Introduction to Child Abuse

Any activity undertaken by anyone which cause maltreatment of child is child abuse. Child abuse is a major and critical issue which many countries are facing in the present situation. Child abuse can affect the growth, physical and mental health, confidence and self-belief in the children as they grow up. Therefore, this paper will emphasize on the thesis statement related to “Child Abuse in society”. Child abuse has various forms which are physical abuse, sexual abuse, physiological abuse, neglect abuse.

Childhood is the early stage of the life and it the stage where an individual learns many things, this is the age where people start building their perception and start building their thinking. This is the reason why this stage of life is the most important where a child has to be taken special care of. At this age an individual start observing things, and from this observation he or she starts building up his or her mindset. So, if the child are in good environment he or she will learn good things and be a good person in life, but if the environment around the child is not good and that child is surrounded by the people who are harming the society in some or the other way, then it will directly affect the mentality of that child and he or she may not become a good person in life. We can see many such examples in our daily life, children are most influenced by their parents and they try and they try to consider everything that their parents do. Also, lot depends upon the society and people they are surrounded with, because children not only learn from parents but they also learn from the people from the surroundings. This is why it is really important to take a special care of children in their childhood days. This is the stage of life where a person loves to play, learn and develop, and this development lot depends upon the surroundings and environment that is created around him or her (Widom, Czaja & Dutton, 2014).

Child abuse is a crime, but still it is done illegally in many countries and this is destroying the future of children. Child labor is the most common example of child abuse. This abuse is evident and can be witnessed every day in some or the other way. Making children work and treating them as slaves is what we called as child labor. There can be many reasons for child labor, bad financial condition, bad mindset is some of the factors which causes child labor to happen. Child labor is forcing children who are below a particular age limit to work for earning money. In most of the places the age limit is 18 years for employing employees to work. Children form the families whose financial condition is not so good, force their children to stop studying and start working so that they could earn something and bring money at home. Governmental agencies of almost all the countries are trying their best to stop child labor and to curb this they are developing and bringing out many schemes and offers through which they are encouraging and motivating children to study, so that child labor can be stopped. Also, people with poor mentality are the biggest reason that encourages child labor. There are many people in different places who has the mentality that there is a limit up to which a child should study and he or she should start earning money as soon as possible irrespective of their maturity level, how much knowledge they have gained and how well they understand things. The people with such mentality does not understand that how badly it will affect the mental growth of the child, because working under someone without understanding the work and without examining the condition or situation can affect your self confidence in a way that it will become very difficult for that person ahead in life to learn or understand new things (Van der Kolk, 2017).

Types of Child Abuse: Physical Abuse, Sexual Abuse, Psychological Abuse, and Neglect Abuse

Another big reason that helps in encouraging child labor is lack of education. Education is the major factor that affects the mentality of any person. Education is so much important for every person, because without this no one can stand up in his or her life and have that confidence to take independent decisions. It will lead to lack of understanding the situation and react upon it accordingly. If a person is well educated, he or she will never support child labor whatever may be the condition, but that person will never want his or her child to go out and work at his or her childhood days. Instead that person will try and understand the condition or the situation, analyze the situation and work accordingly, but at same place if we take a person who is not at all educated, he or she would be least bothered about the bad effects of child labor and would make their child to go out and work and bring money to home irrespective of through what condition their child must be going what all that child would be suffering (Renvoize, 2017). 

First is related with physical abuse. Physical abuse involves physically maltreating of children. Teachers in the school or other educational institutions beating children for small mistakes is considered as physical child abuse. Child labor is also considered as the physical abuse where a child is forced to work in some of the places and he or she treated as a slave and also beaten if they do not perform the work given to them properly. Children working in restaurants are the best example of child labor. There have been many such cases where children are kidnapped from anywhere and they are forced to work and earn money and give that money to that person who has kidnapped them. This is called child trafficking. Small children are kidnapped and beaten brutally and are forced to start working as a labor in some industries or also they are forced to go different places and beg for money (Kleinman, 2015). 

Another type of child abuse is sexual abuse. Activities like forcing a child to get involved in sexual activities, sexually harassing a child and sexually torturing them are some of the activities which are involved in sexual child abuse. Child marriage is also a type of child abuse as they are tied into the relationship but actually, physically immature. When two children who gets engaged in a relationship or marriage in an age when they are immature or in other word they are under aged actually, is what we consider as child marriage. Child marriage is considered as one of the worst child abuses, because with having some physical disadvantages it also has mental and health issues. The children who gets involved in this type of child abuse, are actually psychologically not prepared to become parents which leads to problems in pregnancy, malnutrition etc.  Child marriage not just create physical pressure on the child but create financial problems too. This is because at such stage no one is financially settled and they also do not have that much sense or understanding so that they can prepare themselves for the financial situations (Finkelhor, Shattuck, Turner & Hamby, 2014). In some part of the country’s child are being sold by the medium of marriage which is one of the biggest examples of sexual abuse.

Child neglect is also a big cause of child abuse. Child Neglect can be of any type like parents leaving their babies in trash, locking them in some room etc. Caretaking is one the important role of parent but parent gets confused/trapped into their work that they start neglecting the child which makes the child feel alone, depressed, stresses, and angry etc. Many children like these suffer in nearly every part of their life in terms of confidence, health, trust issues, relationships etc. Parents can do safeguard them from dangers, by sharing responsibilities, can ask suggestions in small talks which can reduce the child neglect in some part of the country gender-based discrimination is also one of the biggest problems causes child deaths. People leaves their children due to lack of money, job etc. which shows the mis-managed sex ratio (Straus, 2017).

Another major child abuse is psychological abuse. Psychological abuse is actually hurting or affecting the feeling or emotions of child. Taking example of school or other educational institute where there is a lot of competition between students in every field, whether it may be studies, sports or cultural activities and in this competition there are some people who do partiality amongst the children. For example, suppose in a cultural fest two students participated and the first student’s performance was much better than the second one, but still the second student is declared as the winner just because the judges must be having some of benefit from that student. This will not just affect the mentality of that child, but also psychologically the student will feel low and will develop sense of failure. So, it can be concluded that child abuse has become the major concern for the countries in the present scenario and frequent action should be taken to curb it at all major levels so that child exploitation can be minimized.

References  

Finkelhor, D., Shattuck, A., Turner, H. A., & Hamby, S. L. (2014). The lifetime prevalence of child sexual abuse and sexual assault assessed in late adolescence. Journal of Adolescent Health, 55(3), 329-333.

Kleinman, P. K. (Ed.). (2015). Diagnostic imaging of child abuse. Cambridge University Press.

Renvoize, J. (2017). Innocence destroyed: A study of child sexual abuse. Routledge.

Straus, M. A. (2017). Ordinary violence, child abuse, and wife beating: What do they have in common?. In Physical violence in American families (pp. 403-424). Routledge.

Van der Kolk, B. A. (2017). This issue: child abuse & victimization. Psychiatric Annals, 35(5), 374-378.

Widom, C. S., Czaja, S., & Dutton, M. A. (2014). Child abuse and neglect and intimate partner violence victimization and perpetration: A prospective investigation. Child abuse & neglect, 38(4), 650-663.