¶ … child neglect is described as the failure of a parent or a custodian liable for the child's care to make sufficient food, clothing, protection, supervision, and/or medical care available for the child. In the United States, child neglect is the most commonly recognized type of child mistreatment and abuse. The theoretical definition of child neglect by Polansky is generally acknowledged which states child neglect as "a condition in which a caretaker responsible for the child, either deliberately or by extraordinary inattentiveness, permits the child to experience avoidable present suffering and/or fails to provide one or more of the ingredients generally deemed essential for developing a person's physical, intellectual, and emotional capacities" (Pagelow, 1984).
Mother is commonly considered as the neglectful parent. Polansky and his colleagues identified the distinctive mental characteristics of neglectful mothers and categorized them into five separate types i.e. impulse-ridden mothers, apathetic-futile mothers, mothers suffering from reactive depression, mentally retarded mothers, and psychotic mothers.
The impulse-ridden mothers have a noticeably undeveloped personality that is chiefly the result of an early emotional deprivation. Such mothers are psychologically immature and childish in their incapacities to think about the needs of others, put off satisfaction and pleasure of essential impulses, and do not possess the abilities to invest themselves in another person sensitively. Such impulse-ridden mothers mirror inadequate self-monitoring and strength of mind in a number of behavioral domains (Melton & Barry, 1994).
The apathetic-futile mothers are "discouraged, fatalistic and immobilized women" (Polansky, 1991). They tend to hold an enveloping confidence that nothing is worth doing which simply means that they have a firm clench on pointless feelings. They have a lack of contact and recognition of their own feelings which is the consequence of never-healed events in early life. They do not have pleasant interpersonal relationships which leaves them combating with loneliness. Moreover, they do not have sufficient confidence to learn and try new skills (Polansky, 1991).
Depressed mothers, on the other hand, are antagonistic, unfriendly, unsympathetic, rejecting, and unconcerned towards their children. They are especially neglectful when it comes to providing food and supervision. Such mothers also significantly lack social-communication and problem-solving skills. Mentally retarded mothers are not verbally accessible as they do not possess the ability to express their own feelings in words. They are deficient in knowing the needs of their children.
The mentioned categories also apply to other caregivers because the personality theory perspective applies to all the custodians, whether parents or not. The children are neglected and mistreated not only by their parents but also by their caretakers. This neglectful behavior is due to the caregivers' own personal experiences in their early stages of life and early histories of inadequate and insignificant parental care.
Answer 2
Physical abuse can be commonly described as the occurrence of an injury that the child/woman experiences at the hands of his/her caregiver via various non-accidental means that include "hitting with a hand, stick, strap, or other object; punching; kicking; shaking; throwing; burning; stabbing; or choking" (Giardino, 2012) to the degree that demonstrate harmful results. There is no single cause that has been attributed to describe the incidences of physical abuse. However, there are various models including interactional model, environmental-stress model and social/cultural/economic models that can help to describe the causes of physical abuse.
The interactional model clearly acknowledges that the physical abuse cannot be considered as an only incident with a single cause and single effect. This ecological model of human development and interaction signifies child as a microsystem, the family as an exosystem and the various communities that mingle together to form a social-value system as macro system. This model is usually regarded as the standard theoretical framework from which the multifarious interactions among the parent/caregiver, child, family, social situation, and cultural values that lead to the non-accidental injury of the child/woman can be approached. As all the components of the system are interactional in nature, they influence one another. Thus, when a caregiver and child interrelate around an occasion, in a specified atmosphere, it results in the occurrence of injury to the child. When maltreatment is viewed in this way, it allows us to consider the factors that the caregiver, child, and environment contribute to display the child at a risk for injury (Giardino, 2012).
The Environmental/Life Stress Model illustrates that there could be certain stressors in the environment...
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