Child Abuse

Outline

I. Child Abuse

A. Cause

1. Family Values

a. Unstable marriage

b. Step parents

2. Religion

a. Attempt to exercise children

b. Medical neglect

c. Abuse perpetrated by religious authority

3. Corporal punishment

a. Spanking

b. Discipline

4. Depression

a. Neglect

b. Stress

c. Poverty

B. Types

1. Physical

a. Beaten

b. Assaulted

c. Starved

d. Burned

2. Emotional

a. Extreme behavior

b. Overly compliant

II. Reduce

A. Parental Licensure

1. Preventive interventions

2. Competent parenting

B. Programs

1. Building partnership

2. Adjusting Services

III. Organization

A. For Kids' Sake

1. Prevention of child abuse through education and intervention

Introduction

Most questions have answers and sometimes explanations, but there have been many answers to the question of why people abuse children? The trauma of a child being abused can be described in various ways. Child abuse is the mistreatment or maltreatment of a child whether it is mental, physical, emotional, sexual, verbal, or psychological abuse. Child abuse can be a traumatic experience on any person not only a child.

Child abuse is often synonymous with the term child maltreatment or the term of child abuse and neglect. It has been said that the trauma of being physical, mental, emotional, or sexual abuse as a child can effect an individual for the rest of his or her life. Such abuse can severely damage a victim's self-esteem. The effects of abuse are often pervasive in the mental, physical, and social nature. Suicide, violence, delinquency, drug and alcohol abuse, and other forms of criminality are also child abuse related.

Those who believe child abuse is extremely prevalent push for more aggressive child protection system that would allow charges to be investigated and prosecuted more efficiently. The increasing involvement has encouraged many people to be concern with awareness and understanding.

One of the major causes of a child being abused is, when he or she is in an unstable family. Unstable families, characterized by frequent changes of partnership, are replacing stable marriages. For a mother, this result is a greater stress and isolation from the child. Frequent family changes also result in frequent role changes for adults in the household, leading to more confusion and more stress for the entire family. In the two part families, mainly the stepfamilies, great deals of conflicts are presented. Of these parents, about 71 percent fought regularly about the children, 81 percent had a conflict over the use of alcohol in the home. Many of the females received very little poise and positive feedback from parents in the home.

The abusing family lives in a manner that separates the bearing and raising of children from traditional marriage. This undermines the well being of children. For every one- hundred children born in the United States, twelve entered broken families, either by being born out of wedlock or through their parents' obtaining a divorce. In such circumstances children are most likely to suffer abuse and neglect, and new subcultures of abuse.

Origins of religiously justified child abuse may seem hard to believe, but it occurs very frequently. Medical neglect dictated by religious beliefs is another route through which children become victims of religious ideology. Neglect is the most common factor of child maltreatment and can have severe consequences. Nevertheless, it receives less attention compared to sexual and physical abuse. Harm resulting from the deliberate withholding of medical care for religious reasons may be particularly serious because it is legally permitted in most jurisdictions, thus unlikely to be stopped. Corporal punishment, more commonly known as spanking, often escalates into child abuse. Spanking and other legal forms of corporal punishment of children are some of the major causes of physical abuse. Clinical work with abusive parents has shown that much physical abuse starts as an attempt to correct and control through corporal punishment. When the child does not comply or, in the case of older children, hits back and curses the parent, the resulting frustration and rage leads some parents to increase the severity of the physical attack and kick, punch, or hit with