User:Lauraleesturm

Definition

Child neglect is an act or failure to act which presents imminent risk of serious harm.. It can be considered a form of child abuse. Like acts of commission, harm to a child may or may not be the intended consequence. Child neglect is a form of child abuse. There are two subsets of child neglect: chronic neglect and acute neglect. Chronic neglect is a continual or ongoing act or failure to act putting the child at risk. Acute neglect is a onetime instance of neglect that poses a serious threat to the health of the child. For example, a child is left unsupervised in the bathtub and drowns.

Types

Physical Neglect

Definition: Parent or caregiver does not provide basic necessities. Examples: Abandonment, inadequate supervision, injuries caused from lack of supervision.

Educational Neglect

Definition: Failure of a parent or guardian to enroll a child of mandatory school age in school or provide appropriate homeschooling or needed special education training. Educational neglect can also cause a child to fail in acquiring basic life skills, dropping out of school, or partaking in disruptive behavior. This type of neglect threatens a child’s emotional well-being, physical health, and development (psychologically and physiologically)

Emotional/ Psychological Neglect

Definition: Parental or guardian disregard to a child’s psychological state of mind. Examples: Actions such as engaging in chronic or extreme spousal abuse in the child’s presence, allowing a child to use drugs or alcohol, refusing or failing to provide needed psychological care, constantly belittling the child, and withholding affection.

Specific parental behaviors considered to be emotional maltreatment

• Ignoring – consistent failure to respond to the child’s need for stimulation, nurturance, encouragement, and protection, or failure to acknowledge child’s presence
• Rejecting – actively refusing to respond to the child’s needs
• Verbally Assaulting – constant name calling, belittling, or threatening
• Isolating – preventing the child from having normal social contacts with other children and adults
• Terrorizing – threatening the child with extreme punishment or creating a climate of terror by playing on childhood fears
• Corrupting or Exploiting – encouraging the child to engage in destructive, illegal, or antisocial behavior.

Medical Neglect

Definition: Failure to provide appropriate health care for a child (although able to do so), refusal of medical care for a child in an emergency or for an acute illness, or ignoring medical recommendations for a child with a treatable chronic disease or disability. Fact: In 2005, 2% of children in the US were victims of medical neglect.

Signs/ Symptoms

The Child

• Clothes are ill-fitting, filthy, or inappropriate for weather
• Hygiene is consistently bad
• Shows sudden changes in behavior or school performance
• Has not received help for physical or medical problems brought to the parents’ attention
• Lacks adult supervision
• Has learning problems (or difficulty concentrating) that cannot be attributed to specific physical or psychological causes
• Overly compliant, passive, or withdrawn
• Comes to school or other activities early, stays late, and does not want to go home

The Parent

• Shows little concern for the child
• Denies existence of or blames the child for the child’s problems in school or at home
• Sees the child as entirely bad, worthless, or burdensome
• Looks primarily to the child for care, attention, and satisfaction of emotional needs

The Parent and the Child

• Rarely touch or look at each other
• Consider relationship entirely negative
• State they do not like each other

Perpetrator Characteristics

Neglect is most often found in a single-parent home where the child is being raised by the mother. Neglect is three times more likely when a child’s mother is under twenty years old. Typically, the mothers have a childish nature. They act impulsively, are severely dependent on others, cannot take responsibility, and show poor judgment. Often times the parent/ guardian neglecting the child was neglected when he/she was a child. Studies show that those who neglect their children have a high depression rate and suffer immense stress. It is also common for a perpetrator to have a substance abuse problem. In many cases, neglect occurs in impoverished homes. If both parents are present in the child’s life, the male is typically unemployed. Neglect is prevalent in families with four or more children and/or where the relationship between the child and adult(s) is negative.

Effects of Neglect

As a child develops and grows, there are certain characteristics they develop due to the neglect they received as a child. One of these characteristics is a lack of trust or ability to effectively build and maintain relationships. Because these children learned they could not trust their parents at a young age, they have developed the mindset that they can only rely on themselves. This, in turn, affects the relationships that they attempt to make with other people. It is very difficult to maintain a relationship with someone who will not trust you.

The children affected by neglect will grow up with the mindset that they are worthless or not good enough. This mindset will dramatically affect the way they live their lives as adults. Most times these adults will not strive for higher education or promotions within work due to the inclination that they are not good enough to succeed anyway.

As adults, neglect victims often have a difficult time controlling their emotions. The disregard their parents had for their emotional state as a child causes the victims to not understand how to handle each emotion. Often times neglect victims will suffer from intense anxiety, depression, or anger.

Feral Children

Definition: Feral children, also known as wild children or wolf children, are children who have grown up with minimal human contact, or even none at all. They may have been raised by animals (often wolves) or somehow survived on their own. In some cases, children are confined and denied normal social interaction with other people. Because of the neglect of their parents, guardians, or caretakers these children are forced to raise themselves and often times cannot develop the necessary skills needed to function in modern day society. Examples:

1. Victor, The wild boy of Aveyron (Victor d’Aveyron)

• Victor was found at the edge of the woods in Aveyron, France. He could not talk and had multiple scars on his entire body indicating he had been living the wild for some time. Victor was eleven years old when he was found. The 1970 film L’Enfant Sauvage (The Wild Child) was based off of Victor’s story.

1. Genie (feral child): Genie

• Genie was found in 1970 in Los Angeles, California. When officials found the 13-year-old girl, Genie was tethered to a toilet seat. She either spent her time tied to the toilet seat or tied up in a sleeping bag in a mesh crib with a metal cover. She was extremely malnourished, dehydrated, violent, and had never learned how to speak.

Evolution of Child Rearing – Stem of Child Neglect

1. “Infanticidal Mode” (Antiquity Era) – The lives of children who were allowed to live were constantly threatened by sever abuse.
2. “Abandonment Mode” (Medieval Era) – Children were often abandoned by parents to a wet nurse, foster family, monastery, nunnery, or they were psychologically abandoned through severe emotional neglect.
3. “Ambivalent Mode” (Renaissance Era) – Parents feared that the child’s insides were filled with evil. This caused the parent to express both love and hate to the child.
4. “Intrusive Mode” (18th Century) – There was less parental ambivalence present in the parent/ child relationship. The child was “prayed with” more than he/she was “played with”. It was common that the child was disciplined as much by guilt as by beating.
5. “Socializing Mode” (19th Century) – The child was viewed as someone who needs continuous training and guidance in order to become civilized.
6. “Helping Mode” (Present) – Both parents are involved in meeting the child’s expanding emotional, intellectual, and other needs.

Statistics

• National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) reports that there were an estimated 1,760 child fatalities in 2007

-Child fatalities is defined as the death of a child caused by an injury resulting from abuse or neglect, or where abuse or neglect was a contributing factor

• Fatality Victims by Age (2007)

<1 year = 42.2%

1-3 years =33.5%

4-7 years = 12.9%

8-11 years = 4.7%

12-17 years = 6.5%

Substance Abuse and Negligence

In 1999, 5.5% of pregnant women used some illicit drug during pregnancy. This, in turn, put an approximate 221,000 babies at risk for drug exposure and possible addiction within the womb. Prenatal drug exposure has been found to cause physical and psychological discrepancies, stunted growth, and other developmental irregularities over a long period of time including learning and language setbacks. The possibility of affecting your newborn with these disabilities qualifies drug exposure during pregnancy as child neglect.

A minimum of five states include drug-affected newborns in their state statutes which define neglect. The child born with a drug addiction will then have to go through withdrawal once they are out of the womb. The pain and suffering caused from this withdrawal is inhumane and thus qualifies it as child neglect.

Child Neglect in Other Countries

India

In India there is a current issue of gendercide – a mass killing of a specific gender. In India’s case, the female gender is being targeted. In many cases, after a family has already had one girl the mother will kill her child. In a study of 1,250 families in Tamil Nadu, 740 families have one girl. 249 families admitted to killing their girl babies after they already had one. In one instance of serious neglect, a mother explained that for three days after the baby’s birth the mother refused to breastfeed the girl in hopes of starvation.

Facts

• Gendercide is not the only issue with neglect in India. From 1999-2004 the exposure and andonment rates on Indian children increased from 593 to 715.
• 40% of malnutrition in the world is in India. Malnutrition constitutes as a form of chronic neglect.
• 6.6 million Indian children have a damaged brain from iodine deficiency.
• 85 million have not been immunized.
• Out of every 100 children who enroll in school, 70 drop out by the time they reach the secondary level.
• In 2005 there were a reported 44,476 children missing.

Japan

In the mid-1970s, Japan utilized coin-operated lockers as a form of neglect. The Japanese would abandon their children in these lockers with the intent of never seeing them again. Often times the child would die. In the 1970s coin-operated locker deaths accounted for 7% of infanticides in Japan.