Research Paper on Child Neglect

Introduction

The definition of child neglect has been in the contest, undeniably, but it all boils down to, simply put, as the omission and commission of parents towards children that fails by parents or caregivers to provide care and protection to the children under their watch or custody. There are different categories of child abuse cases that include physical, sexual, emotional abuse and in some cases neglect. It is of profound importance to explore this topic to provide insightful information to parents and caregivers regarding the best approaches they need to pursue in raising their children. The topic is also prudential as it provides the demographic distribution and characteristics of this social vice which is vital to the society, including authorities whose mandate includes children welfare as their responsibilities, for appropriate action.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

Child neglect has been and continues, to characterize various families. Several factors contribute to the manifestation of these unfolding family events. The authors of this study set to establish the characteristics and risk actors that play an integral role in contributing to child abuse or being causal agents themselves. From the categorization as referenced above, emotional abuse and neglect have little-documented information regarding their occurrence, yet they are frequent forms of child abuse. The USA has abuse of children as one of the leading causes of death among children. Caregivers also contribute significantly to the abuse of children leading to the deaths of some 1300 children in Europe and Asia annually (Derakhshanpour, Shahini, Hajebi, Vakili & Yazid, pp 459, 2017). In Turkey for example, as per the national survey conducted between 1980 and 1982 found that the frequency of child abuse and neglect were highly pronounced in school going children with 34.6% of girls and 32.5% of boys being victims of abuse.

Various studies have mentioned several and varied factors as risk factors in child abuse cases including, but of course not limited to low levels of education, young age of parents, unemployment as well as the mental disorder of parents. On the side of children, there is a mention of the physical debilitation of the victim children as risk factors that put them in susceptibility to abuse.

The researchers researched a hospital in Bandar, Iran that has an affiliation with pediatrics. The authors spread the duration of study over a two year period from 2011 and 2013 with the study population selected from outpatient clinics and inpatient wards. Information forming the premise of the study was obtained from 375 school children in their early stages of adolescence as well as in the middle of this stage. Identifying the risk factors required a framework for such identifications, and so the authors put the definition of child abuse as having the manifestations that fall in one, two or all of the three forms of abuse that are physical, sexual and neglect. Staff members as a way of aiding this research attended a training session on how to detect signs related to these forms of abuse on children. The study involved not only the parents and children but also professionals in the field of psychology and related affiliations. Once the hospital staff had been trained, they were required to report to the department of psychosocial support department upon detection of signs of child abuse and neglect from the guidelines received in the session. For effective analysis and consideration of the referrals in regards to this case, the department included a psychiatrist, a psychologist, a pediatrician, and two social workers that examined the child in consideration. Work was divided in that the psychologist, with their experience and knowledge from the training session, interviewed and assessed both the child and parent(s). They tried to communicate to the subjects to give them motivation for subsequent sessions of attendance and subsequently filled the questionnaire with the data as provided from such interaction (Derakhshanpour, Shahini, Hajebi, Vakili & Yazid, pp 460, 2017).

Data collection involved the use of questionnaires structured in three parts. The first part contained the demographic characteristics of the sample such as age and sex while the second contained the risk factors including but of course not limited to parents mental disorder such as from substance abuse contributing to child abuse. Common signs and symptoms such as burns and fractures of child abuse formed the third section. From the data were formulated levels of severity categorized under mild, moderate and severe as basic definitions with cases as determined by the psychologist falling into a suiting section. Mild cases involved physical cases beyond spanking, but with no bodily marks while moderate included abuse by the use of objects but did not require medical attention. Severity which was on the highest on the scale involved abuse that led to injuries considered serious and required medical attention. Data analysis involved reporting the data as standard deviation (SD) of mean or as frequency and percentages. Two methods were used in the analysis; one was the use of the t-test for continuous variables in the difference of characteristics of the subjects in participation and the guardians. The other involved the use of chi-square for variables considered as categorical. Besides this, analysis also involved the use of univariate logistic regression model. In this case, those variables that were considered to have an association with an outcome had their analysis carried out by use of this technique and there on analyzed using a single method. Expression of results was as odds ratio at a confidence interval of 95%. Statistical significance included the values that were less than 0.2% for univariate logistic regression and 0.05 for other tests (Derakhshanpour, Shahini, Hajebi,Vakili & Yazid, pp 461, 2017).

Of the three types of child abuse, neglect recorded the highest number of cases with 76.5%. The physical and sexual abuse came in second and third positions respectively with 23.3% and 0.2%. There was a significant variation in the percentage of neglect of children among employed and unemployed parents. Among employed mothers and unemployed fathers, children suffered more physical abuse. Contrastingly, and interestingly, the physical abuse had less pronounced cases in children whose parents had little education. Regarding mental disorder in the second section of the questionnaire, fathers had more cases of mental disorder at 17.2% while mothers had 12.7% cases. Cases of mental, physical child abuse among parents with mental disorders had a high prevalence. Mothers, in this case, were the most common aggressors. Parents were, which is not as expected, were the main abusers in the physical abuse category in 82.6% of the cases. From these physical abuses, children suffered more from ecchymosis at 26.3%. Marital status was also a factor or revelations as 32% of cases were inflicted by single parents as compared to only 22.1% of cases from families with both parents (Derakhshanpour, Shahini, Hajebi, Vakili &Yazid, pp 462, 463, 2017).

The researchers in their limitation admit that they were unable to conduct interviews with the two parents in selected incidences and that may have influenced the results. Additionally, the study focused on participants who presented themselves at the hospital for such cases of abuse. Generalization is one major concept in research that is pivotal to the result and so the subsequent actions in correcting the situation. And that only happens, sensibly, if the population of the study is large enough and carefully selected to this effect. The above limitations make it impossible to generalize the results, and so make the study kind of only applicable to a small population and failing to cover the gaps as should the case be. It, therefore, jeopardizes correctional measures of the problem under investigation. In correcting this shortfall, the area should be widened to include cases that are not handled by hospitals. There are numerous cases across society that is not reported perhaps due to fear or lack of proper reporting mechanisms among other inhibiting reasons. They form a significant chunk of the cases and so structuring the research to cover them would be of profound importance. Furthermore, the analysis involved parents and so conducting interviews with both parents would lead to better results as to their contribution to child abuse and neglect.

And while physical abuse rates among the most common forms of abuse in different communities, there are some exceptions as to the take of the same by different communities. The Chines believe that inflicting physical pain is a proper form of instilling tolerance and discipline among children and as such, defining the extent to which such actions of discipline qualify as child abuse requires special consideration. In addressing this concern, therefore, there should be conducted prior research in establishing an understanding of the culture of such communities in regards to this and similar lifestyle. In this manner, there would be eliminated the concept of the issue of vague generalization as well as that has prejudice on culture and profiling when in a real sense the society sees no offense in their actions.

References

Berzenski, S., Bennett, D., Marini, V., Sullivan, M. and Lewis, M. (2013). The Role of Parental Distress in Moderating the Influence of Child Neglect on Maladjustment. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 23(8), pp.1325-1336.

Firoozeh Derakhshanpour, Najmeh Shahini, Ahmed Hajebi, Mohammad A. Vakili, Aazam S Yazid (2017). Demographic characteristics and risk actors of children and parents in child abuse subtypes: Findings from a psychosocial support department. Journal of fundamentals of mental health, pp 459-467.

Achema G, Odinigwe N, &Emmanuel A( 2013): Child Abuse: Effects on the Child and Family in Selected Villages in Enugwu-Ukwu, Njikoka Local Government Area of Anambra, Nigeria: International Journal of Medicine and Biomedical Research.

Telman, M., Overbeek, M., de Schipper, J., Lamers-Winkelman, F., Finkenauer, C. and Schuengel, C. (2015). Family Functioning and Children's Post-Traumatic Stress Symptoms in a Referred Sample Exposed to Interparental Violence. Journal of Family Violence, 31(1), pp.127-136.