How do you define child abuse?

[lisamariewillbe 1]

Inspired by this thread I was wondering how others define child abuse?

http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=2579116;sb=post_latest_reply;so=ASC;forum_view=forum_view_collapsed;;page=unread#unread

Sudsy Fist: i don't think i'd ever say this
Sudsy Fist: but you're looking damn sudsydoable in this

[NCclimber 0]

Wow. She clearly needs to cut bait. Family comes first.

Sorry about not answering your question.

[freethefly 6]

http://www.building-block.org/
Child abuse, whether psychological or physical, should never be tolerated.

"...And once you're gone, you can't come back
When you're out of the blue and into the black."
Neil Young

[jakee 1,610]

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Inspired by this thread I was wondering how others define child abuse?

http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=2579116;sb=post_latest_reply;so=ASC;forum_view=forum_view_collapsed;;page=unread#unread

Yikes!

I'll just say that I agree 100% with the Aggie.

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[lawrocket 3]

Anything that you wouldn't do to your kid. Some people define corporal punishment as child abuse. Others don't.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[jakee 1,610]

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Anything that you wouldn't do to your kid. Some people define corporal punishment as child abuse. Others don't.

That's a poor definition.

There are things that I would choose not do to my (hypothetical) kids that I can accept other people choosing to do to theirs. But at some stage a line must be drawn where we say no, we cannot allow anyone to do this.

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[lawrocket 3]

Okay. There are two types - child abuse done via affirmative acts and child abuse done by neglect.

For the affirmative act, I'd define it as anybody who willfully inflicts any unjustifiable mental or physical suffering on a child. Example? It's not child abuse to spank a child. It IS child abuse to leave bruises.

For the neglect, I'd define it as a person who fails to provide sufficient food, shelter, health care or supervision that causes the child to suffer injustifiable actual or potential harm to health and welllbeing of the child. For example, it's not child abuse to let the kid play outside on a snowy day. It is child abuse to let the kid pay outside in a hurricane.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[Andy9o8 3]

I guess I'd add emotional and psychological abuse. Children are particularly vulnerable to long-term harm from that.

[Airman1270 0]

However it was defined 30 years ago.

One of the reasons we have been sliding away from freedom & liberty toward a more totalitarian society is the constant redefinition of terms. Things like drunk driving and child abuse have always been wrong. However, we have redefined these terms to the point where people who are not driving drunk nor hurting their kids can find themselves sitting in the back of a police car because some vocal social activist group has been demanding that their personal preferences be codified into law.

The current time-honored term which is being forcibly redefined is "marriage." The soundtrack is the same: Small minority of political activists demands that changes be imposed, and accuses anyone who disagrees of "not caring" about (insert victim group du-jour here.)

Cheers,
Jon

[Andy9o8 3]

Factoid: domestic corporal punishment of children is illegal in Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Israel, Latvia, Norway, Romania, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Ukraine.

[jenfly00 0]

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Inspired by this thread I was wondering how others define child abuse?

http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=2579116;sb=post_latest_reply;so=ASC;forum_view=forum_view_collapsed;;page=unread#unread

The OP was a bit manipulative in her initial representation of what happened.

You, and a couple of others, were fairly irrational in your responses.

-----------------------
"O brave new world that has such people in it".

[Squeak 17]

http://www.aifs.gov.au/nch/sheets/rs6.pdf This is how was as a (OZ) Nation define itIt's not THAT long so I'll post the text for the PDF impaired

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What is child abuse?

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Compiled by Nick Richardson, National Child Protection Clearinghouse. Published by the Australian Institute of Family Studies
ISSN 1448-9112 (Online)


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You can access this resource sheet in HTML or PDF (166K) format. You will need an Acrobat Reader which is free from the Adobe Systems Web site .


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Child abuse is an act by parents, caregivers, other adults or older adolescents that endangers a child or young person's physical or emotional health or development. Child abuse can be a single incident, but usually takes place over time.

Much disagreement exists about precisely which acts constitute child abuse:

definitions of child abuse and neglect are dependent on cultural values and beliefs about appropriate childrearing and parenting - what is considered to be an adequate standard of care can vary between, and within, communities (Korbin, 1980, 1991);
in Australia, there is no national definition of what constitutes child abuse and neglect - each state/territory has its own legislation and definitions; and
despite the definitions that are outlined in legislation and for other purposes, it can be argued that in practice the process of labelling a case as constituting a certain type of child abuse is a process of judgement and ultimately rests on value decisions.
Although there are problems in arriving at clear, practical definitions of the various forms of child maltreatment, it is now common practice to classify child maltreatment or 'child abuse' according to four main types: physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse and neglect. It is important to note that children are often subjected to negative experiences from more than one of these categories (Higgins & McCabe, 2000). Experiencing multiple forms of abuse and neglect and the severity of the maltreatment are important factors influencing subsequent mental health outcomes (Higgins, 2004).

Physical Abuse
Child physical abuse takes place when a parent or caregiver causes physical injury by punching, hitting, kicking, beating, biting, burning, shaking or otherwise harming a child.

There is still much debate concerning whether physical or corporal punishment of children by parents, caregivers or teachers such as smacking should be defined as child abuse.

All Australian states and territories legally allow a parent or guardian the right to administer reasonable (i.e., not excessive) physical punishment to a child (Tucci., et al, 2002). New South Wales is the only state that has placed legislative limits on physical punishment to a child. This legislation was passed in 2000 and forbids parents to hit their children on the head, or to cause pain lasting more than an undefined short period time (Tucci et al., 2002).

Corporal punishment in government schools has been banned by legislation, regulation or policy in all Australian states and territories with the exception of the Northern Territory.

Sexual Abuse
The issue of defining sexual abuse is very complicated and there are many definitions of sexual abuse.

A commonly used definition of sexual abuse is: Any sexual activity between a child and an adult or older person (5 or more years older). Sexual activity includes fondling genitals, masturbation, oral sex, vaginal or anal penetration by a penis, finger or any other object, fondling of breasts, voyeurism, exhibitionism and exposing or involving the child in pornography (National Research Council, 1993).

Many definitions of sexual abuse specify the age difference between the perpetrator and the child or young adult, as it is usually considered that young people are not able to make a free and informed decision (i.e., consent) to engage in such sexual activities because of their lack of relative knowledge and power. However, concerns have been raised that definitions that specify age difference between the perpetrator and child or young person fail to take into account non-consensual sexual activity between peers (i.e., sexual assault and date-rape perpetrated by adolescents).

More recently, there has been a growing awareness of the issue of child sexual abuse over the Internet, which provides increased opportunities for the solicitation of children and the committing of abusive acts by offenders outside the family (Stanley, 2001).

Emotional/Psychological Abuse
The core issue of emotional (or psychological) abuse is that it is a sustained pattern of verbal abuse and harassment by an adult that results in damaging a child's self esteem or social competence.

James Garbarino and associates (Garbarino, 1978; Garbarino, Guttman, & Seeley, 1986) classified emotional abuse into five behavioural forms:

rejecting: behaviours which communicate or constitute abandonment of the child, such as a refusal to show affection;
isolating: preventing the child from participating in normal opportunities for social interaction;
terrorising: threatening the child with severe or sinister punishment, or deliberately developing a climate of fear or threat;
ignoring: where the caregiver is psychologically unavailable to the child and fails to respond to the child's behaviour; and
corrupting: caregiver behaviour that encourages the child to develop values that reinforce antisocial or deviant behavioural patterns, such as aggression, criminal acts or substance abuse.
Other forms of emotional abuse have also been described in the literature:

Verbal abuse is, perhaps, the core emotionally abusive behaviour. When used as part of a chronic pattern of interaction, things that may be considered as abusive include: verbal putdowns; negative prediction (eg, 'you'll never amount to anything'); constant negative comparison (eg, 'Why can't you be more like your sister?'); scapegoating; shaming; swearing; threats; and guilt trips (eg, 'How could you do that after all I've done for you?') (Schaefer, 1997).
Witnessing domestic violence is often considered a form of emotional abuse. There is growing support for the experiences of children in families where there is physical and/or emotional violence between parents or with siblings (whether or not a child directly witnesses the violent acts) to be considered a distinct category of maltreatment (Parkinson, 1998).
Neglect
Neglect refers to a consistent pattern of behaviours that involve failure to provide for a child's basic needs. This category also includes fatalities that can be attributed to a caregiver's neglect of the child's needs (Lawrence & Irvine, 2004). Such acts are generally referred to as 'acts of omission'. In contrast, other forms of maltreatment such as physical and sexual abuse generally involve deliberate or active behaviours by an abuser.

Categories of neglect include:

physical (eg, failure to provide adequate nutrition, personal hygiene, living environment, and/or supervision);
medical neglect (eg, refusal or delay in providing general health, or mental health care) including on the grounds of religious beliefs;
abandonment or desertion;
emotional neglect (eg, not providing opportunities for mental/intellectual development; failure to emotionally nurture a child); and
educational neglect (Tomison, 1995).

You are not now, nor will you ever be, good enough to not die in this sport (Sparky)
My Life ROCKS!
How's yours doing?

[jakee 1,610]

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Okay. There are two types - child abuse done via affirmative acts and child abuse done by neglect.

For the affirmative act, I'd define it as anybody who willfully inflicts any unjustifiable mental or physical suffering on a child. Example? It's not child abuse to spank a child. It IS child abuse to leave bruises.

For the neglect, I'd define it as a person who fails to provide sufficient food, shelter, health care or supervision that causes the child to suffer injustifiable actual or potential harm to health and welllbeing of the child. For example, it's not child abuse to let the kid play outside on a snowy day. It is child abuse to let the kid pay outside in a hurricane.

I agree almost to the letter.

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[ACMESkydiver 0]

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For the affirmative act, I'd define it as anybody who willfully inflicts any unjustifiable mental or physical suffering on a child.

What's unjustifiable?

What if a mom is banging random men on the couch while her 7 year old is watching cartoons in the same room? Is that mental suffering, or are people that would call that cruel to inflict upon a child just prudish, and attempting to instill their own values on society?

What about a dad that's drinking himself into a stupor nightly and passes out on the floor in front of the bambino?

A mom that makes her daughter change her last name to whatever her current boyfriend's is? Is that inflicting mental harm on the child? Bad parenting? Acceptable parenting?

What about a mom that grounds her daughter for a week for missing an assignment? Is that too cruel?

~Jaye
Do not believe that possibly you can escape the reward of your action.

[jakee 1,610]

Going out on a limb here, I'm thinking that in some of those cases it would depend not just on the actions, but on the long term effect it had on the child.

I would imagine that some kids could get through some of those things just fine, while others might be reasonably seriously affected. While you can count on similar physical actions inflicting similar physical harm on different kids, resilience to psychological damage seems to differ much more.

My opinions are wiiide open to change on this one though.

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[ACMESkydiver 0]

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Going out on a limb here, I'm thinking that in some of those cases it would depend not just on the actions, but on the long term effect it had on the child.

I would imagine that some kids could get through some of those things just fine, while others might be reasonably seriously affected. While you can count on similar physical actions inflicting similar physical harm on different kids, resilience to psychological damage seems to differ much more.

i would go along with that. However, then we would need a child psychologist to determine some types of child abuse, wouldn't we?

~Jaye
Do not believe that possibly you can escape the reward of your action.

[kelpdiver 2]

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Inspired by this thread I was wondering how others define child abuse?

http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=2579116;sb=post_latest_reply;so=ASC;forum_view=forum_view_collapsed;;page=unread#unread

The thread was locked, and for good reasons. (I only read the first 10, and then the last 6). Why not let it go?

Rough housing with your kids that results in crying probably isn't child abuse. Once upon a time kids were allowed to scrape their knees.

Intentionally inflicting pain on the kid for no justifiable reason is abuse. So is corporal punishment that results in injury, not just discomfort (spanking).

In between is pretty grey and I don't see how I (or you in that thread), can pass black and white judgement without actually being there.