by Douglas J. Besharov and Lisa A. Laumann

About the authors: Douglas J. Besharov is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research and former director of the U.S. National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect. Lisa A. Laumann assisted Dr. Besharov with the preparation of this viewpoint while serving as a research assistant at the American Enterprise Institute.

For 30 years, advocates, program administrators, and politicians have joined to encourage even more reports of suspected child abuse and neglect. Their efforts have been spectacularly successful, with about three million cases of suspected child abuse having been reported in 1993. Large numbers of endangered children still go unreported, but an equally serious problem has developed: Upon investigation, as many as 65 percent of the reports now being made are determined to be “unsubstantiated...