Reframing the Child Maltreatment Issue, Essay Example

The situation discussed by Kirkpatrick (2004) is indeed a serious problem of the modern community that on the one hand tries to be compassionate and proactive in the issues of child abuse, neglect, and maltreatment, but the aptness to sensation cultivated by the mass media sources has brought about a distortion of understanding the child maltreatment issue. The majority of concerned citizens believe that child abuse is manifested in beating, killing, or starving children to death by alcoholic or drug addicted parents. However, in fact, there is a much larger number of extents to which child neglect and abuse may ne manifested; in some cases, even giving no love and care for the child, tormenting the child with indifference, or depriving the child of the basic needs for emotional, psychological, and physical development may be as crippling as regular battering is. In this context, the most alarming is the fact that people tend to justify and even sympathize the parents who were detected in doing the unintentional harm to their children.

Many of these sympathizers are also parents, and they are afraid of being stigmatized as child abusers in case their children are hurt as a result of some accident beyond their control. Hence, child maltreatment is considered a crime only in grave, shocking, and horrifying cases, which is wrong because of the fear of parents to be judged. The criminal justice system has to address the issue by redefining the rights and needs of children first of all. Parents will stop being afraid of accusations of child neglect in case not they, but the child will come to the forefront of social and legal attention. Though children are often too small to formulate adequately and objectively what they need for a normal life, the culture of respect to the child’s rights, dignity, and multi-dimensional needs of physical, psychological, and emotional nature should be nurtured in the community. Parents should not be afraid of stigmatization if they seek answers to child-rearing questions – this may be achieved by making such programs anonymous, thus mitigating the factor of community disapproval.