Improving The Modern American Family Essay Research

Improving The Modern American Family Essay, Research Paper

Concept Paper #3May 5,1999 Now that I have been elected to Congress for my ideas on improving the modern American family , I would like to further explain my plans to improve the modern day society and family. The two main issues that I feel are the key factors to the fall of family are child abuse and the lack of communication in marriage. I do believe that these two factors are directly related to each other think this is true because when there is a lack of communication in a marriage one partner may not know how the partner feels about having children or a women may think that the birth of a child will improve her marriage. If we can improve one problem then I think that the other problem will also decline. Violence in families is a major problem and any citizen of the US who thinks that abuse only occurs between couples who are mentally ill or poor is sadly mistaken. According to the information provided in Chapter 10, 1000 to 1200 children die from abuse and neglect by their caretakers, usually their parents every year. Also 9 out of 10 of these victims are under the age of five and more than 40 percent are infants under a year old. Violence in families is not something that should be ignored and is caused by many factors in modern day society. Some of the factors that contribute to violence in families are as follows: the US Congress does not allow spousal or child abuse but the right for citizens to own a gun promotes violence. The use of corporal punishment which, is the use of physical force with the intent of injury for the purposes of correction is legal in every state and over 90 percent of parents use corporal punishment on toddlers and just half continue to practice this on their adolescent children according to Chapther10 in our book of diversity in families. The use of paddle is legal in 23 states, which allows teachers to paddle their students whenever they deem nesscary. The promotion of violent sports in schools such as football, which is the most financially sport in all colleges and high, schools. Violence in the media is the next cause of the problem of violence in families. As stated in Chapter 10, by the time a child finishes elementary school they will have witnessed 8,000 murders on television and by the age of 18 the average child will see 200,000 violent acts on television. Even in the video game industry the main theme is violence and the video game industry is geared to target children. In the game, Mortal Kombat the player is made to pull out a beating heart from the competitor s chest. However, media is not the sole cause for beating your wife or child because many people who watch television do not beat their family members but it does desensitize us against violence and the actions that it causes. Gelles and Straus who are sociologists with the book have concluded that with the exception of the police and the military, the family is perhaps the most violent social group, and the home the most violent social setting, in our society. (1979:15) The definition of child abuse is violence carried out with the intention of or perceived as having the intention of physically hurting the child (Gelles and Straus 1979:136) The question is where do we draw the line. If the definition is too lax we are jeopardizing the safety of our children and if it is too strict parents might be wrongly accused of child abuse. The best way to describe child abuse is any violent act that is intentional that requires the child to need medical attention. Child abuse is a very complex problem that has many ascepts of occurrence none any better or worse than the other. Some of the issues that determine whether child abuse will enter into a family structure are economic condition, race and ethnicity and gender. Child abuse is much more likely to occur in families of low socioeconomic status because the effects of poverty cause lower self-esteem and more stress causing people to take the stress out on their children. In some studies, there seems to be no difference in the reported cases of child abuse with race and other studies show that African Americans have higher rates of child abuse than Whites. The debate is ongoing. Gender is an issue because unlike any other type of violence where men are the dominant perpetrators women are the perpetrators as much as men with child abuse. Women are much more likely to be in a stressful situation (to head households, to be in poverty, and less economically rewarding work). Women also feel more responsibility than men do because they are usually the primary caretakers. Gertrude Williams (1980:597) believes another reason for child abuse among women is the pronatalist bias in society. Pronatalism is the widespread belief that a woman s only fulfilling activity is motherhood. This causes a mother to believe that if she is not succeeding as a mother she is a failure thus causing her to take out her disappointment and anger on her children who would appear to be the cause of the problem. Now that we have discussed some of the reasons for child abuse I would like to discuss some of adaptations I would make as a US Congress official. I would like to make guns available only to households who do not have children and if they do not have children they would still need to be over the age of 25 in order to own a gun. All gun owners would need to have a permit and a license and it would be illeg