Child abuse Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Child abuse - Essay Example He therefore recommends that parents should be treated alongside their children through the use of therapeutic techniques that will make them more sensitive to each other's needs. This is followed by a research into the effectiveness of home-visits by social welfare units in checking child abuse. The final paper examined is the writing of Dr. Jim Hooper about statistics into child abuse and why children are not reporting abuses. The paper ends by making recommendations based on these empirical findings of these authorities. Keywords: Child abuse, culture, society, community, violence, sexual abuse Introduction Child abuse is a major problem that affects the growth of children. Oates (1996, p2) defines child abuse as any non-accidental injury; physical, emotional or sexual that a child suffers from acts or omissions on the part of his or her parents or guardians. Child abuse exists in four main forms (Harelin, 2000 p6). There is the physical abuse which involves actions that harms the body of a child like hitting, kicking, slapping and punching. Usually, physical abuse leaves injuries to a child. There is the emotional abuse which includes anything said or done to hurt a child's feelings or self esteem. Examples include frequent blaming, insult and shouting. Harelin states that this is the most destructive form of abuse to children. There is neglect which involves ignoring or choosing not to take care of a child's basic needs like food, shelter and clothing (Harelin, 2006, p7). Finally, there is the issue of sexual abuse which involves the use of actions related to sex to harm a child. Examples include rape, incest and child pornography. These four forms of child abuse are universally accepted as wrong and destructive. Many nations, under the auspices of the United Nations have laws that make these four practices illegal. There are also issues that can be technically defined as child abuse, but its inclusion in statutes is quite controversial (Matthews 2004 p396 ). This include withholding medical care to children, corporal punishment and child maltreatment in youth sports. Several studies have been conducted into child abuse that aim at diagnosing and providing a cue to how the issue of child abuse can be solved using empirical studies. This paper examines four of such studies Children, Childhoods & Violence by Jill Korbin In this article, Jill Korbin identifies the link between culture, the society and child abuse. Korbin therefore uses her in-depth knowledge in anthropology to identify the intervention points of child abuse and the real society. She tries to diagnose the issue of child abuse and measure how it finds its way into the society and vice versa. In other words, she looks at the sociological push and pull factors that brings about the issue of child abuse in societies around the world. In setting the parameters of her discussion, Korbin states that the dynamics of the violent treatment of children can be categorized into settin g, perpetrators, type, severity, age and gender, as well as the cultural context (p431). With these yardsticks, the concept could be examined in a given society either individually or collectively. Korbin states that child abuse could flourish in a given society due to three main factors: cultural promoters, cultural categorization/discrimination and structural violence (p437). Cultural promoters like idiosyncrasies, which include things that