Child Abuse

Child abuse takes many forms, including physical, emotional, and sexual abuse and neglect. These forms are not mutually exclusive and are often difficult to define with precision.

Physical child abuse is the excessive and unjustified use of physical force against a child. The abuse might include punching, kicking, beating, biting, burning, and shaking. Injuries from physical abuse might include welts, burns, bites, and broken bones. Physical abuse therefore differs from spanking, a common parenting practice in the United States widely perceived as appropriate and justifiable. Not all societies recognize this distinction between spanking and child abuse. A number of Scandinavian societies have passed laws against physical punishment in homes, recognizing that such punishment is inconsistent with healthy child development. The logic in these countries seems to be, “If we do not use corporal punishment with adults, why employ it against children?”

The emotional abuse of a child usually builds over time, eroding the child's sense of competence and self-esteem. Such abuse can result in serious behavioral, cognitive, emotional, or mental health problems. Abusive behaviors include name calling, ridiculing, degradation, worsening a child's fears, destroying a child's possessions, torturing or destroying a child's pet, making excessive demands, and criticizing the child to excess. More recently, experts have recognized the devastating effects of children witnessing domestic violence, typically the battering of their mothers. Estimates suggest that between 3.3 million and 10 million children in the United States witness [Page 51]such violence every year. These child witnesses report an array of problems, including posttraumatic stress and a plethora of social, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral difficulties.

Child sexual abuse includes fondling a child's genitals (usually to sexually gratify the abuser), intercourse, incest, rape, oral sex, sodomy, exhibitionism, and the commercial exploitation of children by prostituting them or offering their bodies to pornographers (see the Child Sexual Abuse entry). It is nearly always committed by men.

Neglect results from the failure of parents or guardians to provide for their children's healthy development and physical security. Examples include refusing to seek or delaying medical care, abandoning the child, expelling the child from the home, and refusing to take back a child who has run away from home. Parents or guardians also neglect the child when they fail to make provision for the child's education. This might include allowing the child to persistently skip school. Parents can also neglect to give their children emotional affection. Clearly, parents can neglect their children without intending to. In general, low-income parents face a much more difficult time raising children than their wealthy counterparts and may not be able to provide various “necessities” because of their poverty. Indeed, authorities normally level accusations of neglect at parents who are poor. Authorities usually label mothers the “neglectful parent.” This labeling reinforces the stereotypical idea that the care of children is mostly the concern of females rather than males. This works against the interests of poor women, especially minority women, who usually work for wages at the same time they play the central role in childrearing.