Why is Child Abuse Difficult to Define? | Essay

"Why is child abuse difficult to define?"
According to Nelson (2016), child abuse is defined as the behaviour such as neglect,
physical abuse, emotional, sexual abuse and exploitation that harms the child. Child abuse has
severe impacts that lead to physical suffering and mental trauma among the children.
There are many reasons that lead to child abuse. In my opinion, child abuse often occurs
when people do not understand children’s right of being safe. According to the Social Learning
Theory, it is assumed that the abusers have themselves been abused at one point in their
childhood thereby creating a ‘cycle of violence’. It is usually noted that children are abused by
people who desire to feel powerful, or do not think if such behaviour is appropriate. In my
opinion, the abusers tend to forget the hateful feeling of being a victim (Vidal et al. 2017).
The children are usually dependent on their parents for information and help. But if the
parents are involved in abusing their child, it becomes difficult to define or determine it. It is a
common tendency among parents to punish their child if they are doing something wrong.
However, there have been times where it becomes difficult to determine if they are abusing the
child. For example, Sweden banned spanking which was a common punishment among parents
in disciplining their child (Gumbrecht 2011).
It may be noted that children may choose not to speak up or confide in anybody if they
are being abused. I believe they deny for most of the times that they are being abused. It becomes
difficult to define and determine child abuse as the children are ashamed and do not prefer
discussing the matter. Further, there are times when children are confused if they are facing
abuse. There may be situations when the child feels emotional intimacy or physical pleasure
from the abuse thereby making it difficult for them to talk about it. For example, if the abuser