ASSESSMENT OF THE FACTORS RESPONSIBLE FOR CHILD ABUSE AND NEGLECT IN NIGERIA
INTRODUCTION 1.1
BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
It has been the general assumption that children with reasonable physical care would grow into normal happy adulthood. But scientific investigations by psychologists, sociologist and psychiatrists regarding personality development has uncovered the greater importance of growing up and its lasting effects on the total personality of a person. Adult personality has its root in childhood. What we can do as adults are largely determined by the ways in which we were allowed to experience inevitable events of childhood. Thus the aim of this research work is to shed more light on the issue of child abuse and neglect in Kaduna South Local Government of Kaduna State. A child is neglected when he lacks continuous physical and emotional contact with his mother. Children under this category may be due to the loss of a mother or both parents or the separation of both parents, this child may be sent to nursery school or orphanages with many children which makes it difficult for special individual attention to be rendered to each child. Those children are therefore brought up by strangers which could be changed at different times due to the shift of their studies. Child abuse on the other hand can be defined as the portion of harm to children that result from human action or inaction that is prescribed, proximate and preventable. The definition recognizes that such harm is no accident but something perpetrated on children by others, usually intestinally and that the actors inflicting this harm do not enjoy society's approval. It is also pointed out that abuse generally comes from the child's immediate environment and that it is preventable child neglect is a passive form of maltreatment or abuse UNICEF (1986).
1.2 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND