Saving The Children Essay Research Paper Saving

Saving The Children Essay, Research Paper

Saving the Children

Throughout history children have been deliberately killed, abused, and neglected by rulers, society or parents. Child abuse is an injury or pattern of injuries to a child that is not accidental. According to the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, in 1995 about 2.9 million children in the United States were reported as abused or neglected to government agencies that investigate child abuse. Child abuse can be hard to recognize sometimes because it is often under the name of spanking or discipline ( According to the National Committee for the Prevention of Child Abuse , par. 1). Even when the state takes children away from parents because of the severity of the abuse, parents sometimes deny that they did anything wrong (par.2). But when does discipline become abuse. According to Utah State law, if you spank a child too hard and he/she gets a bruise, that technically counts as an incidence of child abuse (par. 2). Refraining from physical punishment, as practiced by parents and recommended by children psychologist today, would have shocked parents of earlier times (Murdock 7). Before the 1960 s parental discipline often took the form of physical punishment. When spankings became beatings physical abuse prevailed (7).

Child abuse does not only consist of physical abuse. There are several types of child abuse, and unfortunately, some children experience more than one. Physical abuse includes deliberate acts of violence that injure or even kill a child. Unexplained bruises, broken bones, or burn marks on a child may be signs of physical abuse. The average age

of victims of physical child abuse is eight years old (Wallace 33). Twenty-seven percent of all child maltreatment cases involve physical abuse. Three percent of these cases involve life-threatening injuries such as poisoning, fractures, or brain damage. Fourteen percent involve minor injuries, including bruises, cuts or shaking. The remaining eleven percent are unspecified injuries (33). The data is probably a low estimate of the true incidence of abuse since there is no exact method of determining unreported cases.

Sexual abuse occurs when adults use children for sexual gratification ( According to the National Committee for the Prevention of Child Abuse , par. 1). Sexual abuse may begin with kissing or fondling and progress to more intrusive sexual acts, such as oral sex and vaginal or anal penetration. Experts estimate that one out of every three or four girls and one out of every seven to ten boys below the age of eighteen are violated (Murdock 11). Other acts that use children as sexual objects, such as, child pornography and subjecting children to view sexual acts committed by adults, are also include in the definition of child sexual abuse (Gitterman 346). The US Department of Health and Human Services categorizes sexual abuse into three groups: intrusion (evidence of actual penile penetration), molestation with genital contact (acts where some form of actual genital contact had occurred), and other or unknown sexual abuse (unspecified acts not known to have involved actual genital contact: e.g., fondling of breasts or buttocks, exposure) (11).

Mary Pipher, the author of Reviving Ophelia , states in her book that she had seen a bumper sticker on a young man s car that read: If I don t get laid soon somebody s gonna get hurt (Pipher 219). This is the sick society we live in, on any given day in America, 480 women and children will be forcibly raped, 5,760 women will be assaulted by a male intimate partner and four women and three children will be murdered by a family member (219).

Emotional abuse, another type of child abuse, destroys a child s self-esteem and undermines his confidence (Landau 36). Such abuse commonly includes repeated verbal abuse of a child in the form of shouting, threats, and degrading or humiliating criticism (36). Other types of emotional abuse are confinement, such as isolation or denying a child friends (39).

The most common form of child abuse is neglect. Neglect makes up almost half of the confirmed cases of child abuse in the 1990 s ( According to the National Committee for the Prevention of Child Abuse , par. 1). Physical neglect involves a parent s failure to provide adequate food, clothing, shelter, or medical care to a child (par. 1). About fifty-five percent of children who are mistreated suffer from severe neglect (Morales, par. 6). These are very young children who are abandoned or left alone for more than forty-eight hours, aren t fed, do not receive needed medical treatment, or are not sent to school for days at a time (par. 5). Emotional neglect occurs when a parent or caretaker fails to meet a child s basic need for attention and comfort. According to a study done by the US Department of Health and Human Services, 223,000 children or 3.5 per 1,000 suffer from emotional neglect ( Murdock 103). Emotional neglect can also be in the form of overprotective restrictions that further immaturity and emotional overdependence.

Young adults who have been abused often confuse the concept of the family. To them, violence, anger, and fear are common. They may also confuse love with violence

or love with sex. Because of these family distortions some victims have a hard time receiving help (Jacklitsch & Powers 24).

The consequences of