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Abuse and Heredity

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Abuse and Heredity
Abuse and Heredity Research question: Is child abuse hereditary?
There are many types of abuse such as alcohol abuse, drug abuse, domestic abuse just to name a few but of all the types of abuse there is one type of abuse that is probably one of the easiest to pass down and that is child abuse. Child abuse is easy to pass down because we look to what we know when were not certain what to do. The term for passing down child abuse is known as intergenerational abuse. There are four methods of child abuse and they are physical, sexual, neglect, and emotional abuse (Baltes, Smelser, Pg 1672). In the study of a sixteen year old mother who had been abused her whole life, it was found that the mother resorted to spanking her five month old child when she was wanted him to stop crying (Leifer, Smith, p.117). While the severity of the spanking was not recorded the fact the she admitted to spanking her child shows that she must have had some type of spanking early in life. Many parents think to their childhood when parenting and some people don’t know a difference between what is right and what is wrong. “Researchers have found support for the idea that children that experience harsh or abusive parenting are likely to become harsh and abusive parents (Capaldi, Pears, 2001, pg 1440).”Child abuse is a relatively common factor affecting the health of children today, in the state of Washington one out of five adults reported being abused in some way as a child ( Bensley, Ruggles, Simmons, Harris, Williams, Putvin, Allen, 2003, pg 1322). A conservative estimate done by child protective services say that 171,570 American children were physically abused in one year , 2001, this being only the number of cases that were substantiated by child protective services ( Narang , Contreras, 2003, pg 684). Pears and Capaldi reported that parents of children with a history of abuse and neglect were twice as likely to have been abused, Confirming that being abused as a child is a risk

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