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Ill-treatment
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| T. S., Doshisha International Jr/Sr High School, Kyoto, Japan |
There are many happy marriages in this world, but unfortunately there are many divorced couples these days. One couple is married every 30 seconds in Japan and one couple signs divorce papers every 40 seconds. Many couples have babies through marriage. When they divorce they have to take care of their children as a single parent. Children must be treated with their parents' full love. These parents love their children, but some of them can't do it.
There are many reasons why some parents start to ill-treat their children, such as life under pressure, loneliness, etc. The children who were ill-treated in their growth period don't know what it is to be loved, so they cannot learn how to love or how to show emotions. Children sometimes have grown up with an unripe mind. Mentally underdeveloped children have problems already. They don't know how to hold back their anger so they give vent their anger easily. They don't know about other's pain so they easily kill to gratify themselves. If these people increase in number, it will disarrange our community and it will soon influence society. Ill-treatment causes problems like these, and it is severe, especially in Japan. Ill-treatment of children is one of the burning issues for Japan. There are reasons why ill-treatment of children is especially severe in Japan.
The first reason is, Japanese don't have good communication with their neighbors. Taking care of children is very hard work, especially taking care of the first child, and parents experience many things they never had to before, and this might be a big stress. In the past, neighbors have helped such a couple, giving advice from their experience. In recent times Japanese don't have any communication with neighbors. They don't know who lives next door. Many fathers and mothers cannot trust their child to others. It makes them mentally unstable and they cannot release their stress. They will start ill-treatment.
Stress may come from other reasons and cause ill-treatment. Many Japanese men expect women to be obedient all the time. It still gives a huge influence to Japanese thought, so that some men don't help with childcare. Childcare is very hard work but the husbands won't do anything. That's why wives build up stress. Finally ill-treatment starts.
Japanese also start ill-treatment because their child is not like in the manual. They don't like anything that is not the same as others. They want a normal child. There are many children's manuals and the parents follow to those manuals. The same thing happens in childcare. Japanese mothers read a child-rearing book to know how their baby will grow up. But naturally every people is brought up differently, so Japanese couples fall into a panic because theirs is a different upbringing from the book. Parents ill-treat their child by trying to breed them to be the same as others.
People can ill-treat children without those reasons. It is human nature to do the same as we have experienced, and that can result in ill-treatment. The person who was ill-treated when they were a child will do the same violence to their child in high probability.
Ill-treatment of children is horrible. Some parents say it is just discipline, but to other people, it looks like family violence. Why don't those parents realize that violence is ill-treatment? It is because the person they are hitting is their own child. People can be strong against the weak and Japanese have tended to do that. Japanese think that because the child is theirs they have a right to do anything to their child. Because of that groundless thought, Japanese can ill-treat children without any guilty.
Society is build up by each and every person. But in Japan, mentally underdeveloped people are increasing in number because of ill-treatment by parents. Especially in Japan this point is ingrained. It is from a Japanese bad habit so it is a bit hard to settle, but if we don't solve this burning issue, soon Japanese society will collapse.
Child Research Net would like to thank the Doshisha International Junior/Senior High School and Takayuki Sumiya, student and author, for permitting reproduction of this article on the CRN web site.
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Child Research Net is supported by Benesse Co., Ltd. |
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