Many homes around the world are usable and dangerous to live in due to various reasons that range from one homestead to another. Most of these reasons range from infidelity, poverty, drug abuse, disagreement with in-laws to religion. This leads to disagreements between parents and may result to violence and more dangerous consequences. When the disagreements erupt a parent may be a danger to the spouse whoever the stronger is but since both parents are mostly stronger and physically stronger than their children they pose more danger. It’s just a case of two bulls fighting and being a danger to the grass and other animals and organisms around them. The children are faced by danger from three types of abuses namely physical abuse, sexual abuse and psychological abuse among other abuses of which effects are unthinkable, some unnoticeable and almost certainly unbearable. A child as per the law is any individual under the age of eighteen in most countries and then the people in this bracket include infants or toddlers, adolescents and teenagers. These abuses are likely to be mostly be found among members of all economic classes in society all religions and cultures though abuse figures are higher in all different subgroups in these groups. Data in America state that about two thirds of abused children are parented by battered women and of the abused women, they are three times more likely to be abused by their fathers (Mackay, 1994). It is then not open to question that the prevalence of domestic violence is high and there is then a warranted need for us to think of the causes and the effects that such abuse is likely to have on this children however wide it may vary.
By physical abuse as by the law we mean act that results to a non-accidental physical injury by a person who has care, custody of a child. It can then be interpreted as any intentional use of force by an individual on a child that risk injury, harm and or pain and may range from bruises to severe beatings that may lead to death. Child sexual abuse as stipulated by the law is any sexual exploitation or sexual activity with a child under circumstances which indicate that the child’s health or welfare is threatened. Child sexual abuse is detailed to include all the following crimes: exposing one’s sexual organs to a child, touching sexual organs of the child, oral or intercourse or anal sex with a child, mutual or self masturbation with a child or allowing the child to view or participate in pornographic or obscene movies. Voyeurism and incest also fall under this cluster. Psychological abuse may include use of derogatory statements or threats of further abuse (e.g. threats to kill), isolation, economic factors and emotional abuse.
Causes of such abuse may range from one individual, homestead or social class to another though sometimes it may be as a result of culture hence one tribe to another. Parents are then likely to abuse their children if they have learnt in childhood it is right to use violence in dealing with child rearing problems. This means that some of these parents may have been abused when they were children maybe as a result of marital problems and hence learnt how parents and other significant adults use violence to express anger, stress and deal with problems. Again this means that most child abusers may have been raised in homes with marital problems and hence the effects of domestic violence on children manifest in them clearly. The society has also accepted the popular view of physical punishment as a proper way of disciplining children especially in Africa
where the child is said to belong to the community hence any member of the community can discipline your child. This then exposes our children to be abused by strangers, relatives and neighbors without anyone raising any suspicion. The almost popular view that the adult is always right makes the matter even more complicated since I would have never imagined reporting my friend’s father to my father who happens to be his drinking partner of any wrongdoings as this could have had consequences on me. This arising evidence can be webbed to arrive to a conclusion that the society has failed us its children by not intervening during the use of violence and propagating the intergenerational transmission of violence.
Effects of child abuse can be used to trace the origin of such animosity against children by the individuals who were charged with the responsibility of protecting them by nature and the law. Investigation on the cognitive, emotional and behavioral consequences produced by exposure of domestic violence to children suggests differing amounts of traumatic stress. Traumatic stress is caused by a child’s exposure to events that are so extreme or severe and threatening that demand extraordinary coping capability. By this I mean that stress is never a surprise attack to the human body since the body has the ability to detect a series of signals that indicate danger hence it has to pass through stages. At the alarm stage a clear warning that a stress agent is present is evident and hence the body takes precaution to face the problem before it materializes. when the problem is overwhelming the body enters the resistance stage where if the individual cannot fight back becomes frustrated and suffers as a result of stress as he or she realizes he is using more energy than he can produce leading to the exhaustion stage. The individual is fatigued and a good night’s sleep cannot be a solution to such fatigue.
Traumatic stress is then beyond the child’s coping capability hence it overwhelms a person’s sense of safety and security. There are two types of traumatic stress (Terr, 1996).Type 1 is due to exposure to a single or short term events such as rape, assault and even a severe beating. Type 2 on the other hand is due to exposure to repeated or overwhelming events, it is also known as ‘trauma’. Type 2 trauma has greater impact has greater impact on an individuals functioning, domestic violence is such an event to a child. Prolonged and repeated exposure of type 2 trauma can lead to post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) which involves different patterns of avoidance and hyper arousal. Individuals can then surround their surround their lives around a trauma and lead to interpersonal and academic problems to a degree that this stress interferes with overall functioning. This explains why such individuals will respond to tear in an exaggerated startled response.
If we could now compare the causes of children the intergenerational transmission of violence we can relate to what such stress from childhood to in adulthood. Parents who were abused in childhood can develop to in adulthood as a way of avenging for crimes committed again them only to the wrong person. We earlier noticed the stress after the exhaustion stage leads to frustration, anger, and irritability hence if such anger is not adequately controlled for example through counseling it is due to due to sprout out. These examples may seem to secondary and high schools that ‘monopolizing’ was a rite of passage let us jog our minds. Our fathers were ‘monopolized’ whoever met them and decades later when their children went to the same schools were molested and left and left the practice in continuation much as it is in much erosion as we the younger alumni realized that it would affect someone else we know.
It is quite unexplainable how matters pertaining to children are always handled by adults and why they always turn them into their own. Back to the effects to such violence to children we all agree children may be injured as a direct result of domestic violence. Batterer sometimes intentionally injures children in an effort to intimidate and control their adult partners. Injuries to older adolescents often occur as children try to intervene during fights. As research has showed there is a direct or positive correlation between domestic violence and child abuse. Children are also adversely affect by witnessing this is kind of domestic violence. Such children may grow up to keep to themselves since they themselves since as life has taught them it is needless to say everything that you know since they fear this might endanger them as well. these children fear their abusers extremely that they may develop attachments with other people other than their parents or guardians. These children suffer from sleep disturbances, anxiety among other problems that could regress them developmentally. Adolescents in such homes are also at risk of recreating abusive relationships as they have seen in life. Other problems involve absence from school, low self-esteem, self blaming, loners, school drop-outs, delinquency, substance abuse, homicides and suicides.
All the same as nature would have it some of these children respond to such negative ness with such unimaginable positive ness resulting to their quick development of coping with major problems in their childhood. Such children may have taken the role of caretakers for their younger brothers when they were as young as six years hence have first hand experience in leadership among other qualities. Other children may grow to be the exact opposite of their parents and guardians especially if they underwent counseling and would like to forget the bad acts by doing good acts. This can be compared to people who commit suicide but live everything in place to make sure that their death does not affect their families especially if they were the bread winners.
As I started all these qualities differ from one individual to another. We are not able to know the effects of such abuse until they manifest themselves in individuals mostly when they are grown-ups. We also have many saints as a result of such violence but since we do not want to gamble and wait to see the effects of a nuclear war lest we do no survive we should treat our children as their nurturers lest we take decades to remove another Sadam or Hitler from power after all we share the achievements of our children directly or indirectly and the failures as well.
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