Child Abuse Essay
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Child Abuse - The physical or emotional abuse of a child by a parent, guardian, or other person
Child abuse makes for one of the most controversial subject matters in the United States today. Being that there are so many different forms of child abuse, many people seems to draw their own conclusions from what reports they hear through the media. Reports of child abuse, those including sexual abuse, beating, and murder, have climbed in the United States and the majority of authorities believe that the number of cases is largely under reported. When reported, child abuse cases are made complicated by inadequate foster care services and a legal system that has trouble accommodating the suggestible nature of children, who are often developmentally unable to distinguish fact from make-believe (Hay, 1996).
In 1993, the United States Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect declared a child protection emergency. Between 1985 and 1993, there was a 50 percent increase in reported cases of child abuse. Three million cases of child abuse are reported in the United States each year. Treatment of the abuser has had only limited success and child protection agencies are overwhelmed (Lewitt, 1997). Recently, efforts have begun to focus on the primary prevention of child abuse. Primary prevention of child abuse must be implemented on many levels before it can be successful. Prevention plans on the social level include increasing the economic self-sufficiency of families, discouraging corporal punishment and other forms of violence, making health care more accessible and affordable, expanding and improving coordination of social services, improving the identification and treatment of psychological problems, and alcohol and drug abuse, providing more affordable child care and preventing the birth of unwanted children. Prevention plans on the family level include helping parents meet their basic needs, identifying problems of substance abuse and spouse abuse, and educating parents about child behavior, discipline, safety and development. Primary prevention is both the prevention of disease before it occurs, and the reduction of its incidence. In the case of child abuse, primary prevention is defined as any intervention designed for the purpose of preventing child abuse before it occurs (Hay, 1996).
Between 1985 and 1993, the number of cases of child abuse in the United States increased by 50 percent. In 1993, three million children in the United States were reported to have been abused. Thirty-five percent of these cases of child abuse were confirmed. Data from various reporting sources, indicates that improved reporting could lead to a significant increase in the number of cases of child abuse verified by child protection agencies. The lack of verification does not indicate that abuse did not occur, only that it could not be verified. The facts are that each year 160,000 children suffer severe or life-threatening injury and 1,000 to 2,000 children die as a result of abuse. Of these deaths, 80 percent involve children younger than five years of age, and 40 percent involve children younger than one year of age. One out of every 20 murder victims is a child. Murder is the fourth leading cause of death in children from one to four years of age and the third leading cause of death in children from five to fourteen years of age. Neonaticide, which is the murder of a baby during the first 24 hours of life, accounts for 45 percent of children killed during the first year of life (Lewitt, 1997).
As I stated above, deaths from abuse are under reported and some deaths classified as the result of accident and sudden infant death might be reclassified as the result of child abuse if comprehensive investigations were more routinely done. Most child abuse takes place in the home and is started by persons are know to and trusted by the child. Even though it has been widely publicized, abuse in day-care and foster-care settings accounts for only a small number of confirmed cases of child abuse, a mere two percent. Child abuse is fifteen times more likely to occur in families where spousal abuse occurs. Children are three times more likely to be abused by their fathers than by their mothers. No differences have been found in the incidence of child abuse in rural versus urban areas.
The profound effect that child abuse has, and many times is long lasting. Abused persons may experience delays in reaching developmental milestones, refusal to attend school and in some cases can even develop separation anxiety disorders. Other consequences include an increased likelihood of future substance abuse, aggressive behaviors, high-risk health behaviors, criminal activity, depressive and affective disorders, personality disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, panic attacks, schizophrenia and abuse of their own children and spouse. Research has shown that a loving, caring and stimulating environment during the first three years of a child's life is important for proper brain development (Davis, 1998).
There have been some recent changes in regards to the causes of child abuse. The results of research initiated by the National Research Council's Panel on Research on Child Abuse and Neglect showed the first important step away from the simple cause and effect patterns. The panel stated that the simple cause and effect patterns have certain limitations, mostly related to their narrow focus on the parents. These patterns are limited by asking only about the isolated set of personal characteristics that might cause parents to abuse their children. These patterns failed to account for the occurrence of different forms of abuse in one child. These patterns had very little explanatory power in weighing the value of various risk factors involved in child abuse. As a result, they were not very accurate in predicting future cases of child abuse. To replace the old static pattern, the panel has substituted what it calls an ecologic model. This model considers the origin of all forms of child abuse to be a complex interactive process. This ecologic model views child abuse within a system of risk and protective factors interacting across four levels: (1) the individual, (2) the family, (3) the community and (4) the society. Some factors are more closely linked with some forms of abuse than others. The following are factors thought to contribute to the development of physical and emotional abuse and neglect of children:
Community/society Parent-related
High crime rate Personal history of physical or sexual abuse
Lack of or few social services Teenage parents
High poverty rate Lack of parenting skills
High unemployment rate Unwanted pregnancy
Emotional immaturity
Child-related Poor coping skills
Prematurity Low self-esteem
Low birth weight Personal history of substance abuse
Handicap Known history of child abuse
Domestic violence
Lack of preparation for extreme stress of having a new infant
(Understanding Child Abuse and Neglect,1996).
I would argue that our society does not really value its children. This argument is highlighted by the fact that one in four children in the United States lives in poverty. Poverty is the most frequently and persistently noted risk factor for child abuse. Physical abuse and neglect is seen more often among the people who are the poorest. Whether this is brought about by poverty-related stress conditions is debated. Secondly, many children do not have any form of health insurance, reasons being inaccessible and unaffordable health care, fragmented social services and lack of support from extended families and communities (Besharov, 1990). Furthermore, the presence of high levels of violence in our society is also thought to contribute to child abuse. Think about it, life-threatening violence is more common in the United States than in seventeen other developed countries. The United States leads developed countries in homicide rates for children from five to fourteen years of age. Other factors that may contribute to high rates of violence include exposure to television violence and reliance on corporal punishment (McKay, 1997).
Parents who were abused as children are more likely than other parents to abuse their own children. Lack of parenting skills, unrealistic expectations about a child's capabilities, ignorance of ways to manage a child's behavior and of normal child development may further contribute to child abuse. It is estimated that forty percent of confirmed cases of child abuse are related to substance abuse. It is also estimated that eleven percent of pregnant women are substance abusers, and that 300,000 infants are born each year to mothers who abuse crack cocaine. Domestic violence also increases the risk of child abuse (Helfer, 1998).
Other factors that increase the risk of child abuse include emotional immaturity of the parents, which is often highly correlated to actual age, as in the case of teenage parents, poor coping skills, often related to age but also occurring in older parents, poor self-esteem and other psychologic problems experienced by either one or both parents, single parenthood and the many burdens and hardships of parenting that must be borne without the help of a partner, social isolation of the parent or parents from family and friends and the resulting lack of support that their absence implies, any situation involving a handicapped child or one that is born prematurely or at a low birth weight, any situation where a sibling younger than 18 months of age is already present in the home, any situation in which the child is the result of an unwanted pregnancy or a pregnancy that the mother denies, any situation where one sibling has been reported to the child protective services for suspected abuse, and finally, the general inherent stress of parenting which, when combined with the pressure of anyone or a combination of the factors previously mentioned, may exacerbate any difficult situation (Besharov, 1990).
The United States Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect has stated that only a universal system of early intervention, grounded in the creation of caring communities, could provide an effective foundation for confronting the child abuse crisis. It is believed that successful strategies for preventing child abuse require intervention at all levels of society. No agreement has been formed concerning which programs or services should be offered to prevent child abuse. This is because research on the prevention of child abuse is limited by the complexity of the problem, the difficulty in measuring and interpreting the outcomes, and the lack of attention to the interaction among variables...
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