Many people say that our children are our most precious resource. They should be protected at all costs and allowed to grow up with out being mistreated. Child abuse is a disturbing problem in our country. Most people don’t think about child abuse.
They just go about their everyday lives doing nothing to combat this issue. They choose to ignore that the problem exists because it is too ugly to look at. It is easier to not do anything if you don’t see it in your own life. Therefore, it appears that those people who try to make a positive impact have in someway come in contact with abuse themselves. For this reason child abuse still exists and will probably always exist.
The way to stop the abuse is to educate our society about this issue. In recent years we have progressed a great deal in the awareness of this problem. A few decades ago it was not mentioned at all in the media and rarely at home. The subject was taboo and only brought to light in the most extreme cases. Parents using corporal punishment was more common in those days and therefore true abuse was harder to detect. Now many instances are reported on the news and in other media.
We are saturated with the reality of violence by TV shows, movies, ads, books, and other art forms. Children’s faces are on milk cartons and billboards designed to raise the public’s awareness. Most people, such as teachers and parents, know the basic signs to look for in an abused child. It seems that we have come a long way in the battle against child about. However, there are still many problems we must still overcome.
Most people don’t know that even when a case is reported there is still a high chance that nothing will be done to protect the child. The psychological abuse which children suffer from is rarely shown in dramatizations and the fact that domestic abuse and abuse of the child is directly related is something which has not been explored. Domestic violence can be related to child abuse in many ways. Forty five to seventy percent of women in battered women shelters say that their abusers have also abused children at some point. It has also been found that the chance of a mother committing child abuse doubles when she herself has been abused.
This seems hard to rationalize to someone standing on the outside. One would think that a mother would be pre-disposed not to inflict harm on her child if she herself is a victim. That instead she would be more protective. But in some cases the mother devotes all of her attention to caring for her abuser in order to prevent future attacks.
When this happens she is prone to neglect her child and possibly begin to abuse the child herself. She may take out her aggression and frustration on the child, as this may be her only outlet. She may also punish her child severely in order to hide the child’s behavior from the abusive figure. Sometimes children can get caught up in the violence, which occurs in the home.
If a child tries to stop a conflict their parent might hurt him or her. In other cases the child may simply be hit by accident as the fight occurs. Violence and other forms of abuse in the home always affect the children who experience it even if they don’t get directly involved. We are driven to believe that when child abuse is reported, it is quickly alleviated within our judicial system. This is not always the case.
When a dysfunctional family goes through an intervention there is usually a high probability of violence. When mothers try to leave with their children an abusive spouse may attempt to harm or kill them. For this reason many mothers stay in relationships where they or their children are being abused. When these cases go to court, the abuser is usually able to convince the court that the mother does not deserve sole custody of the child. In the most extreme cases, the children are given under the custody of the batterer. Finally, .
