Cause and Effect of Social

Violence against children is very prominent among third world countries. Such violence is manifested in the form of child abuse. According to Darlene Barrier, child abuse is the physical, emotional, or sexual mistreatment of children. A child is defined as someone who is 18 years old or below, or someone above the age of 18, but cannot take care of himself due to circumstance. Although there is an increasing awareness of children’s rights, problems with relation to abuse continue to persist in many countries. In the Philippines alone, there are about 33 million children, and authorities estimate that in 1999, there were roughly 12,000 cases of child abuse filed (Velayo, 2006). The department of social welfare and development (DSWD) documented an increase of such cases from 1991 to 1997. The effects of child abuse include physical, mental, and social effects.
Physical effects pertain to the body, the tendency to touch, or to be rough. The physical effects of child abuse include unusual bruises, injuries, and unexplained burns (Barrier, 2006). Some of these may take the shape or the form of an iron, a cord, or anything that might have been used as a tool for violence against the child. Child abuse leads to mental effects (Barrier, 2006). Mental effects refer to a sort of disorder of one’s mind, or a psychological disorder. Such effects may lead to speech disorder, which is when children experience difficulty in speaking. In addition, mental effects may also lead to learning problems, which may later affect the child’s education. Other psychological effects include trauma and/or depression.
Lastly, physical child abuse may also lead to social effects – social, pertaining to one’s interaction or relation with other human being and the community. One example of the social effects of physical child abuse is the fear of one’s home or the fear of one’s parents (Miller, 1991). Children tend to avoid going home by staying in school after class hours, or frequently going to