Both groups of respondents recognized the vignettes to represent serious incidents of child abuse; the citizens, not the social workers, proposed a higher level of intervention. Social workers tended to favor counseling as an initial approach, before resorting to the courts to rectify a domestic situation. Only "immoral parental behavior" failed to elicit concern from either group. The groups found these types of behavior to be abusive: confining the child in a small space, humiliating the child in public, singling one child in the family out for rejection or exploitation, abusing the child verbally, encouraging a child into delinquency, threatening, denying a child prescribed psychological treatment, not allowing social or emotional growth, and not providing a loving and supportive environment. Only age seemed to have some influence on the respondents' ratings, supporting the notion that there is a general standard or societal norm about the psychological abuse of children. 3 tables and 29 references