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Child Abuse,
Oct 03 2003
Defining Abuse in Historical Context, Innocence and Abuse, Preventing and Prosecuting Child Abuse
Entry from Gale Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood in History and Society
Child abuse, as a historical subject, is deeply problematic, since the concept of abuse is inevitably relative and can be only very tentatively applied across cultures and across centuries.
The watershed in the history of child abuse must be dated as recently as 1962, when child abuse received its modern formulation by the American medical establishment as the battered-child syndrome.
The attribution of innocence implied the possibility of violation, and the necessity of protection.
A full generation after "The Battered-Child Syndrome" was first published, there is general public recognition that various forms of child abuse are pervasive – but also an awareness that abuse may remain largely concealed within the domestic walls that protect family privacy.
Furthermore, just as treatment of children in the historical past may appear abusive by current standards, so there is also a divergence of perspectives within contemporary society about what exactly constitutes abuse.
For all these reasons, child abuse is a social problem that has been recognized but by no means resolved.
Defining Abuse in Historical Context, Innocence and Abuse, Preventing and Prosecuting Child Abuse
Entry from Gale Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood in History and Society
Child abuse, as a historical subject, is deeply problematic, since the concept of abuse is inevitably relative and can be only very tentatively applied across cultures and across centuries.
The watershed in the history of child abuse must be dated as recently as 1962, when child abuse received its modern formulation by the American medical establishment as the battered-child syndrome.
The attribution of innocence implied the possibility of violation, and the necessity of protection.
A full generation after "The Battered-Child Syndrome" was first published, there is general public recognition that various forms of child abuse are pervasive – but also an awareness that abuse may remain largely concealed within the domestic walls that protect family privacy.
Furthermore, just as treatment of children in the historical past may appear abusive by current standards, so there is also a divergence of perspectives within contemporary society about what exactly constitutes abuse.
For all these reasons, child abuse is a social problem that has been recognized but by no means resolved.