Most parents and other caregivers do not intend to hurt their children, but abuse is defined by the effect on the child, not the motivation of the parents or caregiver.
Tens of thousands of children each year are traumatized by physical, sexual, and emotional abusers or by caregivers who neglect them, making child abuse as common as it is shocking.
Most of us can’t imagine what would make an adult use violence against a child, and the worse the behavior is, the more unimaginable it seems. But the incidence of parents and other caregivers consciously, even willfully, committing acts that harm the very children they’re supposed to be nurturing is a sad fact of human society that cuts across all lines of ethnicity and class. Whether the abuse is rooted in the perpetrator’s mental illness, substance abuse, or inability to cope, the psychological result for each abused child is often the same deep emotional scars and a feeling of worthlessness.
