Legal Consequences Of Child Abuse And Neglect In Society

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Register to read the introduction… Family size also leaves an adolescent without the necessary attention they need as an individual. Middle children are more likely to behave deviantly because they go unnoticed more than their younger or older siblings. The legal definitions of abuse and neglect varies from state to state but does, in any form, create serious consequences for behavior. It occurs in patterns and not just once, which causes stress, poor self-esteem, aggressiveness, lack of empathy, and fewer interactions with peers. Child abuse is any physical or emotional trauma to a child for which no reasonable explanation is found. Neglect refers to the deprivation that children suffer at the hands of parents (Deviance 1). Such components that comply to these definitions are non-accidental physical injury and neglect, emotional abuse or neglect, sexual abuse, and abandonment. Over one million of the youth in America are subjected to abuse a year. In terms of sexual abuse one in ten abused are boys and one in three of them are girls. It is really unknown how many cases go unreported in any area of abuse or neglect a year. From 1980 to 1986 reported cases did go up sixty percent. The most common …show more content…
The response and label from other individuals in society, such as peers, are how the individuals view themselves. When a person does a deviant act they are then labeled by society and separated from the normal people. Such labels in today's society are whore, abuser, loser, and etc. These people are then outsiders and associate with other people who have been cast out of society. When more and more people think of these people as deviant they, themselves think they are too. The Labeling Theory says that once they feel this way they will continue to behave in the way society now expects them to. The biological answer is found in heredity and genetic testing. This is where the argument of nature vs. nurture comes up. Not in sociology, but in psychology because the social causes are not being investigated. The question is, are humans genetically predisposed at birth with the characteristics that make them act deviantly, or do the people around them influence them to act this way. The early studies of Phrenology was used by experimenters to determine if an area of the brain had the properties to predispose a person the deviant behavior. They had more severe deviant behavior in mind such as sex crimes, rape, theft,

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