by Stephanie Espiritu

Created on: December 24, 2008

Parenting in today's society is different than it was in the 80's. Children need more supervision and boundaries. And with that comes discipline and creative correction. Our children need to be guided, taught right from wrong, shown the effects of a negative choice, and the benefits that can be reaped if they are obedient. However, some parents and adults cross a line that should never be crossed. Unfortunately so many families in the United States alone include someone that has been abused or someone that is currently a victim of child abuse. This article lists the different types of child abuse, what signs to look for if you think that a child may be abused, the long term effects, and available resources.

The major areas of child abuse are neglect, physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. Because there are different types of abuse, I've listed a brief description of each.

Child neglect is not providing for a child's overall needs such as: food, shelter, and clothing. In addition to that the child may not be taken to the doctor for annual physicals or if they are sick. Children are often left alone, abandoned, ignored, or denied the basic needs that every human being needs and deserves. The perpetrator may not only deny the child the proper food, clothing, and shelter, they may also not allow or not feel it important for the child to attend school. So not only are the child's basic needs not being fulfilled, their education is being jeopardized.

Physical abuse is harming a child by slapping, hitting, punching, kicking, choking, burning, and pulling hair, shaking, pinching, and any other "non-accidental" injury to a child.

Sexual abuse takes on many forms such as intercourse, fondling, penetration, forcing a child to witness sexual acts, pornography, child prostitution, oral sex, group sex, exploitation, and exhibitionism.

Emotional abuse involves, yelling, demeaning, screaming, verbally criticizing, putting down, cursing at, belittling, threatening, name calling, denying positive comments like saying "I'm proud of you", but instead telling the child that they are "fat", "worthless", "a failure", "nothing", "stupid", "ugly", etc. This kind of abuse damages the child's self esteem, emotional development, and social well being.

Now that we've outlined the types of abuse who does it affect? Child abuse affects every race, religion, sex, and financial status. According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, statistics in 2006 show that African-American children,

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