Summary Of The Memoir 'Glass Castle'

The memoir “Glass Castle” covers a variety of serious concerns that affect any modern society. One of these concerns is child abuse. Child abuse is defined as any deliberate action taking against a child by an adult. These actions may be be physical violence, emotional or verbal abuse, refusal to meet a child's basic needs and even sexual molestation. There is much debate as to what exactly could turn someone, particularly a parent, to cause harm to child. However, a general consensus is that a few basic factors can increase the risk. Among these are mental health issues, substance abuse, lack of support and socioeconomic stress. Of all of these, socioeconomic stress is the most prominent cause of child abuse. This stress is often seen in a
However, many studies that have been conducted have taken this into consideration and have excluded official records from their research. In doing so, they have avoided any biases and used information that they themselves have concluded. Bronwyn and Lind summarized their findings saying “a relationship between economic stress and the level of nurturance toward children can be found among studies which rely on self-report or direct observation of families for information about parental behaviour rather than on official records. (Bronwyn and Lind 2) Self sufficient studies are done at the same rate, if not more frequently as official government investigations. It is the unofficial records that speak the most on child abuse issues and statistics. One of the first of these such studies was the California based study after the Great Depression. It found that “The behaviour of parents toward their children was assessed through personal interviews designed , among other things , to rate parental behaviour o n four dimensions (rejecting , exploiting , indifferent , positive) . Paternal behaviour was significantly correlate d with elevated levels of paternal rejection and indifference and lowered levels of paternal support both for sons and daughters . Economic loss appeared to have less effect on maternal than paternal behaviour” (Bronwyn and Lind