Causes of Binge Drinking

Child Abuse

What is Child Abuse? By definition, child abuse is the deliberate and willful

injury of a child by a caretaker hitting, beating with an object, slamming

against a wall, even killing. It involves active, hostile, aggressive treatment.

The key word in the definition of child abuse is deliberate. Why would

anyone physically harm a child? The physical destruction of a child is the

extreme reaction of parents to the stress of having children. Most people are

not aware of the fact that deliberately hitting a child is considered a felony in

all fifty states. Abuse of children is more common than most people realize.

At least one out of five adult women and one out of every ten adult men

report having been abused in childhood. Recognizing child abuse in its several

forms is a twentieth century phenomenon. Child abuse is also more likely to

be recognized in economically developed countries than in other parts of the

world. Children have been beaten and abandoned for centuries, based

primarily on the belief that children are the property of their parents. By

educating yourself and your children about abuse, you can help prevent it

from happening to your children and better cope with it if it does. (Child 6)

There are four different forms of child abuse. They are physical abuse (child

beating and neglect), sexual abuse, incest, and exploitation (such as child

pornography). Physical abuse occurs when a caretaker deliberately beats the

child. Some examples of 2 physical abuse include burning with a cigarette,

striking a child, and scalding with hot water. According to social agencies,

beatings of children have been multiplying over the past twenty-five years or

so. The increasing number of reports could mean that in recent years, social

workers, health professionals, and other experts have become better able to

recognize cases of mistreatment. Some 60,000 cases of abuse are reported

annually. (Sargo 12) Many battered children must endure a second terrible

problem - neglect. Neglect, which occurs when parents or others who are

responsible for a child's welfare fail to provide for the child's basic needs in

any number of ways. Physical neglect occurs when the caretaker fails to

provide adequate food, clothing, or shelter. Physical neglect also occurs

when the person caring for a child refuses to seek health care or delays in

doing so. Other examples are abandoning a child, either permanently or

temporarily, and when a child is kicked out of home or refused to be let back

in. There is also educational neglect when parents do not force their children

to attend school. Early civilization regularly abandoned deformed or surplus

children, and ritual sacrifice of the children to appease the gods took place in

Egyptian, Carthaginian, Roman, Greek, and Aztec societies. (Child 2) Either

they do not enroll the child in school at the age required by law, or they allow

their children to be chronically truant from classes. (Gelles 21). 3 Another

form of neglect is emotional neglect, which occurs when parents or guardians

behave "in a way that deeply disturbs a young child." (Sargo 15) Some

examples of emotional abuse occur when parents fight or beat each other in

front of a child, when they give a child permission to use drugs or alcohol or

when