What Effects Does Child Abuse Have On Children

Child abuse is something that happens every day in the united states and all over the world. Ultimately, what effect does child abuse have on children? What effect carries with them through adolescents and adulthood? There are many outcomes that can occur from childhood abuse and they can be psychologically, physical, and more. Abuse is not a set-in stone sentence. It affects each child differently and some abuse may not be as frequent and in turn has less of an effect on the child. Many factors go into how a child experiences abuse and overcomes the abuse. Child abuse incorporates many meanings. Child abuse can be considered physical, emotional, sexual, and neglect/maltreatment. Child abuse is the attempt or failure of response by a parent
For example, a parent who is inconsistent with how they react to their child, will influence the child’s development by the ability to even process emotional information. This in turn leads to a less empathetic child. This lack of emotional stability by the parent doesn’t support the child’s understanding of emotions needed to be successful as possible in society. Children who were neglected or maltreated had trouble recognizing emotion expressions compared to a child who was not neglected. This lack of ability to identify emotions could stem from the form of anxiety and/or depression. Higher levels of anxiety and depression could lead to a child performing worse on a task involving emotion regulation or expression. If a child has been maltreated, this may affect the emotions they can recognize. A test was run and children eho have been maltreated could recognize fearful faces faster than children who were not maltreated. This leads to some controversy from other studies stated previously in this paragraph where it was stated that children had more trouble recognizing emotion in a different study (Young & Widom,
The age of the child, the type of abuse, the frequency of abuse, the relationship with the offender can all affect the severity of the effects of the abuse the child will experience short and long term. There are four types of effects a child can experience from abuse. They are physical, psychological, behavioral, and societal. Separating these categories in real scenarios can be challenging due to how linked each category is to one another. If a child is experiencing behavioral issues, there is a large chance that their societal problems stemmed from the behavioral issues (Soomro, Abbasi, & Lalani,