It has often been the opinion of many members of society that those who commit terrible offenses, such as child abuse, are simply sociopaths, and as a result, their actions can only be described as evil in nature. Yet this deterministic way of looking at such crimes fundamentally detracts from any meaningful analysis of both what the crime is and the reasons behind its perpetration: "These characterizations may explain some acts of child abuse just as they explain some conventional violent crime, but they ignore a host of important social structural and cultural factors that impact upon all forms of violence, "(Brown 558-9). One of the key features of child abuse is simply that it is deemed immoral by mainstream American society; judging from this observation, it is often more useful to determine precisely which factors cause people to not commit acts of child abuse.
             From the standpoint of social controls, the issue takes this wholly different form: "People commit crimes because it is in their nature to do so. The question that really needs an answer is why do most people not commit crimes," (Leighninger 327). Just as those who decide to become johns might justify their actions by pointing to the inconsistencies between the law and morality, it may be possible that some of those who abuse children justify their actions in other ways. However, it is more likely, in the case of child abuse, that differing social controls-those independent of moral concerns-may be absent in the cases of those who commit such acts.
             One study concerned with the factors that can give rise to child abuse found that there are a handful of socialization factors that tend to influence one's likelihood towards this form of deviance: "Results indicated that physical abuse by the father and sexual abuse by males increased sexual aggression by adolescents. Also, children's bonding to their mother was found to decrease their sexual...