Child Abuse
Definition of Child Abuse
Child abuse is also called cruelty to children, which is the purposeful infliction (施加) of pain and suffering on children through physical, ual, or emotional mistreatment. Prior to the 1970s, the term child abuse normally referred only to physical mistreatment. But since then its application has expanded to include physical violence; unjustifiable verbal abuse; the failure to supply proper shelter, nourishment, medical treatment, or emotional support; ual misbehaviors; and the use of children in illegal fields.
Current Situation of Child Abuse
Surveys in North America and Europe indicate that between 10 and 30 percent of young girls are subjected to exploitation or abuse as widely defined above. Estimates of abuse or neglect by parents or guardians range from about 1 out of every 100 children to more than 1 in 7, and figures are far higher if emotional abuse and neglect are included. Although widely prevalent, child abuse is often overlooked by family, friends, and health professionals. Prejudice, anxiety, and shame—not lack of information—seem to be the major reasons for the failure to recognize the private acts of violence. Child abuse can have serious future consequences for its victims, including delays in physical growth, damaged language abilities, and problems in personality development, learning, and behavior.
Causes of Child Abuse
Cruelty to children has several major causes. Abusive behavior of parents can be viewed as responses to stressful situations and feelings of powerlessness. As such, they show the abnormal efforts of s to situations that are out of their control and to regain a psychological balance through the force on defenseless children. Studies have shown that a large part of parents who abuse their children were themselves physically or emotionally mistreated during their childhood. Typically over disciplined and deprived of parental love in their childhood, these parents repeat the pattern with their own children, often in the belief that they are rightfully exercising their parental right to punish a child.
Legal Issues of Child Abuse
The legal definition of child abuse differs between societies and has changed greatly over time. For example, some European countries prohibit the use of physical violence to execute discipline, but others permit moderate forms of power infliction. Despite these differences, the abusive treatment of children, however it is defined, is widely forbidden by criminal laws. One of the earliest national laws to protect children from cruel treatment was adopted in Great Britain in 1884, when the National Society for the Prion of Cruelty to Children was organized. Similar organizations subsequently were created in other countries. In the United States in 1875, New York became the first state to establish laws to protect children. Its laws served as a model for other states, all of which developed laws defining child abuse a criminal offense.
Social Efforts in Combating Child Abuse
Since the 1970s, conservative and feminists(女权主义) groups, for different reasons, have sought measures to combat child abuse. Although earlier campaigns against child abuse had emphasized the threat caused by strangers, feminists stressed the greater er brought by male intimates, such as fathers, stepfathers, uncles, and brothers. Because abuse by male relatives is rarely reported, child- welfare supporters called for new laws that would allow greater intervention (干涉) by outside professionals. During the 1970s and 1980s; most states adopted some form of reporting procedure, by which doctors, teachers, and social workers were required to report any cases that might show suspected child abuse. The courts also change their procedures to grant more protection to victims. For example, judges and lawyers were encouraged to ask questions in a way that did not puzzle or frighten children.
ers of Overreaction to Child Abuse
By the mid 1980s, child abuse was considered a leading social problem in the United States and other Western countries. The extent of the problem seemed to be increasing, and many claims were made about the serious situation of child abuse. In part this was the result of new methods used by social workers and psychotherapists (精神治疗医师) to interview children suspected of being abused. Interviews conducted with these methods often suggested that the child had been mistreated, so many of the children who reported abuse through the new methods were inventing die stories. As critics later pointed out, the methods--which involved repeatedly asking leading and suggestive questions and rewarding children for giving the "right" answers—encouraged children to tell false stories of abuse or to believe, contrary to fact, that abuse had taken place.
One significant series of cases involving such reports were the trials beginning in 1984 of Virginia McMartin, founder of the McMartin Preschool in Manhattan Beach, California, and others on dozens of cases of child abuse. Most of the charges, which were based on reports of abuse collected in interviews with hundreds of students, were finally dropped for lack of evidence. In 1990, the last case resulting from the affair ended in a mistrial (无效审判), Even so, the careers of the McMartin family, as well as their reputations, were mined.
Recent developments
During the early 1990s, charges of child abuse had to face serious criticism, which caused a reverse to the child-protection movement. Following a number of well-publicized cases of child ual abuse and murder in the early 1990s, many U.S. states passed laws, which provided for the lengthy detention (拘留) of offenders, especially those who had aimed at children. They passed other laws, including variations of Megan’s law, which required that local schools, day-care facilities, and residents be informed by police of offenders in their communities. The laws were widely imitated in Europe. Nevertheless, reports of child abuse in developed countries grew sharply in the 1990s. Japan, for example, recorded a ten-fold increase in the period 1990～2000.
Opinions about the scale and nature of child abuse have changed greatly since the 1960s, and the notion that children are widely subject to abuse and exploitation has become firmly fixed in the public ideas. Child abuse has also become a major topic of study in academy; themes of abuse are now common in the social and behavioral sciences, as well as in such diverse subjects as literature, social theory, and cultural and women’s studies. The increasing interest in child abuse, child protection, and children’s rights was one of the most significant social developments of the late 20th century.
When people estimate the scale of child abuse, emotional abuse and neglect are always ignored.