Child Abuse: Forms, Causes, and Impact on Society

This paper discusses the forms, causes, and impact of child abuse on society. It emphasizes the importance of taking special care of children in their childhood days. Child abuse has various forms which are physical abuse, sexual abuse, physiological abuse, neglect abuse. Child labor is the most common example of child abuse. Child neglect is also a big cause of child abuse. Psychological abuse is actually hurting or affecting the feeling or emotions of the child.

CHILD ABUSE

Running head: Child abuse
Child abuse
Any activity undertaken by anyone which cause maltreatment of child is child abuse. Child
abuse is a major and critical issue which many countries are facing in the present situation. Child
abuse can affect the growth, physical and mental health, confidence and self-belief in the
children as they grow up. Therefore, this paper will emphasize on the thesis statement related to
“Child Abuse in society”. Child abuse has various forms which are physical abuse, sexual abuse,
physiological abuse, neglect abuse.
Childhood is the early stage of the life and it the stage where an individual learns many
things, this is the age where people start building their perception and start building their
thinking. This is the reason why this stage of life is the most important where a child has to be
taken special care of. At this age an individual start observing things, and from this observation
he or she starts building up his or her mindset. So, if the child are in good environment he or she
will learn good things and be a good person in life, but if the environment around the child is not
good and that child is surrounded by the people who are harming the society in some or the other
way, then it will directly affect the mentality of that child and he or she may not become a good
person in life. We can see many such examples in our daily life, children are most influenced by
their parents and they try and they try to consider everything that their parents do. Also, lot
depends upon the society and people they are surrounded with, because children not only learn
from parents but they also learn from the people from the surroundings. This is why it is really
important to take a special care of children in their childhood days. This is the stage of life where
a person loves to play, learn and develop, and this development lot depends upon the
surroundings and environment that is created around him or her (Widom, Czaja & Dutton, 2014).
Child abuse is a crime, but still it is done illegally in many countries and this is destroying the
future of children. Child labor is the most common example of child abuse. This abuse is evident
and can be witnessed every day in some or the other way. Making children work and treating
them as slaves is what we called as child labor. There can be many reasons for child labor, bad
financial condition, bad mindset is some of the factors which causes child labor to happen. Child
labor is forcing children who are below a particular age limit to work for earning money. In most
of the places the age limit is 18 years for employing employees to work. Children form the
families whose financial condition is not so good, force their children to stop studying and start

Running head: Child abuse
working so that they could earn something and bring money at home. Governmental agencies of
almost all the countries are trying their best to stop child labor and to curb this they are
developing and bringing out many schemes and offers through which they are encouraging and
motivating children to study, so that child labor can be stopped. Also, people with poor mentality
are the biggest reason that encourages child labor. There are many people in different places who
has the mentality that there is a limit up to which a child should study and he or she should start
earning money as soon as possible irrespective of their maturity level, how much knowledge
they have gained and how well they understand things. The people with such mentality does not
understand that how badly it will affect the mental growth of the child, because working under
someone without understanding the work and without examining the condition or situation can
affect your self confidence in a way that it will become very difficult for that person ahead in life
to learn or understand new things (Van der Kolk, 2017).
Another big reason that helps in encouraging child labor is lack of education. Education is the
major factor that affects the mentality of any person. Education is so much important for every
person, because without this no one can stand up in his or her life and have that confidence to
take independent decisions. It will lead to lack of understanding the situation and react upon it
accordingly. If a person is well educated, he or she will never support child labor whatever may
be the condition, but that person will never want his or her child to go out and work at his or her
childhood days. Instead that person will try and understand the condition or the situation, analyze
the situation and work accordingly, but at same place if we take a person who is not at all
educated, he or she would be least bothered about the bad effects of child labor and would make
their child to go out and work and bring money to home irrespective of through what condition
their child must be going what all that child would be suffering (Renvoize, 2017).
There are different ways through which child abuse is performed and practiced.
First is related with physical abuse. Physical abuse involves physically maltreating of
children. Teachers in the school or other educational institutions beating children for small
mistakes is considered as physical child abuse. Child labor is also considered as the physical
abuse where a child is forced to work in some of the places and he or she treated as a slave and
also beaten if they do not perform the work given to them properly. Children working in
restaurants are the best example of child labor. There have been many such cases where children

Running head: Child abuse
are kidnapped from anywhere and they are forced to work and earn money and give that money
to that person who has kidnapped them. This is called child trafficking. Small children are
kidnapped and beaten brutally and are forced to start working as a labor in some industries or
also they are forced to go different places and beg for money (Kleinman, 2015).
Another type of child abuse is sexual abuse. Activities like forcing a child to get involved in
sexual activities, sexually harassing a child and sexually torturing them are some of the activities
which are involved in sexual child abuse. Child marriage is also a type of child abuse as they are
tied into the relationship but actually, physically immature. When two children who gets engaged
in a relationship or marriage in an age when they are immature or in other word they are under
aged actually, is what we consider as child marriage. Child marriage is considered as one of the
worst child abuses, because with having some physical disadvantages it also has mental and
health issues. The children who gets involved in this type of child abuse, are actually
psychologically not prepared to become parents which leads to problems in pregnancy,
malnutrition etc. Child marriage not just create physical pressure on the child but create
financial problems too. This is because at such stage no one is financially settled and they also do
not have that much sense or understanding so that they can prepare themselves for the financial
situations (Finkelhor, Shattuck, Turner & Hamby, 2014). In some part of the country’s child are
being sold by the medium of marriage which is one of the biggest examples of sexual abuse.
Child neglect is also a big cause of child abuse. Child Neglect can be of any type like parents
leaving their babies in trash, locking them in some room etc. Caretaking is one the important role
of parent but parent gets confused/trapped into their work that they start neglecting the child
which makes the child feel alone, depressed, stresses, and angry etc. Many children like these
suffer in nearly every part of their life in terms of confidence, health, trust issues, relationships
etc. Parents can do safeguard them from dangers, by sharing responsibilities, can ask suggestions
in small talks which can reduce the child neglect in some part of the country gender-based
discrimination is also one of the biggest problems causes child deaths. People leaves their
children due to lack of money, job etc. which shows the mis-managed sex ratio (Straus, 2017).
Another major child abuse is psychological abuse. Psychological abuse is actually hurting or
affecting the feeling or emotions of child. Taking example of school or other educational
institute where there is a lot of competition between students in every field, whether it may be

Running head: Child abuse
studies, sports or cultural activities and in this competition there are some people who do
partiality amongst the children. For example, suppose in a cultural fest two students participated
and the first student’s performance was much better than the second one, but still the second
student is declared as the winner just because the judges must be having some of benefit from
that student. This will not just affect the mentality of that child, but also psychologically the
student will feel low and will develop sense of failure. So, it can be concluded that child abuse
has become the major concern for the countries in the present scenario and frequent action
should be taken to curb it at all major levels so that child exploitation can be minimized.

Running head: Child abuse
References
Finkelhor, D., Shattuck, A., Turner, H. A., & Hamby, S. L. (2014). The lifetime prevalence of
child sexual abuse and sexual assault assessed in late adolescence. Journal of Adolescent
Health, 55(3), 329-333.
Kleinman, P. K. (Ed.). (2015). Diagnostic imaging of child abuse. Cambridge University Press.
Renvoize, J. (2017). Innocence destroyed: A study of child sexual abuse. Routledge.
Straus, M. A. (2017). Ordinary violence, child abuse, and wife beating: What do they have in
common?. In Physical violence in American families (pp. 403-424). Routledge.
Van der Kolk, B. A. (2017). This issue: child abuse & victimization. Psychiatric Annals, 35(5),
374-378.
Widom, C. S., Czaja, S., & Dutton, M. A. (2014). Child abuse and neglect and intimate partner
violence victimization and perpetration: A prospective investigation. Child abuse &
neglect, 38(4), 650-663.