There are many stressors that young children experience during their childhood. As far as on a personal note, the stressor I would like to speak on is violence and abuse. I was granted temporary custody of my three month old cousin about a year and a half ago, due to him being exposed to a violent environment as well as abuse. My little cousin's mother was very young herself and was in an abusive relationship and ended up pregnant at eighteen, right after she graduated from high school. She was in denial for months and did not seek prenatal care for the first five months. After the baby was born, my cousin continued to be abused by the baby's father/boyfriend but would not leave him. My cousin took the baby to the dr. for his 3 month checkup and the dr. called CPS on my cousin because the baby had cigarette burns on his legs and one on the bottom of his foot. Supposedly these burns were caused by the boyfriend/father. The state immediately removed the baby from my cousin's home. They were going to put him in foster care. My cousin gave the state my phone number and they called me and said if I wanted him, I had to come get him right then or they were handing him over. I had no time to think or consider how my life would be with an infant, I had to make an immediate decision. He was "my baby" for three months. My cousin had to move away from the boyfriend and attend parenting classes to get her son back. Charges were pressed against the boyfriend and he spent some time in jail. Baby Jordan is now 2 years old and back with his mother and I am thankful that I was able to make a positive impact on his little life!
Poverty, Hunger, War, and Disease in Africa
Children in sub-Saharan Africa are more likely to be ill, less likely to be in school and far more likely to die before the age of five than children in any other region in Africa. African children are trapped in a downward spiral of war, disease, and deepening poverty.(Fleshman, 2002).Chronic malnutrition remains widespread in Africa, and the target of a 50 per cent reduction of malnutrition in children under five is far out of reach. Fully one in three Africans is malnourished and, despite improvements in some countries, the absolute number of hungry children rose during the decade. Statistics on low birth weight reveal that an estimated one in eight African babies -- some 3.1 million infants -- is born underweight each year. (Fleshman, 2002).
African children were beset by two other, largely unanticipated calamities during the 1990s: AIDS and war. Of the 580,000 people under age 15 who died of AIDS in 2001, a staggering 500,000 -- nearly nine out of 10 -- were African. Of the 2.7 million HIV-positive people under age 15 around the world in 2001, 2.4 million were in Africa. Tuberculosis infection rates, closely associated with HIV/AIDS, have also soared, from an African incidence rate of 16 per 100,000 in 1993 to 52 per 100,000 at the end of 1999. (Fleshman, 2002).
The impact of the pandemic on children has been catastrophic, as those most important to the young -- parents, teachers, doctors, peers and siblings -- fall ill and die, causing close-knit families not talking about the disease itself, but its impact through the loss of health workers and the implications for the delivery of health and other essential services. For many children the loss of parents means a plunge into absolute poverty, the end of formal education and diminished prospects for the future as economies shrink and the hard-won development gains of decades are rolled back. (Fleshman, 2002).
War too has wiped out advances for children in many African countries. With peace would come an end to the economic and social dislocation of war, reduced military budgets and greater resources to invest in children. Instead, he continued, "the world was plunged into a decade of ethnic conflict and civil wars that was characterized by deliberate violence against children on a vast scale. Perhaps more children have suffered from armed conflicts and violence since the summit than at any comparable period in history."(Fleshman, 2002).
References
Fleshman, Michael. 2002. A troubled decade for Africa's children. Africa Recovery, Volume 16, pg. 6
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