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The Neglect of Our Children
| Article
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17747 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
6 / 1990 |
4,654 Words |
| Author
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Ray E. Helfer
Ray E. Helfer is a physician and professor of pediatrics at
Michigan State University is the department of Pediatrics and
Human Development. This article is adapted from a study
published in "Pediatric Clinics of North America," (August
1990) by Saunders Company, Philadelphia. |
The phrase "child abuse and neglect" has been used for so many years that we rarely think of one apart from the other. They even have their own abbreviation, CA/N, and when preceded by the word suspected make a marketable and descriptive acronym - SCAN. The latter usually is used as an adjective to modify the word teams. In the late 1960s and early 1970s SCAN teams cropped up all over the country as multidisciplinary groups of professionals who worked with families suspected of being abusive to and/or neglectful of their children. Initially, the word abuse was equated with the physical aspects of child maltreatment (a phrase still preferred by some), and neglect referred to the failure to meet certain basic needs. For years we thought of abuse and neglect essentially as one entity, often finding evidence of abuse in most cases of neglect and vice versa. The first two editions of The Battered Child did not even contain a chapter on neglect. The index to these editions contained only seven and two neglect citations respectively.
What emerged over the years was that the concept of neglect lost, or never developed, its own identity. When a national committee was founded in the mid-1970s, its name, the National Committee for the Prevention of Child Abuse, even omitted the word neglect. To date, few realize this point and correctly assume the committee is as concerned about the prevention of neglect as they are about the prevention of abuse.
The rapid rise in the prevalence and incidence of sexual exploitation of children over the last fifteen years has served to push the issues of neglect even further into the background. Child Welfare gave way to Child Protection Services (CPS), and interest in child neglect gave way to the physical and sexual aspects of abuse. The de-emphasis on the neglect of children has reached such an extreme that today many who are mandated by reporting laws to report "child abuse and neglect" have second thoughts about the latter, since little if anything will - or can - be done by the overwhelmed, understaffed, CPS agencies. Isabel Wolock and Bernard Horowitz were correct in titling their 1984 article in the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, "Child Maltreatment as a Social Problem: the Neglect of Neglect."
We know what is supposed to happen to and for children; and we have the ability to recognize and measure what happens when children's needs are not met - they are neglected. While I am willing to stipulate, for the purpose of this article, that these two assumptions are true, there surely are exceptions and limitations in many areas. I submit that we are able to identify most of the basic
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