Child Neglect and Child Abuse

The article chosen is ‘ child neglect : developmental issues and outcomes ‘ written by Kathryn L. Hildyard, David .A Wolfe ( 2002 ) discuss on maltreatments such as child neglect and child abuse affects children’s developments and wellbeing. The “neglect of neglect” has been acknowledged for over two decades (Wolock & Horowitz, 1984), yet child neglect remains the poor cousin of child maltreatment research. Many individuals, including those working in related fields of childcare, family, and child development, are often surprised to learn that the consequences of child neglect are as severe as those associated with physical abuse, sexual abuse, and witnessing domestic violence, based on the limited findings available (Hart, Binggeli, & Brassard, 1998; Trickett & McBride-Chang, 1995). The significance of child neglect, however, should come as no surprise, given that a lack of parental care and nurturance— hallmarks of neglect—poses one of the greatest threats to children’s healthy growth and well-being (Rutter & Sroufe, 2000; Sameroff, 2000).

The researcher is especially interested to grasp about the ways within which the principal sort of child neglect appliance their influence on development and has an amass effects on following developmental abilities and limitations. There are few questions the researcher was trying to answer. Firstly , what are the miscellaneous effects of child neglect and child abuse on the growth and well being .Secondly , what are the similarities and differences between child neglect and child abuse , What are the chance factors increase the children’s vulnerability to psychopathology . Furthermore , What are the categories of neglect and also the examples . They also questioning approximately how many percentage of cases regarding child neglect and child abuse have been reported? And last but not least , What is the connection between development periods and developmental processes. There is no hypotheses proposed by the researcher .

There are three group of participants from different development periods took part during this research which are infants and preschooler from the age range between 9 months to 42 months ,school aged children and younger adolescents and the final one is older adolescents and adults. Each kind of participations are examined and analysed from various perspectives such as cognitive, social , emotional and behavioural. The researcher began to conduct their research with infants and preschooler from cognitive and moral development angle by giving the children a controversy solving task such as an obstacle box where a toy was visible but inaccessible in order to know the flexibility of preschoolers. In addition, an standardised IQ test has been carried out in the kindergarten . In the other hand , infants are used to study the performances on the Bayley scales of infants through Minnesota Mother child project . Whereas for Emotional development and social behavioural , a disorganised attachment and social interactions has been observed respectively in preschools and daycare centre . For school age children and younger adolescents, a Peabody individual achievement test has been tested in grades 1, 2 , 3 and 6, as certain social behavioural, a projective story telling task was given .

Since this was an experimental article , there were few variables that were taken such as manipulated variable and responding variable . The changed variable , which also know as manipulated variable is the type of participants involved , from diverse development periods essentially infants , preschoolers , young adolescents, old adolescents and adults . Along with responding variable , the observe how does child neglect and child abuse affects different individuals as in their development processes . Researcher find that child neglect can have severe, deleterious short- and long-term effects on children’s cognitive, socio-emotional, and behavioural development. According to attachment and related theories, neglect occurring in early life is especially harmful and damaging to following development. Moreover, neglect is affiliated with effects that are, in many areas, differ from physical abuse, especially throughout childhood and early adolescence . Relative to physically abused children, neglected children have more severe cognitive and academic deficits, social withdrawal and limited peer interactions, and internalising as opposed to externalising problems.

References

1. Hart, S. N., Binggeli, N. J., & Brassard, M. R. (1998). Evidence for the effects of psychological maltreatment.
2. Journal of Emotional Abuse, 1, 27–58.
3. Rutter, M., & Sroufe, L. A. (2000). Developmental psychopathology: concepts and challenges. Development and Psychopathology, 12, 265–296.
4. Trickett, P. K., & McBride-Chang, C. (1995). The developmental impact of different forms of child abuse and neglect. Developmental Review, 15, 311–3
5. Wolock, I., & Horowitz, B. (1984). Child maltreatment as a social problem: the neglect of neglect. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 54, 530–543.

Cite this page