Various Kinds of Family Violance

There are many key concepts discussed throughout the semester that stood out to me. These concepts include the differences in family violence and how each race and culture is a different scenario, the different types of child maltreatment, and how easy it is to become a victim of stalking. All of these key concepts are problems that can harm or even kill a victim without the proper solution. In order to combat these types of violence, society must learn the reasoning behind why it happens to prevent it from happening.

The different types of family violence are individually unique because of race and culture. For example, Korean culture deems that the male is never wrong, even when he hits his spouse. The spouse does not report him and seek help because she is afraid that her family and friends will reject her and she will lose her resources to survive if her spouse goes to jail (Hines, Malley-Morrison, & Dutton, 2013). In comparison to a Caucasian family, she has a higher rate of asking the police for help and receive resources from services and family. Every family experiences family violence differently and cannot be generalized into a single category. It is unfortunate that many people assume that family violence is simple. Some of the factors that must be considered are ethnicity, race, culture, whether the person suffered from a violent household as a child, and many other factors. Some of the concepts learned this semester that can be applied to our efforts in decreasing violence in families is to stop children from becoming victims of family violence. By aiding children who are victims of family violence, they can grow up without experiencing a violent household and decrease the risk factor of them the perpetrator of family violence, stopping it at the root of the problem.

Child maltreatment can fall into three categories including sexual, psychological, or physical abuse. Child sexual maltreatment happens when an adult inappropriately fondles or engages them in a type of sexual activity (Hines et al., 2013). The conditions for child sexual maltreatment contain traces of physical evidence of sexual activity such as damages to the vagina, anus, or mouth. Child psychological maltreatment happens when an adult isolates, verbally abuses, and deny emotional reaction towards a child (Hines et al., 2013). Some of the effects of a psychologically abused child include distractibility, lack impulsive control, negative feelings, low self-esteem, exhibiting non-compliant and angry behavior, and struggling to learn and solve problems. Child physical maltreatment happens when an adult physically beats a child and it includes punching, kicking, throwing, or even pushing (Hines et al., 2013). This can result in injuries such as lacerations, abrasions, burns, bites, bruises, and fractures. Child sexual, psychological and physical abuse can have negative effects, especially if the child is still growing. This is because their brain is not fully developed and becoming victims can damage them and result in a not fully developed brain (Van der Kolk, McFarlane, Weisaeth, 2007). Some of the concepts learned throughout the semester that can be applied to our efforts in decreasing the three types of child maltreatment are informal systems. For example, Precious from Push suffered from all three types of child maltreatment and had a terrible life. However, informal systems such as her teacher Blue Rain helped her find a home when she became homeless. Furthermore, she never gave up on teaching Precious how to read and write. In addition, Precious had Rita, a classmate, who treated her as a human being and as a friend. Precious’ growth is an example of how informal systems such as her teacher and friends help safeguard maltreated adolescents from abusive families.

Stalking has many negative effects to victims, including Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and other mental illnesses. Stalking is when an individual continuously cause unwelcomed invasions and interaction (McKeon, McEwan, & Luebbers, 2015). Stalking is becoming very prominent due to the advancement of technology. Perpetrators now have the ability to cyber stalk an individual by using the Internet and other social media websites (McKeon, McEwan, & Luebbers, 2015). This is extremely dangerous because the individual would not even know that he or she is being stalked. Some concepts learned this semester that can be applied to our efforts to decrease violence such as stalking by also using informal systems. The informal systems include neighborhood watches, getting to know your neighbors and working together with the community (Hines et al., 2013). The stalking victim cannot see everywhere at once, but their neighbors can keep an eye out and warn them if they see the stalker. Furthermore, the community may have experienced a stalker situation and may know how to deal with the scenario. Reaching out to neighbors and the community is a great informal system that can prevent violence such as stalking.

Throughout the semester, there are many important key points that I have learned. They include why each family violence scenario is different and that we should not overgeneralize. Each individual scenario has a specific reasoning to why it happens and how to solve it. Additionally, I have learned that maltreated children have a greater risk factor in underdeveloped brain or even develop personality problems, which will affect how they grow up. This can result in a cycle of violence where the victim was raised in a violent household and when they grow up foster the same violent household with their family. Finally, I learned that anyone can be a victim of stalking, especially on college campuses. Furthermore, it is amazing how easy it is to become a victim of cyber stalking due to everyone posting their entire lives on social media. I have learned invaluable knowledge throughout this semester that helped me understand why family and community violence happens, and how we as a society can work together putting an end to it.