Child neglect

“ Each year, more than one million children are the victims of child abuse and child neglect. These children represent every racial, religious, and socio-economic group, and the suffering they endure poses a threat to our families and to our society as a whole. ”

“ Child abuse and neglect are national tragedies, and we must work together to eradicate them.
Every day, thousands of children are mistreated by their parents, guardians, relatives, or caregivers. On average, three children a day die as a result of abuse and neglect, and countless others remain silent, their pain unnoticed and unreported. These children face challenges that no child deserves, and young people who have experienced abuse may grow into adults who are self-destructive and damaging to our communities. ”

“ The most recent reports from State child welfare agencies, however, confirm that one million cases of substantiated child abuse or neglect occur in our Nation every year. Of these cases, more than a thousand children-many under the age of four-do not survive; and most die at the hands of a parent or other family member. ”

“ The tragedy of child abuse may afflict American children in different ways. Abuse may occur physically, sexually, and emotionally. Child neglect, another form of child maltreatment, may occur physically and emotionally. Understanding the forms of child abuse is critical to preventing and responding to maltreatment. A well-informed and strong family is the surest defense against child abuse. To help educate and strengthen families, community members can offer their time and counsel to parents and children who may need assistance. ”

“ There is need, for otherwise the child suffers through the criminal neglect of the parents, and the community must interfere for the sake of the future social efficiency of the individual and of the nation. There is justification, for here as in the case of the parents of the morally defective, parental responsibility has either ceased to act or become too weak a motive force to be effective in securing the welfare of the child. As the individual parent neglects his duty, so and to the corresponding degree to which this neglect extends, must the duty be enforced by the State. ”

“ It is seen that the standpoint of the existing law, by which only the gravest offences, such as the abduction of a child, or the infliction upon a child of grievous bodily harm, are specified as punishable, is inadequate. Ever more general becomes the demand that parental neglect of the proper maintenance or education of a child should be constituted an offence per se, and dealt with as such. ”

“ Every child deserves to live in a safe, permanent, and caring family. Regrettably, abuse and neglect continue to threaten the well- being of many young Americans. Each year, more than 800,000 confirmed incidents of maltreatment of children and more than 1,000 abuse-related child fatalities plague our country. ”

“ We live in a Nation blessed with liberty and prosperity. Yet, many of our children still suffer the horrors of child abuse and neglect, knowing no happiness, and sometimes even losing their lives. And, it is a problem that grows worse. Last year, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reported that an estimated 3 million American children were abused or neglected, twice as many as 5 years earlier. Almost half a million of our children were seriously injured because of this mistreatment, quadruple the number from the previous report. ”

“ It is not intended to assert that all the vice and errors of children are referable to parental example: that would be a gross injustice to those sorrowing ones who see the stray one from their domestic circle, disgracing in his vicious career the lessons and examples of piety in which he was reared, and forming a marked exception to the character and condition of his relatives. But we have a right to speak plainly where the evidences of neglect and even of bad example in the parents are manifest in the error of the child. ”

“ To remove this difficulty, children are taught to look down on their nurses, to treat them as mere servants. When their task is completed the child is withdrawn or the nurse is dismissed. Her visits to her foster-child are discouraged by a cold reception. After a few years the child never sees her again. The mother expects to take her place, and to repair by her cruelty the results of her own neglect. But she is greatly mistaken; she is making an ungrateful foster-child, not an affectionate son; ”

“ There may be and are times when a child's place is with its nurse if the household be burdened with one, but to lay it down as a general rule that a child's place is always apart from its mother and by the side of its nurse is to disclose the manner of maternal neglect in the homes of many well-circumstanced folk. ”

“ This disproportionate concentration of feeling on the individual child, and neglect of the child in general, produces a world full of people with a congested family life, full of morbid sensitiveness and potential difficulty and suffering, and a weak, anæmic social life, full of mutual neglect and dereliction of duty. ”

“ Leaving aside questions of heredity and kindred topics, and considering only the conditions under which the child is born, developed, and reared, it is terrible to contemplate the misfortunes which happen to children through lack of insight on the part of their mothers. Doctors are never tired of telling what malformations tight-lacing causes. How many children in the first year of their life become blind through neglect. We only mention here some of the troubles which crude ignorance or lack of conscience on the part of the mothers inflict on themselves or on their children. ”

“ The operation is not difficult to perform and it will not only, as a rule, give the child good sight, but better looks. Parents who are able to have an operation or glasses fitted when needed, and who neglect their children, should be punished; they are guilty not only of neglect, but cruelty. ”

“ His first duty is, of course, one of humanity, to preserve life. Whenever helpless or abandoned children are found, the duty of the State is to take care of them, though this care may, in certain cases, offer an inducement to crime. The danger to the child, if neglected, is certain; that to the community, of inducing other mothers to abandon their offering, is remote and uncertain. On the other hand, the State is under no obligation to offer inducements to parents to neglect their illegitimate children ”

“ As a caring society that cherishes our children, we must work together to protect these little ones who cannot protect themselves.
Two of our greatest resources in the crusade against child abuse and neglect are knowledge and compassion. We must raise public awareness that these cases, while often hidden, can occur in any family and community in America. As responsible adults, we must learn more about the signs of child abuse so that we may report suspected incidents as soon as possible. ”

“ Children in homes where the father is absent are more likely to be suspended from school or to drop out, be treated for an emotional or behavioral problem, become suicidal as adolescents, or become victims of child abuse or neglect. ”

“ Since this care is needful to the life of children, to neglect them is to murder them; again, to give them up to be managed by those people who have none of that needful affection placed by nature in them, is to neglect them in the highest degree; nay, in some it goes farther, and is in order to their being lost; so that 'tis an intentional murder, whether the child lives or dies. ”

“ People have said, and still say, a great deal against asylums for the neglected rising generation; and certainly it would be well if they were not required, if the careful training of the child could be safely left to families, or to the private home; but are there not times, in most countries, where, through former neglect, the number of innocent, friendless children, becomes frightfully great? ”

“ The slight assistance that could be rendered in each case to supplement the mother’s earnings and the necessity of her putting the children to work too early or overtaxing the oldest child in family labor soon showed the ineffectiveness of this method of 251family rehabilitation, for broken-down physiques, undeveloped minds, wrong associations and delinquency were recognized as the outgrowth of the enforced neglect of home care and training by mothers. ”

“ The Problem of the Delinquent Child is one that needs the greatest care and expert attention. If the dependent child is an appealing figure, the delinquent child is an indictment of a community. He is usually the product of neglect, of overcrowding, of bad living conditions, and of defects in the educational system. ”

“ The mother who neglects her child in the eager pursuit of some phantom of pleasure, or for the attainment of ease, will make that child unhappy, and herself doubly so; for she can no more expel from her mind a consciousness of having wronged that child, than she can prevent being disturbed by the evidences of her neglect. ”

“ It counteracts excessive child mortality, which is an effective factor in selection, through its destruction of weakly children. For example, the existence of foundling hospitals induces many parents to abandon the care of their own children, and to commit these to the foundling hospitals. Many parents, being aware that the State undertakes the coercive reformatory education of neglected children, deliberately neglect the education of their own children, in order to force the community to undertake it. ”

“ If only we are prepared to do what is almost immediately practicable for this end, death or injury associated with child-bearing will become rare, the loss of infant and child life will be halved, and what is still more important, mothers and infants will cease to be damaged by neglect or ignorance at critical periods of their life, and will not become burdens to themselves and to the community. ”

“ If the underfed condition of the child was due to the culpable neglect of the parent, the Board should prosecute the parent, and, if the offence was persisted in, should have power to deal with the child under the Industrial Schools Acts. ”

“ But having considered those cases, in which wilful neglect and bad example may be charged upon the parents, we should not forget to tell those who object to our interference in the duty of a child's natural protectors, that it is not, in every instance, from wilful neglect on their part, that their children are left unprotected in the streets. The circumstances of the labouring classes are such, in many cases, that they are compelled to leave their children either wholly unprotected, or in the charge of some one who frequently becomes a betrayer instead of a defender. ”

“ Knowing that they may be investigated by child protective services, or charged with neglect, and that they may lose their children to foster care, battered mothers are more likely to remain in the abusive home, isolated and afraid, so that they can remain with their children. ”

“ Some people may think that the rights of children are safe enough in the care of the fathers and mothers.
Are they indeed! How many children are sent out, day after day, in charge of nurses? Who protects the children against careless and cruel nurses? Anxious mother, answer me that.
Many cases of gross neglect have come under my eye. I will mention one case that took place last summer at the seaside.
I was out in my yacht at the time. Scanning the shore with my spy-glass, this is what I saw:—
A good-looking young woman was pushing a baby-carriage before her. In the carriage was a little child. ”

“ The first class, the act says, shall include any child who is destitute or homeless or abandoned or dependent upon the public for support, or who has not the proper parental care or guardianship, or who habitually begs or receives alms, or whose home, by reason of neglect or cruelty or depravity of the parents, is an unfit place for such a child, or any child under eight years of age found peddling on the streets. ”

“ Another aspect of the neglected children problem, which Federal action alone will solve, is in dealing with cases of neglect by desertion. At present each State is put to great trouble and expense through defaulting parents. Federal legislation would render it possible to have an order for payment made in one State collected and remitted by an officer in another State. By this means thousands of pounds a year could be saved to the various States, and many a child prevented from becoming a burden to the people at large. ”

“ To the official harriers of the poor were added further inspectors sent by such societies as the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Cruelty to children, as Gilbert often pointed out, is a horrible thing, but very seldom proved of parents against their own children. The word was stretched to cover anything that these inspectors called neglect. Lately we have read of a case, and many like it were reported in the New Witness, where failure to wash children adequately was called cruelty. ”

“ Orphans and foundlings for whom homes must be found, children who are over-worked or abused, or who are living with dissolute parents, all of [Pg 187] these must be given proper guardianship and a chance for healthful growth and education, or they are likely to become delinquent and thus become a permanent liability to society. It is true that in the country the home is at its best (see chapter II) , but it is also unfortunately true that some of the most shameful and almost unbelievable cases of neglect and abuse of children are frequently found in out-of-the-way places in rural communities. ”