EFFECT OF CHILD ABUSE ON CHILD DEVELOPMENT

Effect Of Child Abuse On Child Development

Effect Of Child Abuse On Child Development

Abuse of children has become a curse of the modern society. This problem has gained prominence in 1870s, then for some time it was ignored until in 1960 it surfaced back into the public attention. During past 10-15 years medical community has learned about the large scale of this child abuse from parents or other family members as well as from strangers. In United States alone, there are "150 000 to 200 000 cases of child abuse every year" (Finkelhor, 2007). About 10% to 30% of the adult women in Great Britain have been the victims of abuse in childhood. Only in 25% of these cases the offender was unknown to the child.

The psychological characteristics of the children victims of abuse (immaturity, submission to the authority of the adult, gullibility, lack of life experience and sexual education, inability to critically evaluate the situation and forecast the behavior of others) make it easy for adults to abuse children. At the same time, these characteristics serve to cover the facts of abuse. Moreover, if the child does tell adults about what happened, they may not believe him or her because of this. It is well-known that development of sexuality in the abused children is influenced by social, biological, psychological, and psychopathological factors. Thus, special attention is devoted to studying the psychosexual components of the sexually abused. Disgarmonic correlation between the somatic and psychosexual components explain different kinds of sexual dysfunctions of the victims, which is a consequence of the inadequate preservation of the psychological processes and psychological structures related to the sexual self-identification, sexual behavior, and psychosexual orientations (Despert, 2005).

The problem of child abuse is actually in every part of the world. The growth of the child abuse is perhaps can be also connected with the general increase of aggression in modern societies, delinquent behavior, suicides etc. The work of D. Finkelhors shows that sexual contact between children as adults are rather common, and the amount of sexual crimes against children mounts up in the later years. T.W Wind and L. Silvern have conducted a study of the reported incidents of child abuse in the USA and concluded the necessity of creating stronger legal barriers too keep children safe from abuse. Yet it is difficult to determine what forms of contact between the adult and child, with the exception of the sexual intercourse, are a subject to the legal action and when such contacts can be considered as manifestation of the parental love.

The long-term effects of child abuse are intense shame and low self-esteem. Most victims feel valued only as sexual objects and relate to the world through sexual activity. They feel worthless, insignificant and almost invisible. Guilt and shame go hand in hand. Many children continue to believe that they played some part in the interaction. They may blame themselves for the physical contact, and for not having defended ...