Words, deeds, and motivations: comment on Maestripieri and Carroll (1998)

A considerable proportion of Old World monkey mothers living in social groups under seemingly benign conditions maltreat their young. This interesting finding is the basis for the suggestion by D. Maestripieri and K. A. Carroll (1998) that monkeys might provide an animal model for investigating child abuse and neglect in the human population. This suggestion tacitly assumes that the phenomena of abuse and neglect in monkeys and humans are based on similar processes. This possibility is more plausible for neglect than for abuse. Child abuse shows such great diversity of forms and causes in human societies that it is unlikely to have a natural counterpart among nonhuman primates. The suggestion that it does may inadvertently lend support to attitudes that are unduly restrictive or actively opposed to animal research in psychology.