Introduction
Millions of children around the world experience child maltreatment regularly. The effects of child maltreatment, mostly physical and mental, are sometimes lifelong, leading to the need for preventive measures. As a result, various institutions such as the World Health Organization (WHO) have taken up the responsibility of investigating the sources of child maltreatment to help in the designing of intervention measures. Some of the most highlighted causes of child maltreatment include parental and environmental risk factors.
Risk Factors for Child Maltreatment
Risk factors refer to elements that increase the potential of a child to experience maltreatment. Thus, they do not necessarily have to cause child maltreatment directly. For instance, parental risk factors include the characteristics that parents possess that increase their potential to maltreat a child (Kim & Drake, 2018). A child under the care of a parent with a neurological or mental disorder is considered to be at risk of maltreatment. At the same time, a parent with unrealistic expectations or lack of awareness of child development has a high chance of maltreating the child with the aim of forcing him/her to meet those expectations.
Other parental risk factors of child maltreatment are parents who experienced maltreatment when they were young, parents who misuse drugs or alcohol, those who have difficulty bonding with a child, those experiencing financial constraints, and parents who have poor impulse control, among other risk factors (Kim & Drake, 2018). In other words, not all parents that display such characteristics maltreat their children. Rather, children under their care are always at an increased risk of being maltreated.
Environmental risk factors, on the other hand, consist of a combination of family and societal aspects that increase the exposure of a child to maltreatment. Family risk factors involve issues of parenting stress, poor child-parent relationships, violence, divorce or separation, social isolation, and negative interactions (Pittner et al, 2019). Societal issues that lead to environmental risk factors are poor social connections, high rates of poverty, neighborhoods with high unemployment rates, and community violence. Children that grow up in such families on communities have a high probability of becoming victims of maltreatment one way or another because the risks are usually too many.
Mediating the Impact of Abuse
Various protective and mitigating factors exist to eliminate child maltreatment. Supportive family environments, parental employment, and caring adults other than the parents of a child act as protective elements against child abuse (Filion et al, 2020). However, most times, the protective factors against child maltreatment require a united front from the entire community and not just the family to create a conducive environment for the growth of the child.
Mediation or response to child maltreatment also takes the efforts of the community as a whole to be effective. These efforts, as well as the interventions set in place, should be implemented during the early stages of the child’s development to positively influence his/her educational attainment, social and behavioral competence, and cognitive development. Therefore, factors that appear to mediate the impact of abuse include parental support in terms of child nurturing skill building, life skills and education approaches, support and response services, enforcement and implementation of laws, and the use of values and norms approach (Filion et al, 2020).
Conclusion
Child maltreatment is a societal problem that immensely impacts its victims. Since it stems from a continuum of factors, it is also necessary to use a multifaceted approach to deal with it. Such include defining the problem, tabling the risk factors and causes, designing and implementing the protective and intervention measures, and creating awareness campaigns against the vice.