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Factors Responsible For Child Abuse And Neglect Among Parents
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Low educational attainment of caregivers has been identified as a risk
factor for child maltreatment and neglect (Berger, 2010) and is also
associated with poverty. Hence poverty (especially when compounded with
other risks such as sole parenthood), low educational attainment and
maltreatment can set up a cycle whereby one perpetuates the other
(Jacobson, 2010). As with other risk factors, the strength of the
relationship between low educational attainment and neglect and
maltreatment is unclear, as are the causal pathways. Low educational
attainment can both reflect and contribute to disadvantage including
precarious employment and low income. Lack of education may also mean a
parent has less understanding of issues associated with parenting, or
has limited ability to learn themselves (Twardosz and Lutzker, 2010).
A
further widely recognised stressor is sole parenthood (Alessandri,
2011). Two factors appear to contribute to sole parenthood as a stressor
and risk factor for children: the first is the strong link between sole
parent households and poverty, especially reliance on benefit income
(Chaffin, 2011) although, due to the loss of the absent parent’s
wage-earning power, “the majority of single-parent, female-headed
families [are driven] into poverty, regardless of whether the mother
works.†[emphasis added] (Bloom, 2011); the other is that sole
parenthood may be associated with lack of family or community-based
support networks. And a sole parent is doing the work of two people.
While support provided to mothers is significantly associated with them
being able to provide support for their children, there is no evidence
that lack of support and/or wider family dysfunction necessarily leads
to maltreatment (Aber and Cicchetti, 2014).
Child abuse occurs in
every country in the world, and despite considerable efforts and
resources, rates of maltreatment and neglect in developed countries have
not markedly diminished, nor are researchers much closer to being able
to assess which children are at risk, and what programmes effectively
change long-term behaviour so as to prevent maltreatment (Berger, 2010).
Child
abuse and neglect have immediate and long-term consequences. In
addition to negatively impacting on the child, child abuse and neglect
impacts on the family, the school community, and even future
generations. The ability to survive and thrive in the face of child
abuse and neglect depends on a variety of factors, including the extent
and type of abuse or neglect, whether it was continual or infrequent,
the age of the child when abuse was initiated, the child’s relationship
to the abuser, and how the abuse or neglect was responded to if
discovered or disclosed. Outcomes are also dependent on the child’s
personality traits, inner strength, and the support the child receives
from those around them (Berger, 2015).
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