Shouting at children can be as damaging as physical or sexual abuse, study says
theguardian.com
Parents who shout at their children or call them “stupid” are leaving their offspring at greater risk of self-harm, drug use and ending up in jail, new research claims.
Talking harshly to children should be recognised as a form of abuse because of the huge damage it does, experts say.
The authors of a new study into such behaviour say “adult-to-child perpetration of verbal abuse … is characterised by shouting, yelling, denigrating the child, and verbal threats”.
“These types of adult actions can be as damaging to a child’s development as other currently recognised and forensically established subtypes of mistreatment such as childhood physical and sexual abuse,” the academics say in their paper in the journal Child Abuse & Neglect.
You are viewing a single comment
except that there is no hard line of where something moves into abuse. In the end my comment was that yes these are not equivalent. There is no level of sexual contact that is ok but there is a level of physicality and yelling that is ok as long as it is not type of constant thing. and physicality is way less ok than yelling and only should be used in rare, usually dangerous situations.
Ok, but again, you're arguing against a strawman. Nothing you're saying here is relevant to what I said about you misunderstanding the definitions of physical and verbal/emotional abuse as evidenced by you standing up and knocking down examples that are clearly not abuse
yeah but you are taking a whole conversation and not looking at my initial comment. you just don't get the jist of the whole and where it goes. you concentrate on the last thing said and take no context at all.
This is your initial comment and is explicitly what I'm talking about
So where is the effin straw man in that. The news item that references the study equates sexual, physical, and verbal abuse as equivalent and my comment is woa. They are so not!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
There is no one saying these things aren't fine. They give examples of verbal/emotional abuse in the article and study and they are not this. You are creating a strawman argument no one is saying (grabbing your childs arm when about to touch something hot is fine; yelling at them and telling them to behave when they hit their sibling is fine) and using that as a reason to dismiss the conclusions of this study
My argument is about equivalency. When they make the statement they are equivalent they are saying they are equivalent. My argument is not about abuse vs not abuse. Its about equivalency. There is no level of sexual situations with a child that is not abuse. there is with verbal and physical. Again you just are throwing out context and trying to make it something its not.
So your beef is with this:
So you're concluding that verbal/emotional abuse in no case can be as damaging to a child's development as physical or sexual abuse?
Not as much as they can't be and should not be even put into the same class as actions. There is a level of vocality that is ok, there is a level of physicality that is ok, there is never a level of sexuality that is ok when talking adult to child interactions. I understand they are talking in the extreme in all cases but making these out to be the same, even if limiting to the extreme, is not ok.
This isn't about the moral weight of one type of abuse over another, it's only about the psychological impact of abuse on people who were abused as children. There is literally no one saying anything like "sexual abuse is the same as verbal abuse." That is the strawman argument you created
except that when phrased that way it will in future. Your arguing in the context of this one little study and I am arguing from a moral position. I have seen it before and will see it again. This type of phrasing. Especially in the internet age of read headlines and not the details. Results in the strawman you speak of becoming reality. Equivalencies like this should never be made.
What are you even talking about... we're literally talking about this study, you're trying to critique it by saying verbal abuse isn't as bad as physical or sexual abuse, meanwhile the study authors are measuring life outcomes and finding similarities between all of them. You started off trying to critique this as invalid science because it's social science and now you're here, saying your argument is based on morality. It's ok to just say "I didn't understand the study," or "I didn't read the study." You don't have to continue making stuff up based on your "gut."
Man this is all over but lets see. I did not start off with social science critique. That came up in conversation. When a study or article is published into the public and on the internet it becomes more than an isolated thing. My comment chain started. From the begining. In talking about this is bad due to making equivalencies. Something that is a general comment and obviously had not been limited in scope the the study and nothing beyond. The article does not show the study and I don't care to read it or look into it further because again. The title. The equivalency suggested in it and the phrases used in the article. Should never be used.