Child Abuse as a Social Problem

“Child abuse” has become a social problem in Japan since the 1990s. Committed by parents, with their absolute power, against their children, who have no power, child abuse is nothing but a negative experience for children personally and socially. Child abuse should therefore be eradicated and abhorred. However, it unfortunately tends to be treated with moral panic.<BR><BR>The aim of this paper is to clarify the process of child abuse becoming a social problem in Japan and to consider the issue of how to respond to it. I point out that 1) the social problem of child abuse has expanded through several stages, 2) the mass media have created a serious image of an explosion of the problem, and 3) social protection is moving towards risk assessment, which results in monitoring all families.<BR><BR>Risk assessment by government guidance finds troubled families, following which individual measures can be taken, but there are a number of problems. The first is a mismatch between needs and support. Currently in Japan, while child abuse is recognized as a social problem, the measures taken regard it as the parentsʼ personal problem. This is not appropriate. If child abuse is thought of as a personal problem of the parents, support will be provided as a kind of counseling. In fact, however, child abuse is often caused by economic poverty, and thus a mismatch between causes and countermeasures occurs. Actually, what such parents need is not counseling, but life or employment support. Secondly, assessment is carried out by the checklist method. The expert who has been well trained and has an extensive knowledge and background on the causes of child abuse may not necessarily carry out the check. In addition, children do not always talk about their feelings appropriately because there are large individual differences in developmental level.<BR><BR>In the field of child welfare, the cause of child abuse is not considered to be the psychological problem of the parents, but has long been noted instead to be due to socio-economic issues. However, the images of child abuse created by the mass media have led to the belief in the dysfunction of family upbringing, specifically, the reproduction of child abuse, the isolation of child care environments, and the childrearing anxiety of mothers. Therefore, all families are investigated. This amounts to a loss of human resources.<BR><BR>We therefore have to offer an accumulation of empirical research, objective analysis of the moral panic against child abuse, and the results of empirical science from a research perspective. Furthermore, clinically speaking, the extraction of the experience of child abuse and its associated problems also make it possible to give specific recommendations necessary for the solution from the perspective of the parent or child.