Children may respond to abuse differently.  Aggression at home may cause the child's self esteem to become very low.  Abused children are aware that some families are not abusive to their children.  Childhood experiences can have an impact on how their child will grow up.  Coping skills are often learned when a child is maltreated.  The effects of abuse are different among children.  How children perceive abuse, may be different than what we think.  Many times children are quite aware about what is right and what is wrong.  They understand, dysfunction within the family.

Gable (1998) researched neglected children's perceptions of how they perceive their own family. Two hundred and five families participated.  There were two groups: Those from a neglectful home and those from a non neglectful home.  Information was collected from three different sources.  Family demographic and family stress were measured, physical and socio-emotional environments, and perceptions of family functioning were also measured.  After the data was collected, the results of family demographics and family stress concluded that primary care givers in a neglectful family have less education than those in the non neglected families.  Age, gender, race were found to be the same within both groups.  Neglectful families had more stressful life events (e.g.: loss of a job, or death in the family).  The data for the physical socio-emotional environment concluded that a good psychological home environment was need for psychological growth, especially for those from a neglectful home.  Results for the perceptions of family functioning found that neglected children view their home life no differently than children from non neglectful homes.  The children from the neglected homes portrayed their family in a positive manner.  The findings in this study were different than expected.  The results suggest that the socio-emotional and physical environments of the home are looked upon as "normal" to the children from neglectful homes.  They paint a positive picture of how their families interact.  The author concluded that "The children from neglectful homes may have no other point of reference against which to compare their own family life" (p. 866). If the family lives in a neighborhood like their own, then most likely the children will not know how to base their judgements between a neglectful home and a non neglectful home.

The study respondents were from a low socio-economic background.  Respondents from a low socio-economic background will lower generalizability because neglect does not only appear in low socio-economic background families.  Most likely the morality rate was low in the experiment unless one of the children from the neglectful homes died or becomes hurt.  The sample primarily consisted of Caucasian and African-American children.