The Spectacular Now. All the Bright Places. Matilda. Instant Family. All-American. On My Block. Joker. Harry Potter. Can you find some kind of commonality between the aforementioned movies and TV shows? Can you find what unites some of the most popular fictional characters within them? Sutter Keely, Theodore Finch, Matilda, Lizzy, Juan, Spencer James, Cesar, Arthur Fleck, and Harry Potter. What sets these characters apart and synchronously unites them? Is it their innocence, youth, charm or charisma? No. Is it the adventure-filled movie? No, it’s not.
It’s the gruesome circumstances that each one of them determinately faces. It’s the conflict they encounter.
The elemental personal trauma that each one of these characters brings with them. Sutter Keely is a party animal who drinks to cover up the void of an absent father that left his family behind. Harry Potter’s parents died when he was an infant. When left in the hands of unfamiliar relatives, we were made privy of the rejection, neglect, and unfavorable circumstances and treatment that he is left to endure. How about Matilda? The famous childhood novel and movie involves a young girl at the mercy of her abusive parents and an unforgiving headmistress, Mrs. Trunchbull. Theodore Finch arises from a dysfunctional family, even having an abusive father who left him in his youth. He battles bipolar depression and struggles with suicide as he tries to combat the scars of his past trauma and abuse. Spencer James confronts his reality of literally having to grow up fighting for his life, being raised in a gang-saturated neighborhood and without a father.
Each and every single one of these characters faces some kind of childhood abuse that presents itself with pressing trauma and lifelong effects that appear as if they are inescapable.
Deviant behavior is webbed within these plots and characters, presenting itself in various ways. For these characters, it is through the form of some kind of family dysfunction, trauma, or child abuse. Child abuse finds its niche within deviant behavior for many reasons. This study defines deviance, describes child abuse and illustrates the relationship between child abuse and deviant behavior.
Deviance refers to norm violations that typically result in disapproval and can result in consequences when presented in a certain community. Deviance can either be formal (criminal), or informal (non-criminal). Formal deviance is any undesirable behavior that is reinforced by the law. These are also known as crimes. Examples of this include theft, robbery, assault, rape, murder. Informal deviance is behavior that violates social norms and is reinforced by the community, but not the law. An example of this would be an extreme body modification, such as large piercings, or tattoos that entirely cover the face. The law doesn’t give any negative consequences for informal deviance, but generally, the community and/or society at large certainly disapproves of it.
There are many different theories that examine deviance, its causes, and it’s reinforcing factors. One of these theories is called strain theory. Strain theory asks, “Why do people break the rules?” This theory assumes that deviance is an abnormal characteristic of the social structure, that it is caused by a disconnect between the goals of society and the means to achieve them, and that the working and lower classes cannot achieve desired goals by typical means. Therefore, they seek alternate methods of achieving their desired goals. Another theory, called conflict theory, proposes that competition and conflicts over scarce resources result in expected deviant behavior in order to meet the goals of society when people are unable to do so with prescribed means.
Both theories can be used to explain why an unemployed father would turn to selling drugs in order to provide for his two young children.
Differential association theory argues that people learn to be deviant through the people they associate themselves with. This is especially exemplified within subcultures which believe deviance has value. This theory proposes reasoning as to why deviance characterizes more populations than others. For example, where gangs are integrated into a community and neighborhood crime is common, youth may be more likely to turn to deviant-like behaviors to fit in with their community.
Deterrence theory assumes that deviance is a choice based on weighing the cost and benefits of an action. They analyze what conditions deviance is more expected in than conformity. According to deterrence theory, the cause of deviance is that the apparent benefits outweigh the costs, and that this can explain deviance among any group, from wealthy school-ages students, when a bully decides to shove a kid into a locker, to a forty year old mother stealing groceries from her local Walmart for her family. In addition, labeling theory states that deviance is relative. Labeling theory proposes that deviance is enforced by those who engage in deviant activities and who accept the label as deviant. It also concludes that people with less power are more likely to be labeled as deviant. Lastly, social learning theory also helps to explain deviance. Social learning theory proposes that people learn and acquire social behavior through observing and imitating others. Each one of these theories assumes something different. Either deviance could be abnormal within the social structure, it could be an expected response to competition, it could be learned, it, a choice, or that it is relative. All of these assumptions prove to be most useful for explaining deviance among different groups of people including the working and lower classes, delinquent gangs/deviant subcultures and neighborhoods, and those with less power.
Next, childhood trauma and abuse are interconnected and pertinent to deviance. Trauma in early childhood is surprisingly common, having nearly half of all children in the United States exposed to some kind of traumatic social or family experience [8].
Nearly half of all children in the United States exposed to some kind of traumatic social or family experience
According to the Oxford Dictionary, trauma can be defined as an “emotional shock following a stressful event or a physical injury, which may be associated with physical shock and sometimes leads to long-term neurosis [18]. Child abuse is a form of deviance and can create life-long adverse effects. It takes three different forms: emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. Emotional abuse can also be called psychological abuse. Emotional abuse hurts or injures a child’s dignity and psychological integrity [9]. More specifically, it includes various pre-meditated actions that are intended to create fear, intimidate, manipulate, control, or degrade the child. Examples of this include threats to abandon a child, threats to harm a child or people the child cares about, berating, disparaging, or scape-goating a child [9]. This can also include confining a child, having them stand naked before others, or coercing them to inflict pain on themselves. Physical abuse includes any deliberate aggression towards a child that results in injury, such as beating a child. This can leave a child with broken bones, bruises, lacerations, or loss of consciousness. Sexual abuse involves coercing a child to engage in unwanted sexual activity. This is done by an adult, someone caring for the child, or someone with power over them [9]. Trauma can manifest itself through deviant behavior such as parental substance abuse, parental separation/divorce, having a mentally ill or suicidal family member, experiencing or seeing violence against ones’ mother, or having an imprisoned household member [8].
Furthermore, child abuse is undoubtedly consequential. The effects that it produces are harmful, debilitating and can be lifelong. A child that witnesses or experiences any kind of traumatic event not only deals with seeing these things occur but also has to cope with the dysfunction brought through a person who engages in the aforementioned deviant behavior [9]. According to a study performed by the University of Manchester, “Children who experience physical, sexual, and emotional abuse or neglect are at least two to three times more likely to attempt suicide later in life…’ [3]. And, “…as those people who experienced abuse as children get older, the risk of suicide attempts increases,” [3]. We see this with Theodore Finch. His father beat him as a child, and the memory is discussed as emotionally scarring between him and his sister. His dad is absent, and he is continually bullied at school. Sometimes, he finds himself just as violent towards his bullies as his dad was to him. He wonders if he inherited the violence from his father. At times, the bleakness of his world swallows him into manic bipolar depression. He constantly toys with the fantasy of suicide to leave this “…messed up world.”
One study concludes that young people who had experienced child sexual abuse were about 10-13 times more likely to commit suicide, while the non-abused control group, had a rate of zero [11].
Forty-three percent had thought about suicide since they were abused, and thirty-two percent had at least attempted suicide [11]. Statistics show that about thirty-seven percent of all female prison inmates were abused as a child. Even more, it is strongly believed that many cases are underreported, as much as twenty-one percent [14]. Many victims of child abuse end up in foster care or group homes. These places serve as a separation from a source trauma, but many times, doesn’t separate them from trauma and abuse. Instead, twenty-five to forty percent of former foster children report having been abused or neglected [17].
There are many reasons as to why child abuse occurs. One reason that abuse occurs and keeps occurring, is because victims often get caught up in the cycle of abuse. The cycle of abuse discourages the victim from reporting the abuse. The cycle of abuse has four stages: the tension building stage, incidence of abuse stage, the reconciliation stage, and the calm stage. In the tension building stage, tensions begin to rise between the two parties. The victim becomes aware of this and tries their best to act accordingly in order to prevent any conflict. In the second stage, the abusive incident occurs. The abuser commits various acts of domestic violence, whether it be physical, psychological or sexual. In the third stage, the abuser reconciles with the victim, convincing them that they will never do it again, they might ignore that it happened, and might appear remorseful. In the fourth and final stage, everything is calm. The abuser tries to show kindness to the victim, showing them that they care for them in every way possible. The relationship is calm and peaceful, and seems to cover the abuse, making the victim believe that the abuser really has changed. This inevitably leads back to stage, one, where the cycle perpetually repeats itself until something changes.
More often than not, children who were abused are likely to become abusers themselves, and/or experience abuse in adulthood as well.
Social learning theory explains that we develop our behaviors and actions through observation and imitation of what we see.
This theory suggests that children who end up adopting violent behavior through childhood and into adulthood did so because they were exposed to that as children.
In addition, poverty and child abuse go hand in hand [16]. When states cut their welfare benefits, child neglect increases. This can be due to a parents’ focus moving towards providing for the family, leaving the emotional needs of a child to go overlooked. If single mothers work, child maltreatment is a lot more likely, whether it be that these mothers have higher stress levels and living without the extra support of a partner that cause them to be neglectful and abusive, or because they often to leave their children in the hands of a low-cost babysitter that is abusive [16]. Putting all of these things together, we can see that child abuse is at the root, a type of deviant behavior which opens doors to much more deviant behavior.
We can also apply strain theory and conflict theory when analyzing child abuse occurrences. When applying strain theory, we may be able to see that abusive parents were not equipped with the proper knowledge on how to raise a child.
The goal of parenting is to “raise fully functional adults who can take care of themselves and make a positive contribution to society [19].
When individuals become parents, they may lack the necessary knowledge to bring this to fruition, raising their children however they see fit. This often results in using some type of abusive behavior. Another scenario involves single parents who might feel a great pressure to control and raise their kids just as well as two-parent households. Many times, this results in parents who resort to harsher methods in order to compensate for the lack of a second parent. Applying conflict theory, we can again see that we have a goal, and a person that is ill-equipped to achieve that goal. Whether knowingly or unknowingly, this person turns to abuse in order to achieve their goal of raising a fully functional adult.
The effects of abuse are numerous. Let’s consider intimate partner violence. Within this relationship, the abuser might engage in deviant behavior such as excessive drinking. This leads to a loss of self-control, resulting in physically, psychologically, or sexually harming their partner, who now becomes a victim. The victim could then engage in more deviant behavior, including seeking out another partner in order to compensate for the trauma they are experiencing with the abuser, or even engaging in the same aforementioned behavior of drinking to conceal their trauma. Now, let’s say that same couple has young children, and the alcoholic parent projects that abuse onto their children. As mentioned before, children who were abused can end up becoming abusive parents in the future. Studies have presented findings where children who were sexually abused are more likely to commit suicide than those who did not [12]. Sexual abuse is also significantly related to the increase in other deviant behaviors, such as drinking, smoking,
In conclusion, deviant behavior manifests itself in many different forms, including violent behavior. Child abuse is interrelated with a plethora of other deviant behaviors that amplify its’ effects and spurs dangerous cycles. Deviant behavior can cause more deviant behavior. It has been proven that sexual abuse especially increases the likelihood of an individual engaging in other deviant behaviors. According to various theories, children who were abused are more likely to become abusers in adulthood. Additionally, they are more likely to become abused as adults, when compared to their non-abused counterparts. The effects of deviant behavior can leave an undeserving individual with detrimental, lifelong scars.
References
[5] https://www.childhelp.org/child-abuse-statistics/
[15] https://chronicleofsocialchange.org/research-related/abused-children-may-become-abusive-adults/5548
[19] https://pro.psychcentral.com/exhausted-woman/2016/08/the-primary-purpose-of-parenting/
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