When it comes to the topic of child abuse, most of us will readily agree that child abuse is a problem within many families. Where this agreement usually ends, however, is on the question of whether an abuser is destined to be an abuser because he/she was abused as a child. Whereas some are convinced that an abused child will have a higher chance of being abusive to children as an adult, others maintain that a child can learn from the abuse and avoid becoming the abuser to children. While some abused children manage to break the cycle when they become parents, I contend that many abused children grow up to be abusive parents.
Some parents break the cycle and don’t abuse their children. There are some parents that were abused as …show more content…
Murray A. Straus presents in “Physical Abuse” (Murray A. Straus with Denise A. Donnelly, Beating the Devil out of Them: Corporal Punishment in American Families and Its Effects on Children, 2001). Straus maintains that “These [abused] parents tend to be depressed and to be involved in spousal violence. When a parent resorts to physical punishment and the child does not comply, the parent increases the severity of the punishment, eventually harming the child” …show more content…
An abused parent may not know how to react to misbehavior and respond with kindness or nurturing because more likely they were that little baby playing the pick-up game when their parent responded in a negative way and continuing the cycle of abuse in one form or another. In fact emotional abuse is both the most pervasive and the least understood form of child maltreatment. Its victims are often dismissed simply because their wounds are not visible. In an era in which fresh disclosures of unspeakable child abuse are everyday fare, the pain and torment of those who experience "only" emotional abuse is often trivialized. Most people in our society understand and accept that victims of physical or sexual abuse need both time and specialized treatment to heal. But when it comes to emotional abuse, they are more likely to believe the victims will "just get over it" when they become