Most child abuse has a violent quality. A review of the research on child abusers reveals some interesting psychosocial and historical characteristics. Research has shown violence to be more likely in less stable populations, in persons with poor driving records and histories of severe accidents, and in those who are undereducated and unsuccessful in life. Violent individuals, compared to nonviolent persons, have been found to be more likely to reside in the southern United States and to adhere to a cultural group that advocates physical punishment. These violent individuals often have a history of parental deprivation, post childhood enuresis, cruelty to others as children, hurt self-esteem, and alcohol or sedation abuse. Psychologically abusive parents tend to be depressed, to project their self-hatred to the child, and to have a role reversal with the child. Some forms of child abuse involve infanticide, rejection, sexual abuse, restriction, oppression, and slavery. Parents who sexually abuse their daughters often feel depreciatory to women and are sexually rigid and punitive. Psychologically the abusive parent has phobic ideation, marked ambivalence, unresolved oral aggression, and sado-masochistic conflicts with a breakthrough of sadistic pre-genital material. The quality of the entire parental relationship is more significant than the actual physical abuse, with abandonment being the most serious abuse to the child. Clearly all forms of child abuse are a family affair. (Author/NB)