Early Childhood Maltreatment - Research Paper Example

? Maltreatment Maltreatment Psychopathologist emphasize that early childhood maltreatment has a direct effect on the immediate adolescent life and the later adult life to a child victim. Childhood maltreatment is a risk factor for adolescence delinquency and drug abuse. Maltreatment through aberrant behaviors like physical torture, sexual abuse and emotional maltreatment place an individual (especially if young) at an increased risk of problem in behaviors during the adolescent stage (Kimberly, et al, 2012). These maltreatments to a young person have been found to course a development in the brain, which leads to maladaptive behavior. These behaviors are either delinquency in the adolescent stage or the child may turn to drug abuse as the other option. The effect of maltreatment varies from one individual to another but generally, the effect is always negative. A study of the relationship between maltreatment and adolescent behavior indicated that maltreatment during the first eighteen years of development increases the risk of delinquency and drug abuse. The age bracket in which maltreatment consequences can be felt at later age is wide. It varies from childhood to near adulthood. The specialists are yet to clarify the exact effects of maltreatment with regard to the time maltreatment occurred in the development. It has not therefore, been established whether maltreatment at childhood or at adolescence have the same outcome to the later life of the individuals (Kimberly et al, 2012). Two different theories have been generated to explain relationship of maltreatment to delinquency. The two theories had different findings on the relationship between maltreatment and delinquency at adolescent and subsequent adult life. In the first theory model, the specialists grounded majorly on the development psychology, and psychopathology. Their main argument in this theory was that development is age-graded and occurs in a hierarchical nature. For example, a young child acquires a set of specific skills at tender age that facilitate its subsequent necessary development traits that may persist to the adulthood. They argue out that childhood is an active stage for rapid development in the various domains. These domains will ultimately acquire the developments and behavioral changes as the victim grows (Nagi, 2008). These behavioral changes acquired pill up bringing a long-term consequence, the so-called delinquency. Holding other factors constant, the studies compared maltreated and non –maltreated children. The maltreated children were found to have high rates of cognitive impairment, complications in social development, emotional and behavioral problems. The long-term behavioral consequence of early childhood maltreatment develops because the maltreatment alters the manner in which the victim receives and encodes information and social cues. These developmental complications directly affect the schooling of the child and peer relations too. The victim also develops implications of antisocial behavior as well as other problematic consequences that may occur later in the life course. This developmental psychopathology is in line with developmental criminology as both are persistent in life-course offending. The development of early life is not restricted to psychopathology or criminology (Kimberly et al, 2012). The overall brain development of a child changes a little between the ages of five and six. Thus, it is clear that the first years of development are very crucial in the life course. Researchers have drawn attention to the heterogeneity of outcomes that are displayed by even the highly stressed children, their resilience, and their behavior at later stages. The alternative theory is life-course oriented and emphasizes on variability and exogenous influences on the development course. The theory focuses on the possibility of dynamic change over time due to the influence of events and situations. It emphasizes that a greater attention to more proximate causes of delinquency and drug use bring other life-course theories under certain consideration. Both theories marry on the fact that early childhood experiences have an effect on later life of the victim. Each theory recognizes that the risk of crime and drug use is set in childhood and the number of events and situations in adolescence or adulthood can change the likelihood of involvement in these behaviors (Lutzer, 2001). It has been confirmed and in fact is beyond doubt that adolescent maltreatment has stronger and adverse effects on involvement in delinquency and drug abuse as compared to childhood maltreatment. For instance, a maltreated adolescent, due to his greater autonomy compared to that of a child may have more access to illegitimate coping strategies. He may for example reinforce and learn delinquency from the peers and end up having the access to alcohol and drugs. The public nature in which negative experiences are regularly shared within peers makes it difficult if not impossible to reinterpret events of maltreatment (McMillan, 2007). It is clear that stressful events are more aversive during adolescent and they translate to anger, frustration, and disruptive behavior among the adolescents. Different outcomes of early life experiences are derived from developmental psychopathology. Maltreatment at adolescent is more behaviorally disruptive than maltreatment at early life. This orientation may offer a hypothesis about how timing of maltreatment is likely to have varying magnitude of effects to an individual. According to developmental psychopathology, developmental damage from early maltreatment in childhood has the most significance in extensiveness of disruptions and development of antisocial behavior. In addition, maltreatment of an adolescent has a greater impact on the experiences of later life. The two perspectives converge to the suggestion that maltreatment that persists through childhood into adolescence have greater impact on adolescent behavior. However, it is not clear whether persistent maltreatment has an impact on adolescent problem behavior than would adolescence-only maltreatment (Kimberly et al, 2012). The general conclusion is that persistent maltreatment is behaviorally disruptive in adolescent development. Maltreatment that persists from childhood into adolescence leaves little opportunity for resilience for the victim. Maltreatment increases the risk of a variety of antisocial behaviors in adolescent. Typically, maltreatment is identified as a risk factor for delinquency, in general reviews of the risk factor literature. An exhaustive review of literature related to negative consequences of maltreatment concludes that young people are more vulnerable to maltreatment. The impact of timing of maltreatment on the adolescent outcomes can be determined by incorporating its time if induction and the construction measures of maltreatment (Binggeli, 2001). Taking into consideration childhood and adolescent as the main development stages one can identify four independent groups of individuals. The first groups are those that experience maltreatment at childhood or adolescent. The second group experiences maltreatment at adolescent, but it ceases before the individual turns to adolescent. The third group experiences no maltreatment during childhood but as an adolescent, he becomes a victim of maltreatment. The final group is of maltreated individuals both at childhood and in adolescent. The conclusion of the finding is that childhood maltreatment leads to more adverse later problems especially if the subject of review is less than twelve. The individuals maltreated during both childhood and adolescence drive an empirical relationship between maltreatment and delinquency (Scannapieco, 2005). Adolescent maltreatment is serious, pervasive, and damaging than childhood maltreatment. Earlier on, adolescent maltreatment was given little weight, however, after few studies on the relationship between adolescence-only maltreatment and delinquency indicated that the individuals suffer from methodological limitations and are behaviorally detrimental. Persistent maltreatment has more pervasive effect on delinquency. Maltreatment consisting of multiple types of experiences over time overwhelms the capacity of the victim to regulate anymore and is likely to invoke behaviorally disruptive consequences in the adolescent life course. This is because the maltreated child experiences early development disruptions and lacks the necessary resources and or time for recovery because the maltreatment has persisted into adolescent. Another very common question pertaining maltreatment and delinquency is whether the development time frame in which maltreatment occurs is has an impact on drug use on the later adolescent life (Kimberly et al, 2012). A study conducted involving subjects of 14 years and above, being reviewed after every nine months indicated that adolescence-only maltreatment has an effect on measures of delinquency and has a longitudinal relation with arrest, general delinquency, and street crime at later adolescent life. Persistent adolescent maltreatment is behaviorally detrimental as the duration of the maltreatment wears to resiliency. Individuals who undergo maltreatment in adolescent and persist are more likely to report late adolescent drug use more often than those maltreated only in adolescent stage. The conclusion of these findings is that the duration of maltreatment is more significant to the outcome of the maltreatment. Those who are persistently maltreated are significantly more likely to be occasional delinquents compared those never maltreated and are also likely to be more chronic comparatively. It is clear that youth maltreated compared to those never maltreated are at substantially greater risk for chronic delinquency. They are also at great risk for some occasional delinquency although the impact is less consistent (Lutzker, 2001). Contrary, childhood-only maltreatment has a minimal risk of either occasional or chronic involvement in delinquency. Individuals who are adolescent maltreatment and those persistently maltreated are detrimental to behavioral development. However, those persistently maltreated are more likely to be occasional drug users and chronic violent offenders as compared to the adolescent-only maltreated. Generally, those maltreated in adolescence only and those persistently maltreated are more similar than are different. Psychopathologists argue that what happens to a child in early childhood specifically in the pre-school ages is important for proper development in later childhood and adolescent. Changes in conditions of living can have fairly immediate and dramatic effects on behavioral adaptations, which might be the cause to later stresses, though they dissipate varying influence on the life course. As stated earlier, childhood maltreatment has a long-term effect that ripples into antisocial behavior in adolescence and adulthood. Maltreatment limited to adolescent and that which persists from childhood to adolescent are related both in delinquency and drug use manner. The period of maltreatment across the developmental periods that is, childhood and adolescence, are more developmentally destructive in terms of adolescent behavior and more serious in adolescent-only maltreatment. The experience of maltreatment met in childhood does not appreciably add to the impact of maltreatment met in adolescent. Maltreatment is recognized as a negative stimulus and translates into antisocial behavior (Nagi, 2008). Adolescents may be particularly stressed up by adverse conditions that they cannot escape. Although at the time of occurrence the victim was young and could not translate the experiences into anti social behavior, the later definitely happens. The direct interpretation of this is that because of the greater autonomy and access to illegitimate coping strategies the individual is forced by natural conditions to assume the common type of behavior expected. Maltreated adolescents are more likely to be arrested or absorbed into the juvenile justice system as compared to those non-maltreated. A strong co-existence trellises between maltreatment in both childhood and adolescence and the subsequent involvement in delinquency and drug abuse. However, the effect of persistent maltreatment consistently surpasses the effect of adolescent -limited maltreatment and adolescent delinquency. The relationship between persistent maltreatment and negative behavioral outcomes in adolescent is consistent in both the development psychopathology and the life-course perspective (Kimberly et al, 2012). Findings on adolescent limited maltreatment and childhood-limited maltreatment suggest that intervention in childhood to prevent continued maltreatment in adolescence should be paramount. The ultimate conclusion now is that early life experiences have significant ramifications for later development. However, adolescent maltreatment as well as persistent maltreatment poses a great hazard to the adolescent behavioral development. Finally, timing of maltreatment does matter in the understanding and prediction of its relation to delinquency in adolescent and thus it should be a major source of strategy to circumvent the total impact. Child maltreatment is or includes all types of abuse, neglect, and misuse of an underage for self-benefit. Child maltreatment touches five main subtypes: physical, sexual, emotional abuse, neglect, and exploitation. Exploitation is the engagement of a child in a job or any other activity that benefits the perpetrator directly. Exploitation touches different fields like the child labor, prostitution, or child soldiers. Physical abuse of a child involves thorough hitting of a child for no good reason, poisoning, or causing of physical harm to the same (McMillan, 2007). Physical harm may also come about when a parent fabricates symptoms or deliberately induces illness into a child. Pediatricians normally diagnose physical abuse of a child as discrepancy between physical findings and history in the absence of a non-abusive explanation. Physical abuse consists of excessive corporal punishment that crosses the line that is described as physical discipline to a reportable case. As a parent tries to teach the child a lesson in order to change what is deemed as unacceptable or bad behavior, he/she may distort the expectations of the child. Children who have ever witnessed their mothers being physically abused by their husbands may develop some anomalous behaviors at later age. A research done on that basis suggested that 90% of reported cases of domestic violence also recorded aggressiveness in the children. It is also clear that children who have IPV in their families are four or five times at risk of subsequent development complication than those without (Scannapieco, 2005). Other factors that may translate to physical abuse of a child are chronic illnesses, development delays, and behavior problems. Maltreatment of children by parents through violence is one of the widely prevalent forms of maltreatment in modern societies. This arises to particular difficulty since the perpetrators of maltreatment are at the same time the breadwinners or the source of nurture for the child. It is quite impossible to make any absolute statement about the number of children maltreated by their parents through violent acts. Psychological maltreatment is a common type of child abuse. It occurs to a child when someone conveys to it that he or she is unloved, unwanted, and flawed. The psychological maltreatment damages the interaction or the relationship of a child and his/her guardian or parent for that matter. The pattern might however be chronic and pervasive in situation where the parent is alcoholic, or has any other potential factor that may bring the former. During the induction of psychological terror to a child, the perpetrator may isolate, ignore, or terrorize the child, events which may directly impair the child’s socialization ability (Binggeli, 2001). Other events like divorce may constitute to the child’s psychological maltreatment. Another type of child maltreatment is sexual abuse. Child sexual abuse is the contact and interaction between a child and a grown up where the child is used for sexual satisfaction of the later. When a child is forced or lured for sexual advances this may create a psychological pressure on the former. Despite the fact that the benevolent or perpetrators promise some favors to the victim he or she definitely preempts the rights and the individuality of the victim. The act has diverse effect on the victim. The child develops secondary stress patterns that have been reported in studies of the consequences of child abuse (Nagi, 2008). The child develops emotional reactions and self-perceptions where suicide may be an option. Females who have ever been involved in sexual abuse develop sexual maladjustment in their immediate married life or so. Sexual abuse has a contribution on the victim turning into prostitution. Maltreatment has both long-term and short-term effect on the on the social, and emotional life of the victim. A child that is psychologically disturbed losses self sense as well as personal safety. Physical abuse also has damaging effect on the social interactions of the victim. Physically abused children tend to become less popular because they are always turned down and acquire few friends possible. They also show less intimacy to their close friends, are much aggressive for no good reason, and cause conflict in many incidences. These physically abused children tend to be shy and inhibit their interpersonal contacts. They score less marks especially in verbal scales and verbal language (McMillan, 2007). They show deficits in mathematics and both receptive and expressive languages. Maltreated children also have cognitive and emotional complications where the victim has a persistent moment of stress and feels depressed in most of the time. The victims tend to have sleepless nights full of interruptions and have high rate of nocturnal activity. Emotionally these people have poor predictions on their fateful future. They have more psychological difficulties due to increased emotional suppression (Nagi, 2008). The emotional life of the victim is damaged from inside and the damage is detrimental to the individual and may persist to the rest of their lives. Maltreated persons have more problems in getting language exposure with their caregivers and show high levels of neglect to the public and tend to assume an isolated life. In conclusion, this paper has concentrated on effects of maltreatment on the later life of the victim. The ultimate finding is that maltreatment has negative effects to the victim. Also analyzed in the paper are the possible neurological, psychological, and cognitive difficulties due to maltreatment. The paper has more education, exposure, and extensively analysis forms of child maltreatment in our society. It is quite vivid from the paper that the challenges, which maltreated children undergo, are unbearable and they are left vulnerable to various societal problems (Kimberly et al, 2012). The message I have been sending is that child maltreatment has very damaging psychological effect on the victim. The message am appealing to the people is that they should be humane enough to protect the children and report any suspicious of acts against Child Welfare in their neighborhood. References Binggeli, J., Hart, S. & Brassard, M. (2001). Psychological Maltreatment of Children. Los Angeles: SAGE. Kimberly, A., Katherine, A. & Douglas A. (2012). Report information from proQuest. New York: Springer Science & Business Media. Lutzker, J. (2001). Reducing Child Maltreatment.  New York: Guilford Press. McMillan, A. & Barlow, J. (2007). Safeguarding Children from Emotional Maltreatment. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Nagi, N. (2008). Child Maltreatment in the United States. New York: Columbia University Press. Scannapieco, M. (2005). Understanding Child Maltreatment. New York: Oxford University Press. Read More