Word: parenting
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...from shaking a child?an adult can more easily understand, fight back or flee?and both are very unlike rape. Of the three, rape is most unequivocally a statutory crime, and probably every rapist ought to be locked up for some time. They are real criminals. Of course, a parent who willfully scalds a child's arm is a criminal. Of course, a man who stomps his pregnant wife is a criminal. These cases are, ironically, the easiest ones to think about: when the violence is so ugly and utterly inexcusable, you just throw the book at the sick bastards...
There are more specialized kinds of private violence, of course, only just beginning to be classified as "social problems." Most prominent is "granny bashing," the flip British nickname for the physical mistreatment of old people, usually the victimizers' parents or grandparents. About 5% of dependent elderly Americans may be abused, according to Murray Straus, a University of New Hampshire sociologist. Is a surge of parent bashing possible? It would not be a real surprise: futuristic cabin fever could break out if, on the verge of the 21 st century, millions of Americans really are working and living in their hermetic...
...into the confession box and choke on the words. When you abuse your child, it seems like you're watching someone else do it. There is guilt, horror, pain. Society need not hate us. We hate ourselves. No one hates an abusing parent more than the abusing parent...
Most abused children, of course, do not murder their fathers. A parent who tries to kill or succeeds in killing a child is also relatively rare. Unfortunately, Mary's account of the physical and emotional humiliation inflicted on her by an out-of-control parent and the recycling of the same kind of abuse when she became a mother is all too typical. What is hopeful, although unusual, about Mary's story is that she realized she needed help, found a group, Parents Anonymous, that knew how to help her, and made peace with her son. In high...
...future crimes (studies of prison populations show that upwards of 90% of all inmates claim to have been abused as children) is intolerable in a civilized society. Even more intolerable, child abuse perpetuates itself. In a great preponderance of cases-estimates run as high as 90%-the abusive parent was abused as a child. Says Lieut. Richard Willey, a child-abuse specialist in the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department: "The rate of increase is geometric: if a woman has four children and abuses them, there is a potential for four abusive families...