Much like rape, murder, violent crime, poverty, disease, and bigotry, almost everyone at least pays some degree of lip service to opposing child abuse and neglect. Perhaps for that reason, youth liberationists have not tended to invoke the language of "child abuse" or "child neglect" as often as the language of "youth oppression" when discussing the mistreatment of young people at the hands of adults. Youth liberationists feel that it is important to point out that it is not just the most egregious cases of child physical, sexual, and psychological abuse and neglect that almost everyone can agree are wrong that are problematic, but also the more commonplace, banal, accepted, and taken for granted ways that adults exercise arbitrary authority over young people that also need to be problematized. Youth liberationists also do not tend to see cases of child abuse and neglect simply as anomalous incidences in which uniquely bad actors perpetrate uncommonly evil crimes on young people. Rather, youth liberationists tend to see all of the many ways that youth are mistreated as existing on the same spectrum with cases of child murder, rape, and severe battering lying on the far end of the spectrum to be sure but existing on a continuum with many practices which are almost universally regarded as acceptable ways of disciplining or controlling young people. Finally, youth liberationists regard all forms of child abuse, neglect, and maltreatment as inseparable from the social, cultural, legal, political, and economic context in which they occur, one in which the notion of "parental rights" and other adult caregiver prerogatives to do with youth in their care as they see fit are regarded as something akin to natural rights and young people are systematically deprived of rights, autonomy, and dignity and discriminated against as members of a subject class. So to address the issue of child abuse through youth liberationist eyes is to take account not just of those bad acts committed against some youth by some adults but also of a larger context in which oppressed members of a subject class are placed in an especially vulnerable position due in part to being systematically stripped of their rights on the institutional and societal levels.
All of that having been said, I do think that there are some advantages to youth liberationists from time to time invoking the language of "child abuse and neglect" in order to speak about some forms of youth mistreatment in some contexts. First of all, it gives us at least some shared vocabulary with those who may be allies of ours on at least some issues as well as those who are concerned with youth issues more generally. Speaking of the mistreatment of young people in terms of "child abuse" also carries with it the distinct advantage of making a clear moral and teleological claim to the effect that "Treating youth this way is wrong. It is immoral. This sort of treatment is not what children and adolescents are for." It also allows us to participate in the conversation with people of good will who are already concerning themselves with issues of child welfare and rights.
The first book that I read on child abuse this April was Dr. Diane Prinz Callin's The Last Bastion: Child Abuse and Child Neglect in the Brotherhood of America's Schools. The thesis of this book is that the emotional, physical, sexual, and educational abuse and neglect of students in America's schools is a major but largely undiscussed social problem with far reaching consequences and that a culture of silence and unaccountability coupled with the willingness of educators and other school personnel to put loyalty to the profession and each other above the welfare of students keeps abused students from being able to seek justice for or relief from their sufferings. I agree strongly with all of this.
That said, this book offers little in the way of solutions or even thoughtful analysis of the problem and reads more like an angry screed than either a thoughtful analysis of a social problem or a self-help guide for students, parents, or others dealing with abuse from those within the school system. Many examples used are unsourced and very bold claims are made without any data to back them up or any nuance in the discussion. It's unfortunate that this book is not a more well-researched, well written, and serious resource because the problem it describes is a very real one in need of thoughtful analysis, actual data and statistics, and genuine solutions both for individuals dealing with the problem on a personal level and for society as a whole. This book sadly does not offer that.
What I like that this book does is to state plainly that much of what passes for "strict discipline" or "school policy" in America's K-12 schools is in fact abusive. It is both child abuse in the conventional sense and it is an abuse of authority of the sort we understand police brutality to be. In a profoundly anti-youth culture, where all too many adults cheer the notion of "tougher discipline for teens" or "forcing youth to abide by the rules" and many people are not yet ready to understand and grapple with the notion of youth oppression, using the language of "child abuse" forces the acknowledgement that the conduct of all too many professionals in K-12 schools should be regarded as deviant. When we as youth liberationists hear about a school policy that causes young menstruating women to ruin their clothes because they are allowed so few bathroom breaks, we should refer to this as "child abuse." When we hear of youth facing corporal punishment in our schools, we should refer to this as "child abuse." When we hear about teachers demeaning or humiliating students, we should refer to this also as "child abuse." We need to be more clear in stating just how abusive an environment many PreK-12 schools are for students and we need to be willing to talk about the culture of silent complicity that even many good educators feel forced to participate in in order to keep their jobs. In their quest to impose discipline, many of America's PreK-12 schools have indeed become bastions of abuse and there is indeed a code of silence within the profession similar to the "blue wall of silence" one often hears about in reference to the police. I wish that Callin's book had offered more concrete suggestions for students, parents, and good teachers for how to deal with these problems. Good resources are sorely needed where this issue is concerned.
The second book I read about child abuse this April was What Happened in the Woodshed?: The Secret Lives of Battered Children and a New Profession to Protect Them by Dr. Lawrence R. Ricci. This book was much more rewarding for me as a reader as it was clearly a well written, well sourced book on a difficult yet important topic. The subject of the book is the emerging medical specialty of child abuse pediatrics. Writes Ricci, "The crime scene of a child's abused and neglected body can, through careful medical analysis, lead us inexorably back to what happened, sometimes to who did it, and most revealingly to why it happened." The problem with Ricci's formulation is that it makes perfect sense when discussing battered infants, but becomes more and more problematic as children grow older. When a young person clearly states that they are in an environment where they are being physically, sexually, or emotionally abused, what is called for is not CSI: Child Body Edition. What needs to happen is that that young person needs to be able to go somewhere else that they feel safe, secure, and hopefully, loved. The courts may need physical evidence in order to prosecute abusers, but the right marks showing up in the right place should not be a necessary prerequisite for a young person being able to leave an oppressive situation.
One important point that Ricci brings up in his book is the extent to which the child welfare system revolves around the goal of family preservation which can prove tragic when, as is all too often the case, preserving a family is seen as more of a priority than providing safety for a child. This is but one way in which the notion of "parental rights" poisons nearly every aspect of our child protection system at the roots.
Perhaps the most fascinating chapter of Ricci's book dealt with Munchausen syndrome by proxy. It is a bizarre form of child abuse but one that our culture facilitates by way of common attitudes about mothering, caregiving, disability, and children. Medical practices that center parents instead of appropriately centering child patients play a role as well. Munchausen by proxy is a rare and strange pathology, but its ability to arise as a condition at this point in our society owes a lot to institutionalized ageism and ableism in the medical context and elsewhere. While alas these rich links were not explored in the ways in which I would have liked to have seen them be, we are provided with several fascinating case studies of the phenomenon.
So to wrap up this post, I will say that Ricci's book is well worth your time if you are interested in learning more about child abuse pediatrics. I'm glad that I read it and I learned a lot. Callin's book had potential in terms of its thesis statement but the execution was poor. If you have found any books about child abuse and neglect or related subjects to be especially worthwhile, please leave the names and authors of these books in the comments section so that I can check them out too. Thanks for reading!
