Fight Against Child Abuse In USA

There are certain things that are universally seen as taboo or simply as disgusting by the majority of the cultures. Child abuse is certainly one of those things. We, as humans, can agree that a child is defenceless, and ignorant to the dangers of the world and could in no scenario defend themselves against an adult. There are more than 3 million cases brought forth to the Child Protection Service every year in the U.S.A. alone, with most of them reporting child neglect, although there is still a significant amount of those cases where reports of sexual child abuse have occurred. This is a very important topic because the numbers of cases per year fluctuate, it seems that one year there is less than the previous and then the year after that, it goes back up. It is very difficult to get an accurate number on this topic because those cases mostly stay in the dark. Although, a very effective way of doing this would actually be to have every adult fill out a form, as they do for taxes, every year and they would answer whether they know of any such cases of this type. It would be completely anonymous and those numbers that we would get would be a lot more accurate than questioning kids at school because most of the children involve in child neglect cases do not attend school first of all nor would they necessarily speak up if they did. This topic, if it had to be associated with a theoretical perspective, it would be the one of functionalist, seeing as raising a child is at the for front of how the human society works.

Normand, R. Byamba, M., The Long-Term Health Consequences of Child Abuse, PLOS medicine, 9-11 2012. This article is very interesting considering most research on child maltreatment involves sexual abuse as the primary point to be analyzed and studied. This study, on the other hand, will try to associate a different idea, that not all maltreatment involves sexual patterns. They studied the patterns of child neglect and emotional distress into their adult life, meaning that they were trying to see, specifically, what kinds of health problems, if any, would a childhood of neglect and abuse have later on in life. This article shines light on the effects a dark childhood can have. According to the findings, the majority of these kids will grow up to have a depressive disorder. Those who are affected by this disorder will, in some cases, have a tendency to end their life, either by leading a life with drugs because it is the only thing that brings them peace or simply by ending their lives themselves. In summary, this article indicates that non-sexual child abuse can have as big or even bigger of an impact on the victim's mental health and stability in his life. As mentioned, it was seen to have a very big causal relationship with other things such as drug use, sexual behaviour amongst many other things.

Arias, I., The Legacy Child maltreatment: Long-Term Health Consequence for Women, Journal of Women's Health, 13-5 2001. This article tries to tackle an even smaller proportion of all child abuse and neglect cases by studying the short and long lasting effects of abuse in girls. Evidentially, girls are affected as much as boys when they are in that situation, but this study shows multiple correlations starting from that neglect or abuse to her behaviour tendencies in her adolescent and adult life. In 2001, the Administration on Children, Youth and Family found that out of the types of child maltreatment such as sexual abuse, emotional abuse etc. Medical neglect was the highest, meaning that the children involved would get little if any medical attention for anything. Physical abuse was the second highest followed by sexual abuse and , finally, psychological abuse. The ratio of boys and girls associated with each term is very similar in terms of victims, except for the sexual abuse where we can see the rate of girl victims raise above that of the boys. The study shows that the victims tend to have a harder time in social situation such as school afterwards, either with their grades or simply fitting in with the rest of the kids. In general, they also tend to be more aggressive than others who grew up in a comparatively good household. What is most alarming but at the same time not so surprising is that the young girls who are affected by this kind of abuse or neglect will most likely tend to be victims in their adult intimate relationships as well. This is because both boys and girls will be greatly affected but in different ways, the boys would tend to grow up having aggression problem therefore the possibility of an abusive relationship, in addition, the girls tend to be more affected by depression than an aggressive behaviour leading to the victimization of women in most scenarios. Once again, the article is very valuable in understanding my topic because it studies the post-effects of domestic child abuse.

Afifi, T.,Taillieu T., Kristene, C., Substantiated Reports of Child Maltreatment From the Canadian Incidence study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect, Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 60-7, 2015 Lastly, the goal of this study was roughly the same as previously covered, except for the fact that they wanted not only to focus on the victims but also on the perpetrators. They analyzed which type of home environment and circumstance can affect the treatment of a child. The research was conducted with the Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect in 2008. Most of child abuse and neglect cases that were received by the CISRCAN with 50% of all cases came from a single-parent home. Other life circumstances can help determine which household is more likely to have cases involving this type of treatment such as being on social assistance, running out of money regularly and so on. Many things can be reasons for this type of behaviour, nonetheless, none of them are valid excuses. It is said that those who are most at risk are those living with a male single-parent home with low income that move house regularly. A solution to this problem could be by helping out the people in the situations that we determined to be more prone to this behaviour, therefore maybe helping single-parents financially more than we do at the moment to ultimately reduce the risk of child abuse. Although they conclude that more research needs to be done for the solution because, as of yet, nothing is stopping abuse. Authorities do they best, but only when they know, and unfortunately, most of the time those cases are not reported. This article is very valuable as well because it shows us more of the reason why the perpetrator does it than the effects on the victim therefore showing us both side of the spectrum.

In conclusion, This is a very touchy subject that no one understands fully because most of the information is kept in the dark. Though we are able to see that there are important consequences for the victims of child abuse and neglect in their life. As a result, we try to associate different parental situations with different types of abuse and their consequences to, hopefully, find a way to prevent it. Although they are trying to prevent it by supporting parents that could be abusers, there will always be cases that cannot be prevented nor detected which is why it should be mandatory to fill out a form every year if you know anybody in those situation, usually anonymity will make people comfortable to denounce such actions instead of intervening themselves and possibly creating a worse situation for the victim.