Child Abuse Research Paper

     Estimates of the extent of child abuse are quite conflicting. Some experts assert that about 200,000 children are sexually or physically abused each year. Others assert that the figure is closer to 2,000,000. However even the most conservative estimates are cause for alarm. The cold, hard facts demonstrate clearly that each year 1,100 children die from abuse, 21,000 children are victims of other serious physical abuse, and more than 100,000 are sexually abused.   While experts may disagree about the extent of abuse and about how to combat it, most agree that the reduction of child abuse is a moral imperative in North America today.
 
 

     There are essentially three forms of child abuse:  physical, sexual, and emotional. Physical abuse involves striking a child in any manner or the threat of such violence. Sexual abuse involves touching a child in a sexual way. It also includes speaking to a child in an inappropriate, sexual manner. There are many forms of emotional abuse.  For instance, the abuse of cruelty is included. Even harsh words and/ or making disparaging comments to a child is categorized as cruelty, and thus, a form of child abuse. There is also the abuse of manipulation. An example of this is when a parent uses any persuasive means available to see a child pursue a particular end. Additionally, there is  the emotional abuse of neglect. [1.]

     Medically defined, child abuse is the physical, sexual, or emotional maltreatment of a child. It may be overt or covert. Frequently, it results in permanent physical or psychiatric injury, mental impairment, and sometimes, death. Child abuse occurs predominantly with children less than three years of age. It is the result of multiple and complex factors involving both the parents and the child. These factors are only compounded by various stressful environmental circumstances, including (but not exclusive to) poor socioeconomic conditions, inadequate physical and emotional support within the family, and any major life changes or crises - especially those crises arising from marital strife.

     Parents at high risk for abuse are characterized as having unsatisfied needs and difficulty in forming adequate interpersonal relationships. Having unrealistic expectations of the child and a lack of nurturing experience, they often received neglect or abuse in their own childhood. Predisposing factors among children include the temperament, personality, and activity level of the child, sensitivity to parental needs, and order of birth in the family. Also to be strongly considered is if the particular child has a need for special physical or emotional care resulting from illness, premature birth, or congenital or genetic abnormalities.

     Identification of potential child abusers and abused children is a major concern for all health care workers. Obvious symptomology includes but is not limited to physical marks on a child's body, such as burns, welts, or bruises. Sometimes the outward signs are not readily evident and require more careful analysis of the victim. These often include signs of emotional distress, including symptoms of failure to thrive. All of the preceding are common indications of some degree of neglect or abuse. Often, x-ray films are helpful in detecting new or improperly healed-over fractures of the extremities, and other diagnostic tests to identify sexual molestation are sometimes necessary.

     In all cases of suspected abuse, the intake nurse is required to make the necessary report. Special counseling services or support groups exist to help families in which a child is abused. Physicians, nurses, and other clinicians  can play a significant role in preventing abuse by promoting a positive parent-child relationship. This has been found to be especially important in the neonatal period. Explaining normal child development and behavior to  parents and instructing them in proper child care and disciplinary techniques enables them to formulate realistic guidelines for discipline.   [2.]

     We might have been clued into the damaging effects long before now if the consequences of these various forms of child abuse were uniform. Different people can react altogether differently to the same form of abuse. If the solution were as clear-cut as: physical abuse in childhood results in behavior A in adulthood, sexual abuse results in behavior B, and emotional abuse in behavior C, then lasting solutions would perhaps be promising and brief.  But  one child who is beaten may internalize the violence. He may even come to believe that there is a logical reason for it: He may feel that he must be bad and therefore deserving of such treatment. Another child faced with the very same beatings may develop differently. He may harbor an ever-growing rage. He may ultimately seek to quell this rage with drugs or alcohol.    [3.]
 
 

     Some contend that child abuse hysteria is turning us into a nation of busybodies. That's bad enough, but it goes further: we're a nation of paranoid busybodies. We're suspecting not only that an occasional friend or neighbor might be abusing his children, but moreso we're suspecting all our neighbors. "If those ridiculous statistics of one in four girls sexually abused, and millions of children in general being abused each year, were right, then you could literally look to the house on the right, the left, and across the street and be sure that at least one of your neighbors was an abuser (because abusers are supposedly evenly mixed in the population)."

     It comes as a great relief to think that there is much, much less abuse in America than we're being told. The reason? There's a great gap between what you and I mean when we talk about abuse and what some "experts" mean. You and I think of bloodied, battered, and /or raped children. The "experts," who are making a good living off of this issue - and some of whom, in reality, could give a damn what's actually going on as long as they get a paycheck from profiting off of the misery of others - think of parents who scold and withhold TV-watching privileges. Let me emphasize here: abuse is undefined by law. That means that an "expert" can define it any way they  want to.  And there are increasingly more and more "parental sins" which the so-called "experts" are redefining as abuse. Included are such things as "failing to provide sympathy and support." (That quote was from the National Committee for Prevention of Child Abuse.)

     Child abuse "experts" Gelles, Strauss, and Steinmetz do not stand alone, either. They're just the point men. Following them and those like them are an entire corps of "child advocates." And they have found a way to impose their elitist, white, upper-class, post-Christian parenting philosophies on the rest of us. They accomplish this under the guise of "fighting child abuse."   "When this group talks about vast numbers of 'abused' children, what they really mean is 'children who are raised in ways we disapprove.'  That number can, of course, be as large as they like."   [4.]
 

Contributing Factors, From An Historical Perspective

The Denigration Of Family Values And "Old-Time" Virtues ..........................................................

     For several generations now many North Americans have been shirking the responsibility of raising their own children. The federal and state governments have done their utmost to change the rules of the game so that all parents are either actually or potentially guilty of child abuse by definition. Essentially, this means that we get to keep our children only as a temporary favor that can be denied at any time. Subconsciously, do we actually want to lose our children? Or are we going to wake up and smell the coffee, realize at last just what's going on here, and do something beneficial - namely:  throw the rascals out?

     "The home, that is, the traditional home of mother, father, and their natural children, is not the cradle of violence. It is the best protection children ever have had, or ever will have. And all the furor over "fighting sexual abuse" looks more like a bid for state control of every family than a sincere attempt to address the problem. The wolf is knocking at the door of the Little Pig's house and crying, 'Little Pig, Little Pig, let me come in! I have just finished a study that proves your home is a mess, Little Pig! I have solutions to your problems!' The Little Pig in the story was too smart to believe that a wolf in the house would do him any good.

     "Are we that smart?"

     The American family has dramatically changed since the 1970's. Ever on the increase are families headed by two working parents or by single working mothers. More and more children attend day care while their parents work. It is the contention of some experts that working parents are neglecting their children. Their common prediction is that these children will become troubled adults. "Children who go unheeded are children who are going to turn on the world that neglected them," states Harvard psychiatrist Robert Coles. Some argue that a return to the more traditional family is needed.   [5.]

     Let us consider for just a moment some current statistics pertaining to our new lifestyles here in America:

* ...fewer than 10 percent of Americans live in a traditional, male-headed, one-career household.

* ...children whose mothers work are less secure and more aggressive and withdrawn...
 

     "The primary goal of parenting should be to give a child a lifelong sense of security - a secure base from which he can explore the world, and to which he can return, knowing he will be welcomed, nourished, comforted and reassured," according to child psychologist John Bowlby of London's Tavistock Clinic. Bowlby emphasizes the importance of what is called the "attachment theory." "The child's ability to establish intimate emotional bonds throughout life, as well as his mental health and effective functioning, depends on the strength and quality of his attachment to his parents, particularly his physical and emotional contact with his mother." Many psychologists strongly agree with his theory.

     Extensive research has shown the importance of maternal attachment. Patterns of attachment which have been developed by 12 months of age are not only highly indicative of how the child will act in nursery school, but also of how he will act as an adolescent, as a young adult, and as a parent.

     Jay Belsky, a psychologist at Pennsylvania State University, is a former advocate of daycare. He now has concluded that recent research reveals that infant daycare is "a risk factor for the development of insecure infant-parent attachment, noncompliance and aggression." Fifty percent of the daycare children he studied developed a wide range of negative behaviors and insecure attachments to their mothers. Daycare infants are more apt to cry. They're more likely to be troublemakers. More often than not they tend to be withdrawn; loners. They are less likely to pursue tasks to completion. Influenced more easily  by their peers, they are significantly less cooperative with adults than home-reared children.   [6.]

     Almost four decades ago, a British psychiatrist explained to the World Health Organization that "What is believed to be essential for mental health is that the infant and young child should experience a warm, intimate, and continuous relationship with his mother in which both find satisfaction and enjoyment."

     Daycare undermines this. Children who are beautifully formed and physically healthy are all too often subjected to unbearable stresses, loneliness, and emotional trauma at daycare centers. "Child development experts are becoming increasingly worried and vocal about the effects daycare may be having on a whole generation of American children. The revelation that serious disease epidemics are occurring in many daycare centers adds yet another frightening dimension to their concern."

     Consider these facts, quoted from "America's Children" by Carol Wekesser:

*   Americans avoid bearing children more than ever, with birth rates at historic lows

*   The proportion of children in poverty today is much higher than 20 years ago. We are in a
     remarkable situation now in that a much larger proportion of our children are classified as poor
     than of our elderly population

*   American adults spend less time with their children than at any time in American history, despite
     evidence that familial nurturing is important to the economic, social, and intellectual well-being of
     our progeny

*   A record proportion of children suffer emotionally and often economically from illegitimacy and
     broken marriages

*   The knowledge of the world that we pass on to our children may be declining and is probably less
     than that taught to children in many other poorer nations

*   The proportion of our income that we set aside through savings for new investment is below that
     of many other nations, so our capital stock is growing relatively slowly, imperiling the economic
     advantages of life for future Americans

*   Amidst generally stable suicide rates, teenage suicide rates in America have risen dramatically and
     are high relative to other nations

*   America is borrowing unprecedented sums of money, reflected in the twin budget and trade
     deficits which some believe are "mortgaging the future" of our youth

*   Through our Social Security System, we are making commitments to adult Americans that will
     significantly burden the generation born after 1970

*   A moral relativism inculcated in our children has contributed to high rates of antisocial behavior,
     evident in a high incidence of crime and drug usage among our young ...
 
 

     Ironically, the damaging trend toward the failure of families to form escalated during the period when the nation was committing an increased portion of its national wealth to helping the most disadvantaged. In 1959, 23 percent of poor American families were headed by females. This figure was 48 percent by 1982. These figures are indicative of the unprecedented destruction of families. As a nation, we remain committed to helping the poor. We strive to end their dependency wherever it's possible. These goals go hand in hand. If "helping" perpetuates dependency, then it is a useless cause; it's worse than not helping at all.   [7.]
 

TEENAGE LIFE IN AMERICA TODAY
 

     Dr. Barbara Staggers is a 39-year-old physician at Freemont High School Clinic in California, and also at the Teen Clinic of Children's Hospital in North Oakland, California.

     "I'm dealing with people who are incredibly resilient physically, yet they still see their most positive option as being dead."

     White teens are more likely to be injured or killed in an automobile crash or by killing themselves. Black teen-agers are far more likely to be shot to death. Both groups share this underlying condition: Three-quarters of the 30,000 per year death toll for people between 10 and 24 years old result from preventable causes, not disease. Whereas the risk of violent injury or death has decreased for most other age groups, for the aforementioned age group it has escalated dramatically. The risk of being shot to death among youths aged 15 to 19 has more than doubled in the last ten years.    [8.]

     The teenager of today runs about twice the risk of being murdered or becoming a suicide victim than those growing up in the turbulent 1960's did. As if adolescence has not become enough of a high-risk activity, HIV infection has begun to cut an even wider swath. "This school has a fair number of kids who openly identify [themselves] as gay or bisexual," Staggers confides. She sees several patients who are exploring their sexuality. She has a two-edged concern for one young man whom she treats because he has been living with older men off and on, perhaps trading sex for shelter. No one seems to be in charge of his care. His family is scattered. While Dr. Staggers is treating him for asthma, she also is counseling him to avoid exploitation and about the underlying dangers of drug abuse and AIDS.

     The sign-in sheet of Staggers' receptionist typically contains a litany of mundane complaints - aching ears, persistent coughs, upset stomachs. On one specific morning (and this is just an example of a typical day for Staggers' medical treatment of teens) the earache turns out to have been caused by a beating. The cough was caused by parental neglect, and the stomachache by a suicide attempt. Generally, the kids "loosen up" when alone in the examining room with Staggers, relating the true underlying causes of their "mundane" complaints.

     Most teens, all over the country, are sexually active. They increasingly risk serious illness and death through sex. HIV infections are occuring at a startlingly high rate. Staggers asks of her female teenage patients: "Is an orgasm worth dying for? Why do you want to be pregnant?" Many of these girls don't think that they have any control. Boys tell them that they don't like the feel of condoms. The boys say, "Trust me," and the girls do because they are desperately looking for someone whom they can trust. Staggers feels that there's an "influential connection" between  teen pregnancies - which tally up to about one million per year - and the violence which pervades their lives. Many get pregnant to replace some of the people they've lost. This, despite the fact that they really do not want to get pregnant.

     When we make an analysis of why these kids are "screwed up" we must consider home and family background. Add to that the extreme importance to a teenager of keeping the status quo. Parents ask, "If everyone else jumped off a cliff, would you do it, too?" when kids say that the reason they did something was because they had to - everyone else was doing it. We must keep in mind that the answer to that question is an emphatic "yes." For a teenager, being at the bottom together is preferable to being at the top alone.

     Staggers believes that the common problems of teenagers stems from a festering generational grievance which cuts across differences of income, ethnic background or particular trauma. She asserts that all the kids who make it through their problems have one thing in common: an adult who cared and who stuck by them no matter what.

     Natalie Van Tassel, a teen counselor at Castro Valley High School (also in California) agrees with Staggers' theory. She also concludes that although the parents of most of her patients have a great capacity for giving their children material things, the one thing they lack giving is time. "What I see are kids without real parents," she states. Dr. Staggers adds, "See, it's the same disease, different symptoms. Here the kids have economic opportunity, but no real family life. I'm tired of hearing people say, 'I'm too busy'." She also insists that teenagers are the least likely group in the country to get medical attention when they need it, and that when they do receive it, it's inadequate. It's notable that first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton has asked Staggers for her advice.

The Vogue of Divorce, the Single Parent, and Abortion for Convenience ......................................

     "Only 4.2 % of children lived with a never-married parent in 1960; in 1970, the percentage rose to 6.8; by 1980, to 14.6, and as of 1990, it had climbed to 30.6, according to the  Bureau of the Census. Babies born to single women in 1988 - the latest year for which statistics were available - represented 26 percent of all American newborns, the highest proportion ever; and most of the mothers were at least 20 years old, according to the Federal Centers for Disease Control. The sharpest increases in birthrates from 1980 to 1988 were among older women, with the birthrate for single women age 15 to 17 rising 29 percent and the birthrate for women age 30 to 34 rising 52 percent. The rate among single black women.  [9.]

     "Children living with one divorced parent increased from 23 % in 1960 to 30.2% in 1970, and 42.4 percent in 1980; between 1980 and 1990 there was a decline to 38.6%. Children living with 2 parents in 1960 represented 87.7%; in 1970, 85.2%; in 1980, 76.7%; and in 1990, 72.5%."   [10.]
 

"Modern Day" Anti-Child Activities Which Invariably Contribute To The Problem ......................

*  Abortion tortures babies to death. It also leads to anti-child attitudes. If you can legally murder
     your child before birth, it's hard to understand why you can't slap him around afterwards. Those
     who scoff at this linkage may be interested to know that the Canadian provinces which forbid or
     limit abortion have vastly lower child abuse rates than those which do not.

*  Pornography is inherently anti-baby - it divorces sex from reproduction. As I pointed out in an
    earlier book, this leads quite inevitably to departing from normal man/woman sex. If having sex
    has nothing to do with having babies, you can have sex with anyone or anything. Including
    children. Which just happens to be the current pornographic trend.

*  Sexual infidelity, so much glamorized by the media, is present in the vast majority of sexual abuse
    cases.

*  Drunkenness has been shown again and again to be a factor in serious crimes against children. This
    is common sense - doing a dreadful deed is easy if one's conscience is thoroughly sedated.
    Common sense should also lead us to look for ways to reduce drunkenness.

*  Age segregation increasingly alienates children and adults. Children are the "new niggers," a term I
    absolutely hate, but that is the only one to convey the force with which adult society rejects them.
    Not only are children barred from almost all adult activities (up to and including the worship of
    God), but the idea that the society of children is actually bad for their parents, and vice versa, is
    gaining ground.   [11.]
 

Wanted vs. Unwanted Childbearing Statistical Trends ....................................................................

THE UNITED STATES, 1973 TO 1988

     Of the nearly 16.2 million births to ever-married women  that occurred from 1983 through 1988, about 5.8 million, or 35%, were unintended. Of those, about 30 percent were unwanted, and the other 70 percent were mistimed (wanted at a later time). The most recent statistics show an apparent increase in unwanted births for the first time since the widespread acceptance of the most effective methods of contraception. Between surveys conducted in 1973 and 1982, the proportion of recent births to ever-married women that were unwanted at the time of conception was cut almost in half, from 14.3 percent to 7.7 percent. However, the most recent data suggest that the proportion has once again risen to over 10 percent, and the pattern is consistent across subgroups of age, race, marital status, and income level.

Two Realities? ... "False Positives" and Advocates Against "The Child Abuse Industry" ..............

     Child abuse and neglect have markedly increased since the child abuse industry was established. When it comes to solving child abuse, today we have the blind leading the blind.