Child Abuse: An Academic Overview

Abstract

Child abuse, as the term is commonly used in western societies, was discovered, or more properly rediscovered, in the post-war period. The process of rediscovery can usefully be viewed within a sociological framework for analysing the social construction of social problems. This emphasises the complex processes by which behaviours or social conditions, which may have been long experienced as private pains or sorrows, become defined as public ills. It is encapsulated in Manning’s observation that social problems ‘are not just what people think they are but rather what powerful and influential people think they are’ (1985, p.5).