child abuse
About 47 out of every 1,000 children are reported as victims of child maltreatment. What is Child Abuse? By definition, child abuse is the deliberate and willful injury of a child by a caretaker hitting, beating with an object, slamming against a wall, even killing. ... The key word in the definition of child abuse is deliberate. Why would anyone physically harm a child? The physical destruction of a child is the extreme reaction of parents to the stress of having children. Most people are not aware of the fact that deliberately hitting a child is considered a felony in all fifty states. Abuse of children is more common than most people realize. ... Recognizing child abuse in its several forms is a twentieth century phenomenon. Child abuse is also more likely to be recognized in economically developed countries than in other parts of the world. ... By educating yourself and your children about abuse, you can help prevent it from happening to your children and better cope with it if it does. (Child 6) There are four different forms of child abuse. They are physical abuse (child beating and neglect), sexual abuse, incest, and exploitation (such as child pornography). Physical abuse occurs when a caretaker deliberately beats the child. Some examples of 2 physical abuses include burning with a cigarette, striking a child, and scalding with hot water. ... Some 60,000 cases of abuse are reported annually. ... Neglect, which occurs when parents or others who are responsible for a child’s welfare fail to provide for the child’s basic needs in any number of ways. ... Physical neglect also occurs when the person caring for a child refuses to seek health care or delays in doing so. Other examples are abandoning a child, either permanently or temporarily, and when a child is kicked out of home or refused to be let back in. ... (Child 2) Either they do not enroll the child in school at the age required by law, or they allow their children to be chronically truant from classes. ... 3 Another form of neglect is emotional neglect, which occurs when parents or guardians behave “in a way that deeply disturbs a young child.” (Sargo 15) Some examples of emotional abuse occur when parents fight or beat each other in front of a child, when they give a child permission to use drugs or alcohol or when the parents themselves are under the influence of drugs or alcohol.