Child Abuse Theory

hat have been developing to understand and explain the origins and causes of child abuse.

Psychological Theories

This theory focuses on the impulsive and psychological traits of the offenders. According to Corby (2000), often the individual abuser may have been abuse in childhood, thus causing abnormalities are responsible for abuse.

i. Attachment Theory

Bowlby (1951) talks about this theory whereby he explains that the separation of a child from the mother in the first five years may lead to psychological and social difficulties in later life. A child feels psychologically secured and physically protected with the bonding and attachment from his mother. In the 80s, this theory was not applied to the issue of child abuse but from the poor

Child abuse is, thus, the outcome of having cultured or experienced dysfunctional childcare practices, or not having learned these practices. For instance, someone may have violent behavior because he or she has learned it from other aggressive role models, thus they will rely on such ways to discipline their own children as punishment. Though this is theory takes into accounts the importance of the development of an adult, it could not explain why although boys and girls are likely to be abused, still men are mostly represented among the offenders. It could not suffer any abuse become abuser (CORBY, 1993; 2000; BROUGHAM, 1997; BROWNE, 1995; DEACON AND GOCKE,

Individual Interactionist Theory

This theory explains that our behavior will depend on the interactions between people. Greater attention is placed on current relationships rather than the parent’s background. Interactionists take into account the child’s and spouse or partner’s part to the issue of abuse. However, people viewed in isolation rather than from wider social influences (Corby, 1993; 2000; Gardner, 1993; Doyle, 1996; Goddard, 1996; Deacon and Gocke, 1999). ii. Family Dysfunction Theory

This theory explains that the family’s interactions may lead to abuse and often abuse occurs in broken relationships. Some reasons why children are confined to violence by a parent is because they are considered as a way of ‘getting at’ the other parent or that he/she may be a ‘scapegoat’, the unacceptable in the family and the cause for all the family’s ills. Kempe and Kempe (1978) suggested that sometimes child sexual abuse may help in keeping the families together; a teenage girl who is being sexually abused by his father who himself is in need of emotional and physical pleasure because such relations have been broken with his wife. However, feminist theorists, Hall and Lloyd (1992), criticized the family dysfunction theory because they lack focus on the power relations within the family. In addition, this theory did not take into account the abuse outside the