Your editorial last Sunday ("Child abuse issue must be tackled," Aug. 14, page 8) was both timely and well intentioned, but I don't think the solutions it proposed will be very effective. Increasing the pool of licensed nannies, for example, is unlikely to help much because, as noted in the editorial, the vast majority of abuse is committed by family members.
The other main strategy proposed was to educate the public on "How to identify [abusive] parents and offer them help before tragedies occur." While this is a good idea, it still only addresses the symptom rather than the disease itself.
The underlying causes of abuse are many, and complex. But science has learned much in recent decades that can help explain how the cycle of violence is perpetuated through generations.
One such mechanism is the release of hormones called "cortisols" in the brain at times of stress -- such as when a child is being abused. A loose description of the cortisols' function might be: to "burn in" a mental association very rapidly, so that the stressor (say, a predator) will be avoided in the future. But when the stressor is one's own parent, it cannot be avoided. Worse still, repeated over-release of cortisols can literally scar a child's brain tissue.
Another branch of science that illuminates child abuse is evolutionary psychology, which studies, among other things, that gray area between "nature and nurture" in the causes of human behavior (The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker is an excellent introduction to this topic.) Essentially, it has been demonstrated that much more of our behavior is rooted in our genes than was previously thought. The most obvious insight from this is that our brains are adapted for a completely different environment than we inhabit today: the Pleistocene wilderness.
Thus, the patterns and processes of childhood development, which are also genetically encoded, are adapted to that same environment.
In the Pleistocene era, food was mostly plentiful. Women, children and the elderly all foraged close to home, while men hunted farther afield. Due in part to a non-agrarian diet and a more active lifestyle, the onset of puberty was much later, especially in females. Above all, there was no such thing as a "career." Child care was the universal pursuit of all humans.
Nowadays we have dual priorities, work and family, which often conflict with each other. In the Pleistocene, everything one needed to know about parenting could easily be learned before adolescence. But modern humans reach child-bearing age long before most even have a clue about what career they want. And sadly, many start families before they have established the financial resources and, more importantly, the social skills and emotional stability needed for parenting.
Another contributing factor is that our "factory" school system socializes children for an artificial same-age environment, which only makes it more difficult to adapt to the real world, where we deal with people of all ages. And certainly, the use of corporal punishment, both at home and in schools, only exacerbates the problem of abuse.
In short, one of the main causes of child abuse is simply that people are having kids before they're truly ready for the task, which is far more complicated and challenging today than it was in the Pleistocene world for which our brains are genetically optimized. And one obvious culprit here is the social pressure placed on young adults to marry and produce children.
It takes time to become a mature, "integrated" adult, free of emotional baggage and dependencies. And too often children are conceived with the aim of "filling the emptiness" caused by such issues. Such parents inevitably project their own faults and fears onto their children, so any childish behavior that triggers those fears can cause a parent to lash out. For example, a mother who smacks her child in the grocery store is most likely acting out of embarrassment rather than protecting the child or others from any realistic risk.
It was heartening to see a report in the next day's Taipei Times that the average age at first childbirth for Taiwanese women has now risen to 27.4 years, up one and a half years in the last decade ("Women waiting longer to begin having children," Aug. 15, page 2). However, this is most likely an indication of increasing affluence, and doesn't necessarily correlate with increased emotional stability and financial security -- both of which do correlate strongly with child abuse, as noted in your editorial.
We need a rearrangement of the structure of society to more realistically accommodate our Pleistocene brains. One that encourages us to become "complete" individuals before having children instead of by having children. This will take more than just a licensing policy and an educational program. It will require us all, both individually and as a society, to question our most fundamental beliefs about who we are, what we value, and how we live our lives.
John Diedrichs
Taipei
Note: Due to space limitations, the following references could not be included in the print edition of this letter:
The Body Never Lies: The Lingering Effects of Cruel Parenting by Alice Miller -- describes physiological and psychological effects of abuse.
The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature by Geoffery Miller -- an interesting take on human development in the Pleistocene era.
The Origins of Peace and Violence [website] -- presents research showing a correlation between violence, sexual repression, and corporal punishment.
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