I worked for Royal Family Kids Camp last summer. The camp is specifically for foster children who have been abused and neglected. The kids were wonderful and touched my life deeply. Knowing they had experienced an egregious past, I would have never imagined many of them experiencing neglect before their first birthday.
So when I read the 2006 statistic in a recent Washington Post article that 91,000 babies in the U.S. were mistreated before they reached their first birthday, it was truly devastating.
The research targeted non-fatal abuse, but the same officials who conducted the research concluded that an additional 499 babies were killed from abuse in the same year.
Many couples need to focus on planned parenting before having children. You cannot read the statistics without wondering who are the parents of these babies suffering because of irresponsibility and/or lack of knowledge in raising a child are.
I know raising children must be hard, but many don’t realize that neglecting children, no matter how young, has long-term effects. We focus on impoverished countries around the world, but fail to highlight the major crisis we have in our own country. There has to be an awareness of all of the potential repercussions.
We cannot wait until shocking statistics are revealed to take action. It should be a continuous campaign to wipe out the problems before they get worse.
More than one-third of non-fatal abuse occurred in the first week of the child’s life. How could you mistreat a newborn child?
I am not trying to be na’ve, but why do we blame social services for not “rescuing” these children when the responsibility should be on the parents?
We should at least implement more programs to teach new parents the proper way to care for their children.
There are women who live their lives focused entirely on themselves. When these women have a child, it is hard to shift focus to the responsibility of caring for and nurturing another life.
We have to encourage everyone, especially women who are the bearers of the children, to think about the decisions they make now in order to avoid long-term misery for a child who does not deserve to be neglected or abused.
The issue is seen as most prevalent in the first year, but obviously has implications for the rest of the child’s life. I only hope that through continued research, parents – whether single or married – will re-evaluate their parenting skills and seek help if they are in need.
Miranda Gill is a senior journalism major and a contributing writer for the Daily Forty-Niner.
