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Child Abuse: Why?
| Article
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17749 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
6 / 1990 |
3,704 Words |
| Author
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James Garbarino
James Garbarino is president of Chicago's Erikson Institute
for Advanced Study in Child Development, a private graduate
school and research center specializing in issues of child
development and early childhood education. He is the author or
editor of eleven books, among them Understanding Abusive
Families, The Psychologically Battered Child, and What
Children Can Tell Us. In 1985, he received the first C. Henry
Kempe Award from the National Conference on Child Abuse and
Neglect; in 1988, the American Humane Association's Vincent De
Francis Award; and in 1989, the American Psychological
Association's Award for Distinguished Professional
Contributions to Public Service for his work on behalf of
abused and neglected children. |
The serious mistreatment of children by their parents and guardians arouses public indignation, motivates professional service providers, and frustrates researchers perhaps more than any other single public issue. Broadly speaking, child abuse is willful behavior by a parent or guardian that harms a child in their care. However, the unresolved issue is, What constitutes harm? While most would agree that savage and severe beatings, burnings, or assault with a deadly weapon constitute abuse, the line between physical punishment and abuse in cultures such as our own, which approve of using physical blows as a legitimate means of discipline within the family, is less firmly drawn.
For this reason, we must rely jointly upon community standards and scientific expertise to know which behaviors by a parent are threatening to a child. Community standards tell us what is normal in a culture - for example, scarification is normal in some tribal African communities, while spanking is normal in North America. Scientific study provides grounds to evaluate cultural values and norms, such as the finding that rejection is psychologically damaging no matter what its standing culturally. When we call certain behavior "child abuse" we are thus offering a social judgment, a kind of negotiated settlement between what professional expertise and scientific evidence tell us is damaging to children and what the values of our community decide is inappropriate. Some dangerous behavior is considered acceptable (e.g., children playing tackle football), as is some physical damage (e.g., circumcision or ear piercing). Likewise, some behaviors considered inappropriate may not be "objectively" dangerous (e.g., nudity).
What Causes Child
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