Physical abuse is an important issue related to the human development. It affects the growth and development of an individual. Physical abuse is a common phenomenon that is probably found in every society. There are different factors for physical abuse that affects the human development. Children in their childhood experience the physical abuse from their parents, for example, there are possibilities that their father or may be their mother abuse them physically. In addition, there are equal chances that a husband physically abuses her wife front of his parents that affects the children’s cognitions, emotions and behaviors. Physical abuse or violence affects the individual development in a different ways. This issue can be generated or started in the homes or in the school life. The physical abuse in homes and physical abuse in school affects altogether differently. In homes, physical abuse can be found because of the house environment, inheritance, and cultural tendency or may be, the one of the parents has faced it their home or in their society, therefore they apply this to their children too. Although it was founded in the past and due to different researches it is shown that, the physical abuse should be avoided because it affects the individual (Salkind, 2004).
Physical abuse among the children and adults tend to occur due to many reasons like, stress, alcoholism, and lack of knowledge, drug abuse, household violence, single parent child and due to be a victim of it. Those people, who physically abused the children or his wife, do not realize its results that can drastically affect the child development (Susan, 2000).
There is a difference between the physical abuse and punishment. Parents or elders sometimes punish their children for wrong deeds or actions to stop them to do it in the future. Physical abuse can be described as any injury hitting by parents and it can be a minor or major injury.
Children are physically abused by their parents, siblings (mostly older ones, grandparents, teachers and relatives. There can be different forms of physical abuse like a bully. When first time a child experiences physical abuse in his home, he undergoes a feeling of shocked and unable to understand that, this physical punishment is right or wrong for him. Whenever, he is physically abused by his parents, he thinks that he has done something wrong or may be, it is his mistake, therefore, his parents physically punish him, this thought forms or shapes his cognition that whenever his parents are physically abusing him, he has done something wrong that is not acceptable by his parents. In addition, this physical abuse most of the time puts a negative effect on the human growth. It completely affects the cognitive, behavioral, social, physical and personality development in the children. Children become passive and weak and have low self-esteem, lower trust on them and sometimes they react to it completely in a different manner, they move towards stubbornness, aggression, or crimes (Rose, Mcauley, & Pecora, 2006).
In addition, children show these things directly or indirectly. The do it because of their experiences in their childhood. As their parents or teachers physically abuse them or compel them to do things or actions according to their will, so in their young ages they develop this habit to compel others to work according their will by the use of the force. For example a child who experiences child abuse due to his an activity for exploring something, he may stop himself from discovering or knowing something useful and new in life. His interest in learning may decrease because of child abuse. His self-esteem may decrease because of embarrassment that he has to face every time after physical abuse (Bartollas, 1996).
Physically abused children’s social development affects badly. They have a lower tendency to make friends, lower communication skills, and a higher tendency to over comply others. They use aggression to solve interpersonal issues and physical abuse in childhood affects the adult life of the individual. The adult may develop mental illness, criminal activity, and professional life too.
Adult, Physical abused in their childhood become juvenile victims. A study was conducted on the 4465 children and siblings, these children reported physical abuse in their childhood in New York. The results revealed the association between the physical abuse and juvenile misconducts. 10 to 30 percent were indulged in the juvenile misconducts and it was observed in the context of different references like sex, religion, ethnicity, status and family composition (Carr, 1977).
Social learning theory
Social learning theory has been proposed by Albert Bandura in 1976 and further experiments have been done. It is also called observational or modeling. The social learning theory proposed that individual learn behaviors or new things through the observation. This traditional theory is the influential theory of learning and the development. It brings changes in the behaviors and development of the individuals. Social learning theory shows connection between cognitions and behaviors. Bandura’s theory is based on the reciprocal determinisms.
Englewood, Hall, Bandura, (1986) social learning theory claimed that every brain has the power to observe by paying attention to a stimulus, incident or behavior, retain and replicate specific behavioral patterns that are executed before it. This theory is called the observational learning where individuals tend to display traits and behavior.
People repeat the observed behaviors due to different reasons that can be called motivation. Bandura proposed the three modeling stimuli on which the learning is based on, (1) live model through which an actual person exhibits the action to someone, (2) verbal instruction in which the instructions are given to the individual to perform an action and (3) symbolic in which the individual learns through the media, like TV dramas, films, literature, etc (Chadee, 2011).
The social learning theory fully describes that the physical abuse among the child affects their life completely. In their childhood, they are suffering from cognitional, behavioral, physical, emotional developmental problems. Miller stated in her book Theories of Developmental Psychology that social learning studies the gender role and moral development in-depth and explain it clearly.
Social learning theory describes that the physical abuse of a child is a live or visual model because he experiences through one of his parents directly. It is his personal experience that he observes, he remembers it, he will able to retain it in the future or it can be motivational for him to do a juvenile action or crime that provides him any reinforcement in different forms. These reinforcements can be, an expression of power, control someone’s behavior, or to get something expensive, valuable, etc.
Social learning theory also explains that the physical abuse is practiced by the parents due to their own experience of being physically abused in their childhood. Therefore, they reflect their experiences on their children, because they observed the physically abusive behavior of their parents, remember it, retain it and imply on their children for different purposes.
Social learning theory has also used to give an explanation about appearance furthermore upholding destructive or criminal actions, particularly violent behavior and aggression. Ronald Akers and Robert Burgess famous criminologists incorporated the principles of operant conditioning and social learning theory with the differential association theory of Edwin, to create a broad theory of criminal behavior. Both the criminologists proposed that illegal and juvenile behavior are learned through communal and no communal circumstances through mixture of different reinforcements and observations of different wrong behaviors such as physical abuse (Ammerman, 2006).
At the end, it can be concluded that the physical abuse is a general phenomenon that is found in different societies and culture of the modern age too for a long time, different researches show that physical abuse toward children lead them towards juvenile delinquency or criminology. Social learning theory also proposes that physical abuse is a learned behavior through observation or modeling. It is proposed by different experts that the precautionary actions consist of defensive exclusion of kids and adults as of violent domestic, official punishments designed for violent husbands, fathers and trained; and enlightening the community regarding the characteristics and reasons of abuse. The basic three types of social learning theory live model, instructional model and symbolic can be utilized to remove the physical abuse in the society. Family training intervention can be helpful for the intervention of physical abuse (Ammerman, 2006).
References
Ammerman, T., R. (2006). Comprehensive Handbook of Personality and Psychopathology. New
Jersey: John Willey & sons, Inc.
Bartollas, C. (1996). Juvenile Delinquency. Macmillan Publishing Company, New York
Goldman, D., Lappalainen, J., and Ozaki, N. 1996. Direct analysis of candidate genes in
impulsive behaviors. In Genetics of Criminal and Antisocial Behavior, edited by G.R. Bock andJ.A. Goode. Toronto, Canada: John Wiley and Sons, pp. 139–152.
Carr, A. (1977). Some preliminary findings on the association between the child maltreatment
and juvenile misconduct among the eight New York countries.
Chadee, D. (2011).Theories of social psychology. New Jersy: John Wiley & sons, Inc.
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Salkind, N.J. (2004). Social learning theory. In an introduction to theories in human
Development. (pp. 197-226). Thousand Oakas, CA: sage publications
Susan, W. (2000). "Not to People Like Us": Hidden Abuse in Upscale Marriages. New York:
Basic Books,
Rose, W., Mcauley, C., & Pecora, P. (2006). Enhancing the well-being of children and families
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