Preventing Child Abuse

Child abuse is defined as any recent act or failure to act on the part of a parent or guardian, which results in death, serious physical or emotional harm, sexual abuse or exploitation (Definitions of Child Abuse and Neglect in Federal Law). For many years, child abuse has been the cause of millions of children’s deaths. This is one of the bigger problems that is happening in the United States and all around the world. People need to take into consideration that children are more helpless than adults and need the attention more than say a job or errands. According to the Child Abuse Hotline, “about 30% of abused and neglected children will later abuse their own children”, continuing the cycle of child abuse (National Child Abuse Statistics). …show more content…
Society looks at child abuse as a problem that will be handled by law enforcement or the parents of the children, but in reality most people just turn the other way if they see a child or children being yelled at, slapped, or exploited by their parents or guardians. A case that happened recently was where the husband failed to stop or report the abuse his wife was doing to their adopted daughter. The wife tried to sew the daughter’s mouth shut, gouge her eyes out, and choked the girl until she blacked out. The husband knew for at least four years and did not tell the police or even stop it himself; he said that it was a type of discipline to punish the child. What should have been done was when the child started to be abused, he should have either stopped his wife or told the authorities. Instead of protecting their daughter from more abuse, he looked the other way (“Husband”). Most children like this girl do not want their parents or guardians to go to jail or prison because in spite of being abused; they still care for their loved ones. The children being maltreated would rather see their abusers taken care of rather than be taken away from them, even if they would not be able to forgive and forget what had happened. If society starts to take steps to stop abusing children, they can make the child’s life tremendously different, first is to …show more content…
First of all, people need to know what child abuse is and what it does to the children that are being harmed. There is not only physical and sexual abuse; there is emotional abuse and neglect, hurting children by saying they are worthless or hideous and not letting them get the necessities they need, eventually can be detrimental. Another method society should look at is the way someone is disciplining their child, it may be telling them that what they did was wrong and to not do it again, but sometimes parents or guardians take it too far and call the child horrible names or spank them more forcefully or worse. Disciplining a child is a way of teaching them what is right and wrong what most parents do, not to harm