Child Maltreatment among Asian Americans

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Table of Contents

Abstract
Introduction
Literature Review
Limitations of studies
Discussion/ Implications
Conclusion
Annotated Bibliography

Abstract

This paper provides a critical exploratory framework of the child maltreatment among Asian Americans. The driving force behind this research is the alarming reported cases of child maltreatment among Asian Americans. The reported cases are disproportionately low since a very high rate of the many types of abuses among Asian Americans is found in this group of Americans. The abuses range from physical abuse; sexual abuse, verbal abuse, and even child neglect are prevalent. The findings emanating from the literature review do indicate the low rates could be as a result of underreporting as opposed to actual incidence.

Introduction

Most of the studies carried out do indicate child maltreatment in Asian American families is rampant. A big number of these children has in one way or the other been victims of a certain type of abuse. This paper will endeavor to expose the nature of the maltreatment meted upon the Asian Americans, an ethnic minority in the USA. The research will discuss ways the child development professionals should address when dealing with the issue of maltreatment among the children.

In the United States of America, there are several ethnic groups that include Native American Indians, African Americans, and Pacific Islanders, among many other minority groups. The research particularly explores the various aspects that surround this maltreatment among Asian Americans. This maltreatment is serious since it has even led to many deaths of these children in some instances.

The children experience different maltreatment types. For example, according to information from the relevant departments indicates that in 2010, there were over three million cases of child maltreatment reported. 43 percentage of these were either being abused or even had been neglected (Aten et al. , 2008). Other cases were sexual. In the same year, it was established that 62% of the cases were due to sexual violence (International Labour Organization, 2009). In some cases, the maltreatment led to fatalities that varied according to sex and even race. For instance, in the year 2010, the rates of deaths per every 100000 children were 1. 9% for American Indians/ Alaska natives, 1. 9 for Hispanics, 3. 9 for African Americans and 0. 6 for the Asians (International Labour Organization, 2009).

Literature Review

Several types of research have been done about child maltreatment. This literature review is going to look into what the various studies have on the issue of child maltreatment among Asian Americans in particular and how the professionals can benefit from any knowledge gained (De Boer & Coady, 2007).

Child maltreatment includes ‘child abuse’ as well as ‘child neglect’. All in all, child maltreatment could manifest itself in physical abuse, substance abuse, sexual abuse, physical neglect, emotional abuse, parental substance abuse, among other forms of maltreatment. Statistics have indicated that though child maltreatment is prevalent in the USA, the incidences are particularly higher among the ethnic minority children. The children of color have proven to be overrepresented when it comes to maltreatment. This is an issue of great concern. It has been thus established that perhaps they do move differently through the systems by way of placement, length, the type of placement and even the services offered to them (Myers, 2008).

For example, the provision of mental health care service could be less as compared to the availability of such services to other children. Further, when it comes to the type of placement one may find that in the case of children of color, there is greater use of extended kinship care (International Labour Organization, 2009).

The findings of this research were also equivalent to the one carried out in Canada where the researchers found out that the non-Aboriginal were not fairly represented in the child welfare system than the Aboriginal (Khan et al. , 2006). Thus, in the study of the Aboriginal, Black and even Latino children were almost two times more likely to be associated or even involved with child maltreatment as compared to the cases reported for the white children (International Labour Organization, 2009).

This report is useful to this study since it goes ahead and gives an account to the disparity. One of them could be that either those who reported were biased in reporting the abuse e.g. teachers, social workers, counselors, etc. Thus the finding will help weed out any form of bias as we set out to carry out our research, thereby making it as objective as possible. This ‘professional ethnocentrism’ could make a caregiver prescribe measures that are detrimental to the child’s welfare (Bala, 2008).

The issue of culture has also arisen in many research findings. The Asian American cultures do for instance emphasize a lot of relational types of socialization. Asian families’ authoritarian parenting styles do stress on the need for harmony and protection of family image and honor. In a related study, it was found that there exists a subtle correlation between the authoritarian type of parenting and outcomes such as academic achievement (International Labour Organization, 2009).

Unlike American families who use strategies such as time-outs and lecturing as a way of disciplining their kids, Asian American families do commonly practice spanking with the hand or object. They also use verbal means of disciplining their kids, depending on the nature or frequency of the wrong done by the child.

But as seen earlier, different cultures define abuse differently. This makes it very difficult to define the forms of maltreatment. Thus, the socio-cultural and social and social ways of labeling do greatly affect the way professionals should handle cases of child maltreatment (International Labour Organization, 2009).

The socio-cultural perspective does greatly tell how caregivers should handle the issue of maltreatment. According to this school of thought, the way we define child maltreatment should reflect the cultural norms of the community in question (Aten et al. , 2008).

Though physical aggression is frequently seen as an abuse, the categorization of emotional and psychological abuse and neglect have met resistance in terms of being considered as abusive. From such conflict then, it is apparent that the categorization of child maltreatment is to a greater extent influenced by aspects of race, culture and even ethnicity. For instance, in a research carried out to determine the perception of child maltreatment among White Americans and the Asian Americans, it was found out that there were obvious racial disparities in the definitions. In the study, the white respondents tended to rate many behaviors as forms of abuse (Fang et al. , 2012).

These were particularly physical and emotional maltreatment. The Chinese Americans and Filipino American respondents, on the other hand, were more concerned with parental sexual exploits and parental drug abuse as more qualifying to be considered as abusive acts. One conclusion that can be drawn is that this particular response could be derived from deep-rooted parental socialization of the children in these Asian American cultures (International Labour Organization, 2009).

In another study Asian Americans of Korean descent, it was established that child abuse signified parental love for the child. Education also played a big role in the findings of this study. For instance, mothers who had attained higher levels of education tended to be more negative toward child maltreatment (Earner, 2007).

Equally, Korean immigrant women who held the opinion that they had at one time as immigrants tended to be more predisposed to approve of the use of any form of corporal punishment. Yet in a study carried out among urban Americans, the respondents were found to have very strong feelings toward the classification of child neglect as an abuse. In general evaluation, the Native American parents concluded that the mainstream of vignettes was in massive abuse of child care rights (Aten et al. , 2008). The differences in regard to cultural attitudes and perception of experts towards the child maltreatment are important aspects of this study.

In a study conducted on 80 priests of Korean descent, the study found out that the priests were aware of child abuse and maltreatment reporting legislation and felt that the legislation in place indeed endeavored to safeguard the children’s rights. The majority of the pastors also said that they would prefer the majority of family members go for the pastoral mode of counseling as opposed to directly reporting the incidences to the child protective agencies.

Limitations of studies

This study relies on secondary data due to the cost of carrying out primary research. The information relied upon therefore is gleaned from library material. Further, the records relied upon to tell us only of reported cases of abuse and there is no way we can get reliable information on the statistics of unreported cases. Finally, looking at the sizes of the sample of the studies quoted, it is quite evident that the sample sizes are quite small. This leads to us into not being to reliably rely on the results as being able to be generalized. All in all the research attempts to provide adequate exploratory inroads into the nature of child maltreatment among Asian Americans.

Discussion/ Implications

To assist in the discussion perhaps the Strengths-Based Perspective would suffice. This perspective focuses on the strong points of an individual rather than weaknesses. This perspective is grounded on the belief that every group is of people has the ability to improve positively. So empowering individuals from the core objective of this perspective. This equally goes a long way in assisting the people learn by themselves to change.

Through empowering the people, there are reduced possibilities of accessing both external and internal resources. Thus the individuals should be viewed as agents of change. From the literature, it was seen how Asian Americans have a unique perspective towards child maltreatment. Therefore, there is a need for professionals to consider the capacities of the members of these communities to address maltreatment and work with them accordingly. This, therefore, requires that the individuals in question should be granted their freedom to identify their own goals. Thus one sees clearly that professionals like those in healthcare should be in a position to work perfectly well with the community stakeholders in order to address the existing challenges that are to do with child maltreatment.

This approach debunks the earlier tendency of several professional practitioners in always blaming the victim. Thus, the bi – culturalization of assessments and interventions should be in line with the individuals’ and families’ cultural norms. Further, these should involve the identity of the indigenous interventions that could be incorporated into the Western type of interventions (Bala, 2008). Of equal importance is the formulation of a plan which promotes the individuals’ set values and belief systems.

Conclusion

In order for the welfare of the child to be effectively managed for Asian Americans, it is crucial for professionals to promote interventions that are racially and ethnically meaningful. Thus, professionals from diverse disciplines should have a clear grasp of the different ways of maltreatment. These do manifest themselves in oppression, marginalization resource access. Therefore the various stakeholders are faced with the formulation of the direction the child welfare has got to the head. The professionals should not be tempted to think that the dominant practices are necessarily the best and should be prescribed to even the ethnic minorities such as the Asian Americans.

Annotated Bibliography

Aten, J. D. , Madson, M. B. , Ric, E. A. , Chamberlain, A, K. (2008). Post disaster Supervisor strategies for promoting supervise self-care: lessions learned from Hurricane Katrina. Training and Education in Professional Psychology, 2 (2), 75- 82.

The book helps to bring out the various types of abuses that can go unidentified in disaster situations. Hence, it is the role of the stakeholders involved in disaster management to devise measures that aid self-care and other strategies to safeguard life. The book also dwells much on child psychology.

Bala, N. (2008). An historical perspective on family violence and child abuse: comment on Moloney et al. , Allegations of family violence. J Fam Stud, 14 (2/3), 271- 278.

The author presented a wide range of issues on family violence and the place of the child in the whole scenario. Quite relevant information.

De Boer, C., Coady, N. (2007). Good helping relationships in child welfare: learning from stories of success. Child Fam Soc Work, 12 (1), 32-42.

This work proved quite useful in identifying the various compromises to conflict of diversity employed in the summary of this paper that in order for the welfare of the child to be effectively managed for the Asian Americans, it is crucial for the professionals to promote interventions that are racially and ethnically meaningful. Thus, professionals from diverse disciplines should have a clear grasp of the different ways of maltreatment

Earner, I. (2007). Immigrant families and public child welfare: barriers to services and approaches for change. Child Welfare, 86 (4), 63-91.

This work helped find the major challenges facing the immigrant minority as concerns child maltreatment. It helped provide the background to understanding the subject of this research.

Fang, X., Brown, D. S. , Florence, C. S. , Mercy, J. A. (2012). The economic burden of child maltreatment in the United States and implications for prevention. Child Abuse and Neglect, 7 (36), 156-165.

This work helped in conceptualizing the need for this research; devastating nature of child maltreatment. The authors point out the economic implications of child maltreatment such as cost of treatment, psychological torture and strain on social welfare programs. The book is quite useful in showing the need to incorporate the local interventions into child’s community harmoniously.

International Labour Organization. (2009). Child Labour Statistics. Web.

The International Labour Organization brings out various statistics of child maltreatment of various ethnicities in the United States. The publication is important in analyzing the trend of the practice across the country.

Khan, K. S. , Wojdyla, D., Say, L., Glmezoglu, A. M. , Van Look, P. F. , (2006). WHO analysis of causes of maternal death: a systematic review. Lancet, 367 (9516), 1066- 1074.

This source was useful in understanding the role of culture in child maltreatment. Quite useful contribution to this research. It explains that professionals should not be tempted to think that the dominant practices are necessarily the best and should be prescribed to even the ethnic minorities such as the Asian Americans.

Myers, J. E. B. , (2008). A short history of child protection in America. Farm Law Q, 42 (3), 449-463.

The source gave the some kind of perspective into how the child protection legislation is was formulated and its nature. This source provided material that was useful in gaining of insights into the growth child’s protection. The issue of child protection has been progressive. It is seen here that some states in the US did not have any child protection measures for a long time.

Rafferty, Y. (2007). Children for sale: child trafficking in Southeast Asia. Child Abuse Review , 16 (6), 401-422.

This information helped link the nature of child abuse in South East Asia and the way the Asian ethnic group handles child welfare even in the USA. The book highlights the undesirable dark secrets of child abuse and neglect ,hence, it was a pivotal source to his research.

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