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When Should Parental Child Abuse Or Neglect, Not Be?

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Parents, beyond the innate biologic or humanistic need or action to care for and provide for their offspring in addition to keeping them safe and avoiding abuse or neglect, have a socially dictated duty to do so. Those parents who fail in these duties may be subject to legal penalties up to and including imprisonment and the removal of their children from their control.

The definition of parental child abuse or neglect has in recent times been subjected to some ethical and legal debate. Whereas intentional and obvious physical injury or sexual abuse by a parent is seemingly uncontestable, there remains some parental behavior which is yet uncertain. Some recent areas of discussion, where legal action against parents have already occurred include the outcomes of fetuses (fetal death or ill newborns) of addicted mothers who have used cocaine during pregnancy. If cocaine causes harm to the fetus, is this different than mothers who smoke or drink alcohol during pregnancy which is also understood to be harmful or a mother not wearing a seat restraint while driving? Another issue are parents who allow their children to become morbidly obese and thus subjecting them to associated serious medical illnesses such as hypertension or diabetes. Is overfeeding children an abuse? Still another situation brought to legal attention as neglect involved parents of a child already treated for cancer but the parents declined consent for further physician-advised therapy because to them the harms of the treatment outweighed the benefit.

Consider whether these behaviors represent to you child abuse or neglect and what would be an explanation of your view?

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Here is the question:

When should parental child abuse or neglect, not be abuse or neglect and why not?

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Consider the woman who smokes or does drugs and or alcahol during pregnancy. She knows these things are harmful to the fetus and yet she does them anyway thereby causing deliberate and intentional harm to her fetus. This should be considered as abuse. She is, after all, harming the child in as much the same way as she would if she were beating it or causing some other kind of deliberate physical harm.

The seat restraint issue is a little bit different as some women become so large during pregnancy that the seat restraint will not fit around them. I know because I am one of those women. This should not be considered child abuse. Also consider the woman who DOES where a seat restraint during pregnancy and (just for the topic of this discussion) say she gets into an accident and is thrown forward so violently the the restraint causes harm to her abdomen and the unborn fetus. Should she then also be considered for the case of child abuse??

Consider the parents who let their children over eat and become grossly obese. They are endangering the lives of their children in more ways than one; 1.. Being grossly obese is life threatening in it's self. 2.. Think of the childs life at school, at home, in the community they live in. They will be picked on, made fun of, ridiculed and ostricized. They are mostly unhappy because people make them feel worthless because they are obese and the unhappiness makes them eat more. The food takes the place of any real friends they might have if people in general weren't so insensitive. That unhappiness can lead to thoughts and acts of suicide.

Whom then do we blame for the childs death?? The parents, for letting the child over eat, or society, for making them so miserable that they eventually come to the conclusion that suicide is the only answer??

The topic of child abuse has such a broad range of views, discussions, debates and opinions that sometimes it is hard to say exactly where to take a stand. Except for the blatantly obvious forms of abuse, such as sexual and physical, who is to say what else constitutes abuse??

The woman who takes drugs and or alcahol during pregnancy is causing deliberate harm to her unborn child and is therefor committing child abuse.

The pregnant woman who does not wear a seat restraint is not committing abuse, however, whether or not she is neglecting the health of her unborn child would have to be solely each idividuals opinion.

Over feeding a child is not abuse but neglect because you are neglecting the childs nutritional needs.

As being a mother of two children I feel that it is my duty to protect them from harm as soon as I conceived them in my womb. Becoming a parent is a blessing from God and I believe that you owe it to God and the baby as soon as you conceive to take care of yourself and the fetus. I believe that most mothers should know by now that there is harm to the fetus when the take illegal drugs and consume alcoholic beverages. A person should think that they would know to stay away from these substances during this period. I would consider this neglect and abuse to the unborn fetus. This is the same for mothers who smoke cigarettes.

This is different from parents who overfeed there children. I am not saying that it is right to over feed children to where they become obese. I do want you to realize that most of the population is overweight and this is do to the American culture. Generations and generations of our ancestors were taught to eat when you were happy, sad and to celebrate in which we are taught to indulging into food. I think that food should be for only one thing that is survival.

I also think that pregnant women should also wear seat belts to protect them and their unborn child.

BSample

I totally agree about drug addicted mom to be they are hurting their baby NOW and we let them get away with it until delivery then we drug screen the baby if positive at that time we follow procedures to take baby away. In our state the moms usually get the babies back with or without birth defects. I think they need to be screened prenatal and face the consequences then! this could possibly stop the injury to the fetus and save our tax dollars from supporting a "drug" baby with possible complications. alcohol use should be treated as the same. smoking and seat belts hard question. maybe required smoking cessation classes and seat belts pregnant moms die with them too.