Through this study, it has become clear that child abuse is not a problem limited to the boundaries of one specific family but is a problem that has a great impact on the society in general. Through child abuse, a children experience fear and distrust...
Through this study, it has become clear that child abuse is not a problem limited to the boundaries of one specific family but is a problem that has a great impact on the society in general. Through child abuse, a children experience fear and distrust which become the main cause for hindered emotional growths. The abused also show poor grades in school and problems in peer relationships. Abuses have major impacts on self esteem and acts as an important factor in the juvenile growth and development.
This study tried to divide the child abuse into different categories of abuses, namely; physical abuse, emotional abuse and negligence. The study tried to also show how each type of abuse impacts the children and to what extent hoping that the results would help everyone notice the importance of child abuse on one’s self esteem and be used as basic material in finding ways to help abused children lead normal social lives which would in turn help prevent the problem at the initial stage. To derive at such outcome, 300 male and female students of first and second year middle school were surveyed and the questionnaire contained questions related to their general characteristics, abuse experiences and self esteem index to relate how child abuse experiences impacts self esteem of juveniles.
Results of the study are as follows;
First, out of different types of abuses, physical and emotional abuses showed relationship to self esteem and higher the number of abuse experiences, lower the level of self esteem. Negligence did not show any relationship to the self esteem.
Second, for those who participated in the survey, the only part of general characteristics of a child that showed relationship to child abuse was the relationship of school grades with emotional abuse. That is to say those with higher grades were those with less abuse experiences than those with middle or lower grades.
Third, in relationship between general characteristics and self esteem, those with higher grades in school showed higher level of self esteem than those with middle or lower grades. Also, those with child abuse experiences showed lower level of self esteem than those without abuse experiences.
Fourth, looking at the relationship between different types of child abuse and self esteem, it was found that those with higher level of emotional abuse showed lower level of self esteem. That is to say that child abuse experiences have impacts on juvenile self esteem and out of different types of abuses, physical and emotional abuses have impacts on self esteem. The higher the level of physical and emotional abuse is, the lower the level of self esteem.
From the study, it was found that emotional abuse had the most impact on one’s self esteem. Looking at these results, as I pointed out earlier, child abuse is not a problem limited to the boundaries of one family but must be highlighted at the level of society as a whole in general and preventive measures as well as cures must be thought out through policies and practical measures.
Regulations should be passed to reinforce penalties/punishments for those who abuse these children and laws also must be passed to obligate the related people to report cases of abuse in which case if not reported, the obligated reporters must be punished harshly.
Practically, caretakers of children must also be provided with educational programs within the societies of the caretakers, appropriate therapies need to be provided to those children and juveniles with abuse experiences, and child abuse prevention education programs need to be intensified. It is the responsibilities of the caretakers, obligated reporters and non-obligated reporters who must all work hard to make sure that above practical measures are carried out so that our children are protected from any future child abuses which may result in very negative outcomes for the individual as well as the society as a whole.