Child AbuseWhat is Child Abuse? By definition, child abuse is the deliberate and willful injury of a child by a caretaker hitting, beating with an object, slamming against a wall, even killing. It involves active, hostile, aggressive treatment. The key word in the definition of child abuse is deliberate.
Why would anyone physically harm a child? The physical destruction of a child is the extreme reaction of parents to the stress of having children. Most people are not aware of the fact that deliberately hitting a child is considered a felony in all fifty states. Abuse of children is more common than most people realize. At least one out of five adult women and one out of every ten adult men report having been abused in childhood. Recognizing child abuse in its several forms is a twentieth century phenomenon. Child abuse is also more likely to be recognized in economically developed countries than in other parts of the world.
Children have been beaten and abandoned for centuries, based primarily on the belief that children are the property of their parents. By educating yourself and your children about abuse, you can help prevent it from happening to your children and better cope with it if it does. (Child 6) There are four different forms of child abuse. They are physical abuse (child beating and neglect), sexual abuse, incest, and exploitation (such as child pornography). Physical abuse occurs when a caretaker deliberately beats the child.
Some examples of 2 physical abuse include burning with a cigarette, striking a child, and scalding with hot water. According to social agencies, beatings of children have been multiplying over the past twenty-five years or so. The increasing number of reports could mean that in recent years, social workers, health professionals, and other experts have become better able to recognize cases of mistreatment. Some 60,000 cases of abuse are reported annually. (Sargo 12) Many battered children must endure a second terrible problem – neglect.
Neglect, which occurs when parents or others who are responsible for a childs welfare fail to provide for the childs basic needs in any number of ways. Physical neglect occurs when the caretaker fails to provide adequate food, clothing, or shelter. Physical neglect also occurs when the person caring for a child refuses to seek health care or delays in doing so. Other examples are abandoning a child, either permanently or temporarily, and when a child is kicked out of home or refused to be let back in.
There is also educational neglect when parents do not force their children to attend school. Early civilization regularly abandoned deformed or surplus children, and ritual sacrifice of the children to appease the gods took place in Egyptian, Carthaginian, Roman, Greek, and Aztec societies. (Child 2) Either they do not enroll the child in school at the age required by law, or they allow their children to be chronically truant from classes. (Gelles 21). 3 Another form of neglect is emotional neglect, which occurs when parents or guardians behave in a way that deeply disturbs a young child.
(Sargo 15) Some examples of emotional abuse occur when parents fight or beat each other in front of a child, when they give a child permission to use drugs or alcohol or when the parents themselves are under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Then there is moral neglect, when parents let their children run loose in the streets at all hours so he or she risks getting in trouble with the law. Moral neglect also occurs when the parents allow or encourage the child to perform criminal acts. Of the various types of neglect, physical is said to be the most common. The DHHS study reports that some 571,600 American children suffer from physical neglect . Educational neglect is next at just over 292,000 children.
Emotional neglect is third with 223,000 victims. (Child 11) Sexual abuse, which is also known as sexual molestation, is defined as the exploitation of a minor for the sexual gratification of an adult. Sexual abuse involves forcing, tricking, bribing, threatening or pressuring a child into sexual awareness or activity. Sexual abuse is an abuse of power over a child and
