Parents Of Abused Children example essay topic

Child Abuse The safety and security of home are comforts we all wish for no matter what age we are. Though some of us get our wish roughly three million children don't (United States Department of Health web ). Children who are battered and bruised, beaten, and in some causes sexually assaulted are constantly looking for an escape from the torture brought upon them by none other than their own parents. These children who average in age at only four years old (Jones, Smothers F 8) endure more pain at their young age than most of us face in a life time.

The crime hurts children physically, emotionally and in most cases the pain goes on for a life time. The memories of climbing into bed with your parents are replaced with memories such as your father's hand lashing your back for absolutely nothing because he is not in the right mind caused by all the alcohol. Making matters worse is that these children are too afraid to tell the world of the anguish and continue a life of hiding bruises and making excuses. As for the children who are brave enough to tell, they get it no better if not worse.

They are recklessly thrown into foster home after foster home. They face such hard ships as limited space with an enormous amount of children. Throughout all this, they never learn the true meaning of family. Why is there a lack of effort put into this crime? One is left to guess for the reasons are far too hard to comprehend.

With so much drama and war around the world, Americans would like to convey an image of security and safety, once doing so we tend to black out the horrible acts of abuse occurring against our own children, causing child abuse to be a very neglected crime. "Having children makes you no more a parent, than having a piano makes you a pianist". (Levin, web levine. html) With that being said the United States continues to give parental right to drunks and abusers without realizing the ripple affect it has on all of us. These children whose minds are being wasted not by lack of effort but by lack of parenting and lack of care from the government, have the ability to grow and become future leaders, heroes, and peace makers of our world. Why not take the extra effort in making sure that our future is being looked out for in our present? Because it takes too much time, energy, and most importantly sympathy.

Abuse is an increasing problem in our world and the reason why it continues to be a problem is because few people's care. Each year three million children are assaulted and though some might think that is a small number compared to the sixty-three million children in the country (United States Census Report) in order to help these children we must believe that three million abused children are three million too many. Imagine the pain and agony in every one of those children's eyes. You might be against abuse but you are equivalent to an abusive parent up until the moment you decide to take action. Why allow these so-called parents the power to corrupt the minds and feelings of children so young? That is something all people must ponder to realize the hatred the children are learning each day.

"What is a neglected child? He is a child not planned for, not wanted. Neglect therefore begins before he is born". (Buck, web) Amazingly those words have a stirring truth. Abuse in most cases starts for children as young as months old. When looking into such a cruel subject one would wonder exactly why a person is capable of hurting their own flesh and blood, a person that they created.

Though the most obvious answer is the idea that most are too drunk or stoned to notice, sadly that is not the only answer. Some of the abusive parents are not drunk nor are they addicts, they simply are aggravated, frustrated, and chose to take it out on their children. It has been shown that in almost half of these abuse cases most parents are poverty stricken and left to raise there children alone. Another sad statistic found about the parents of abused children is that in most cases they were abused as children themselves causing the problem to carry on from when generation to the next, slowly growing into a much larger problem because we chose not to deal with abuse when it was indeed a problem that only affected a small percentage of the population. When talking about abuse, it is not completely far to say that our government has taken no action against the crime; however, they have not tried hard enough. Programs have been set-ups, people have been punished and most important, children have been saved.

The government has taken some necessary action against the crime but have done very little to make the problem known to the people of the United States. Though you will see an anti-war or anti-smoking commercial during just about every show in the prime time schedule, are you able to recall the last time you saw a message spreading to the masses exactly what is being done to these children. We talk about how wrong the third world countries are for making their offspring endure the pain of child labor but cease to realize exactly what is happening to them here. Child labor is wrong but at least those children have the pleasure of feeling safe at night without wondering whether or not their dads and moms are close to coming after them.

Let's all come to realization that our evil is equal to the evil of the owners of Chinese sweatshops, we just go about or torture in a different way. We force three, four, and five year olds to live with a burden caving in on them never making it clear that it is indeed okay to speak up against your parents. The first step to solving this problem is getting the child to confess to the fact that it actually is happening, and very few people do something even as simple as that. Once the child has confessed about the problem they are in not all are home free, the lack of adoptive parents has children thrown into over-crowded and under-sized foster care homes where abuse usually stops but neglect worsens. Foster parents are paid to care for these kids.

Adding money as an incentive for people to become foster parents make for a group of very poor and very greedy people who are obviously only after the money. Often foster parents take in three or four children at a time over their own children. The children are forced to share rooms with complete strangers and are commonly shuffled in and out of homes waiting for a family generous enough to adopt. These children are now not only abused but begin to feel unwanted as they are commonly removed from one home to the next.

Raising awareness can draw more caring people allowing the children to be put in more generous homes with fewer children. Abuse is a problem that seems to have never gone away. In the early years parents who beat their children seemed nothing more than parents. They justified it as discipline, stating that a child not beaten is a child wasted. But isn't tearing a child into limbs and making sure he or she is in complete pain wasting that child? How can you actually teach a child through abuse if the most important lessons a child can learn, to love and to trust, are erased through the vicious beatings?

These among other questions come to mind and all go unanswered when talking to the abuser. So exactly when does parenting stop and abuse begin? Though that line is rather unclear, in most cases of abuse the boundary of uncertainty is clearly crossed. Beating a child and making them eat the left-overs the dog has not eaten as Dave Pelzer's mom did is crossing the line (Pelzer 87). Having any sexual intercourse with a minor is crossing the line whether they be you child or not (Lindsey web ). And as a young woman in South Carolina did, forcing cocaine down to her unborn fetus resulting in a still birth is also crossing the boundary (Smith 23).

Granted that all three parents in the above stories have been punished for their crimes one has to wonder why it had to go on for so long until anyone bothered to put an end to this. The government could have helped in all three of the problems above by finding out when the hate actually began. Parents that are abusive usually feel resentment towards the child or feel the child does not live up to the un-realistic expectations set by the parent (Basham 34), so by making the parents aware that a child does no indeed want to cause harm and is not there to ruin anything can cause for a much more loving environment. By teaching tolerance and acceptance of others we can help to prevent this problem. So how can the government help to prevent abuse, hate and resentment, towards a child? By forcing parents to take a class learning how to deal with children.

It is amazing that a person working at a cash register at Sears requires weeks of training whereas that same person can be given the power to raise another being without so much as a question. People say that parenting is one of the most important roles a person can fill, you are given the power to teach and change the outcome of society but how seriously are they taking that power? Though very few people care enough about the issue, still some do. Organizations have been set-up by caring individuals who are looking to make a difference.

The organizations work side by side with the government to put an end to child abuse. But they are not the only ones who can help, by becoming more involved and allowing one or more of the victims into your homes on purely heartfelt reasons. Helping the government and showing the public what this crime does is a way all people can become more involved. We can send a message to parents telling them that what they do is wrong and they eventually will be caught. "I have always believed that I could help change the world, because I have been lucky to have adults around me who believed in me".

(Edelman 36) By believing in a child you too will be changing the world for his or her heroism could not have blossomed without the support of another. Children who were saved from abuse have gone on to become great people and accomplish great things, no matter how late they were saved. These parents who molested and tortured the innocent deserve every punishment they receive if not more. They have managed to put a dent not only on today but on tomorrow. Parental rights are immediately removed and the right is taken away forever. Though jail time is not always a punishment, for those who are found guilty, for hard offenders it usually is the least of their worries.

Our biggest problem is not that we do nothing to punish the offenders of the law but that we fail to shed light on it. We are living in a hard time indeed so shying away from our smaller problems tends to be an option. With a crime such as child abuse we need to stand tall, look the evil in the face, and as a nation put an end to it. (Levin, web levine. html) (Edelman, 36) (Basham, 34) (Smith, 23) web) (Pelzer, 87) Buck, web (United States Census Report) (Levin, web levine. html).