Factors Responsible For Child Abuse And Neglect Among Parents

Factors Responsible For Child Abuse And Neglect Among Parents

Chapter One

Preface

Background of the Study

Ika South is a Original Government Area of Delta State, Nigeria. Its headquarters are in the city of Agbor. It has an area of 436km2 and a population of 62,594( Onyeche, 2012).

Child abuse and neglect is a social and public health problem in Nigeria, as well as a children’s rights issue. Abuse and neglect can lead to a wide range of adverse consequences for children and youthful people. There’s generally not a single factor that results in the abuse or neglect of a child; it’s generally a combination of colorful factors. In addition, the duration( similar as the duration of an illness) or intensity( similar as the position of medicine or alcohol abuse) can make it more or less likely that a child will be at threat for abuse( Aber and Cicchetti, 2014).

Child abuse is a term used for maltreatment and neglect of children. Child maltreatment may be formally described as all forms of physical and/ or emotional ill- treatment, sexual abuse, neglect or careless treatment or marketable or other exploitation, performing in factual or implicit detriment to the child’s health, survival, development or quality in the environment of a relationship of responsibility, trust or power( Woodhouse, 2011).

Child neglecton the other hand is generally seen as a different miracle from maltreatment. Child neglect may be defined as “ any recent act or failure to act on the part of a parent or caregiver, which results in death, serious physical or emotional detriment, sexual abuse or exploitation, or an act or failure to act which presents an imminent threat of serious detriment ”( Culp, 2011). Neglect is in numerous ways the further insidious detriment against a child, with long- term goods at least as dangerous as physical abuse( if not more so) but frequently going unnoticed( Bloom, 2011).

The term ‘ child abuse and neglect ’ refers to the detriment endured by children or youthful people under the age of 18 yearsas a result of the conduct, quiescence or incapability of people with a maternal responsibility for them( Sylvestre and Mérette, 2010). Maternal responsibility in relation to a child means all the duties, powers, liabilities and authority which, by law, parents have in relation to children( Greenfield, 2010). The detriment endured by the child or youthful person may arise from a significant event or may arise from the accretive effect of abuse and neglect. utmost parents love their children, but when stress, frazzle, lack of chops, information and support combine it can be inviting( Drotar, 2012).

It’s certain that no child is ever to condemn for abuse foisted on him or her by an grown-up. There may be no ‘ child ’ factors present at each when a child is abused. still the threat of abuse of a child may be increased if the child has attributes that make parenthood more delicate or has high requirements. Applicable factors might include being a unseasonable baby, persistently crying, being one of a multiple birth, and/ or having behavioural or internal health problems( Rosenbaum, 2011).

Some children may be vulnerable because of emotional difficulties they’ve that both reflect and complicate social insulation. The performing cognitive and emotional poverties serve as signals of vulnerability and/ or intrude with their tone-defensive chops outside the home( Vissing, 2012). therefore, some children are victimised again and again. Cognitive and emotional poverties performing from sustained abuse( including family violence) or neglect at home may increase the threat of a vicious circle of victimisation outside the home as well. therefore, for illustration, gests similar as loss, conflict, privation or fermentation within the home may undermine a child’s capability to cover themselves, making them a implicit target for bullies or sexual bloodsuckers( Abram, 2010).

Low educational attainment of caregivers has been linked as a threat factor for child maltreatment and neglect( Berger, 2010) and is also associated with poverty. Hence poverty( especially when compounded with other pitfalls similar as sole parenting), low educational attainment and maltreatment can set up a cycle whereby one perpetuates the other( Jacobson, 2010). As with other threat factors, the strength of the relationship between low educational attainment and neglect and maltreatment is unclear, as are the unproductive pathways. Low educational attainment can both reflect and contribute to disadvantage including precarious employment and low income. Lack of education may also mean a parent has lower understanding of issues associated with parenthood, or has limited capability to learn themselves( Twardosz and Lutzker, 2010).

A farther extensively recognised stressor is sole parenting( Alessandri, 2011). Two factors appear to contribute to sole parenting as a stressor and threat factor for children the first is the strong link between sole parent homes and poverty, especially reliance on benefit income( Chaffin, 2011) although, due to the loss of the absent parent’s pay envelope- earning power, “ the maturity of single- parent, womanish- headed families( are driven) into poverty, anyhow of whether the mama works. ”( emphasis added)( Bloom, 2011); the other is that sole parenting may be associated with lack of family or community- grounded support networks. And a sole parent is doing the work of two people. While support handed to maters is significantly associated with them being suitable to give support for their children, there’s no substantiation that lack of support and/ or wider family dysfunction inescapably leads to maltreatment( Aber and Cicchetti, 2014).

Child abuse occurs in every country in the world, and despite considerable sweats and coffers, rates of maltreatment and neglect in developed countries haven’t markedly lowered, nor are experimenters much closer to being suitable to assess which children are at threat, and what programmes effectively change long- term geste so as to help maltreatment( Berger, 2010).

Child abuse and neglect have immediate and long- term consequences. In addition to negatively impacting on the child, child abuse and neglect impacts on the family, the academy community, and indeed unborn generations. The capability to survive and thrive in the face of child abuse and neglect depends on a variety of factors, including the extent and type of abuse or neglect, whether it was continual or occasional, the age of the child when abuse was initiated, the child’s relationship to the abuser, and how the abuse or neglect was responded to if discovered or bared. issues are also dependent on the child’s personality traits, inner strength, and the support the child receives from those around them( Berger, 2015).

Neglected children are also at considerable threat. These children are more likely than other children to suffer from a serious physical injury due to an accident similar as falling, drowning, fire, or ingesting bane. They’re also at a lesser threat than other children of being physically and sexually abused from an unconnected caretaker, frequently times a significant other or friend of their parent( s)( Berger, 2010).

It’s important to note that some children won’t develop behavioral problems, so it can not be assumed that a lack of behavioral problems is substantiation against child abuse or neglect. When there are behavioral problems as a result of child abuse and neglect, they will most probably be related to difficulty following rules, being regardful, staying in their seats and keeping on- task, temper explosions, and delicate peer connections. As children come aged they’re more likely to engage in tone( Wood house, 2011).

Statement of the Problem

numerous child deaths, still, aren’t routinely delved and posthumous examinations aren’t carried out, which makes it delicate to establish the precise number of losses from child abuse in Ika South Original Government Area of Delta State. There are problems in duly feting cases of infanticide and measuring their prevalence. Significant situations of misclassification in the cause of death as reported on death instruments have been set up, for illustration, in Ika South Original Government Area of Delta State. Deaths attributed to other causes – for case, unforeseen child death pattern or accidents have frequently been shown on reinvestigation to be homicides.

Despite the apparent wide misclassification, there’s general agreement that losses from child abuse are far more frequent than sanctioned records suggest in Ika South Original Government Area of Delta State where studies of child deaths have been accepted.

Among the losses attributed to child abuse, the most common cause of death is injury to the head, followed by injury to the tummy. purposeful suffocation has also been considerably reported as a cause of death. Injuries foisted by a caregiver on a child can take numerous forms. Serious damage or death in abused children is most frequently the consequence of a head injury or injury to the internal organs. Head trauma as a result of abuse is the most common cause of death in youthful children, with children in the first 2 times of life being the most vulnerable. Because force applied to the body passes through the skin, patterns of injury to the skin can give clear signs of abuse. The cadaverous instantiations of abuse include multiple fractures at different stages of mending, fractures of bones that are veritably infrequently broken under normal circumstances, and characteristic fractures of the caricatures and long bones.

One of the runs of child abuse is the ‘‘ bombarded child ’’. This term is generally applied to children showing repeated and ruinous injury to the skin, cadaverous system or nervous system. It includes children with multiple fractures of different periods, head trauma and severe visceral trauma, with substantiation of repeated infliction. Fortunately, though the cases are woeful, this pattern is rare.

Children may be brought to professional attention because of physical or behavioural enterprises that, on farther disquisition, turn out to affect from sexual abuse. It isn’t uncommon for children who have been sexually abused to parade symptoms of infection, genital injury, abdominal pain, constipation, habitual or intermittent urinary tract infections or behavioural problems. To be suitable to descry child sexual abuse requires a high indicator of dubitation and familiarity with the verbal, behavioural and physical pointers of abuse. numerous children will expose abuse to caregivers or others spontaneously, however there may also be circular physical or behavioural signs.

There live numerous instantiations of child neglect, includingnon-compliance with health care recommendations, failure to seek applicable health care, privation of food performing in hunger, and the failure of a child physically to thrive. Other causes for concern include the exposure of children to medicines and shy protection from environmental troubles. In addition, abandonment, shy supervision, poor hygiene and being deprived of an education have all been considered as substantiation of neglect.

Data onnon-fatal child abuse and neglect come from a variety of sources, including sanctioned statistics, case reports and population- grounded checks. These sources, still, differ as regards their utility in describing the full extent of the problem. Official statistics frequently reveal little about the patterns of child abuse. This is incompletely because, in Ika South Original Government Area of Delta State there are no legal or social systems with specific responsibility for recording, let alone responding to, reports of child abuse and neglect. In addition, there are differing legal and artistic delineations of abuse and neglect between societies. There’s also substantiation that only a small proportion of cases of child maltreatment are reported to authorities, indeed where obligatory reporting exists.

Case series have been published in numerous countries. They’re important for guiding original action on child abuse, and raising mindfulness and concern among the public and professionals( Corso and Mercy, 2011). Case series can reveal parallels between the gests in different countries and suggest new suppositions. still, they aren’t particularly helpful in assessing the relative significance of possible threat or defensive factors in different artistic surrounds, this study is thus set to probe the factors that are responsible for child abuse and neglect among parents in Ika South Original Government Area of Delta State.