Maltreatment of Children.—Maltreatment of children belongs to the second group of punishable offences against children. It is rare for the offender to maltreat the child of a stranger; the offence is usually committed against a child for whose care the offender is responsible. The principal kinds of maltreatment of children are—(a) corporal chastisement; (b) improper behaviour towards children (in this connection the question arises whether parents can commit an offence against the honour of their own children); (c) working children to excess, either in the form of overwork at school, excessive domestic work, overwork at wage-earning, forcing children to beg, and the like.
Begging is more lucrative in proportion to the degree to which the child’s appearance is calculated to arouse compassion—the poorer, the more miserable, the more delicate it looks. In actual fact, a child is often ill-used simply in order to give it an aspect which will arouse more sympathy. Frequently a minimum amount of money is fixed, which, under fear of punishment—usually gross physical ill-treatment—the child has to bring home as a result of its day’s begging. In large towns children are hired out to professional beggars; in such towns as Paris and London there is actually a regular market for such children. The child employed for purposes of begging suffers many moral disadvantages; it becomes crafty and obstinate, acquires a dislike for work and a love of enjoyment, &c. The general public, which squanders money freely in almsgiving to child beggars, gives without thought of the consequences. It is less trouble to drop a few coppers into the outstretched hand of a mendicant than to undertake a thorough investigation of the case, and, if necessary, to remove the child from the corrupting influences of its present environment, and to see that it will be properly cared for in future. Mendicancy frequently leads to criminal courses, more especially to offences against property, and in the case of girls to offences against sexual morality.
The immediate causes of the maltreatment of children are the following: (a) Illness or delicacy of the child; (b) illness or nervousness in the parents; (c) interested motives; (d) a rough disposition and incapacity for education on the part of the child; (e) improper views concerning education; (f) alcoholism; (g) exaggerated religious ideas; (h) sexual causes; (i) unhappy conditions of conjugal life.
(a) Parents are much more likely to ill-treat sickly or weakly children than healthy ones, for the former much more readily prove a burden than the latter. Feeble-mindedness, moreover, is difficult to recognise, and is often regarded by the parents as obstinacy or naughtiness. It is a painful fact that in many cases the parents are themselves responsible for the defective intellectual equipment of their child, and yet it is on account of this very defect that they ill-use the child.
(b) Delicate and nervous parents are much more likely than healthy ones to ill-treat their children. In the case of parents who are mentally unsound, the lust of cruelty may be a direct outcome of their mental state.
(c) In many cases children’s lives are insured for a considerable sum, and in this case the death of the child may be desired by the parents for the sake of the insurance money. This happened very often in the manufacturing towns of England, until the matter became the subject of special legislation. Sometimes parents ill-treat children in the hope of inheriting money belonging to these latter.
(e) The view is very general that the corporal punishment of children plays an essential part in the process of education. The child becomes to some extent accustomed to such punishment, whereby the punishment ceases to be effective; as a result of this, yet more severe punishment is inflicted.
(f) Alcoholism is a cause, both direct and indirect, of the maltreatment of children. The father of a family who, in a state of intoxication, will maltreat his family, and who, when sober again, is bitterly ashamed of himself, is a familiar figure.
(g) Maltreatment of children (especially by clergymen, monks, and nuns) often depends on the belief that it is necessary to mortify the flesh in order to save the soul. There is also some connection between exaggerated piety and sexual perversion.
(h) A quite considerable proportion of cases in which children are maltreated are dependent upon sexual motives. But the maltreatment of a child may give rise to sexual excitement, not only in the active agent, but also in the passive. Cases of this nature occur chiefly in the upper classes.