Various societies and cultural contexts have abused children throughout history. The incidences of abuses have existed in family systems, although numerous societies regard this practice as a taboo. Along the U.S.-Mexico border, for instance, situations have emerged where parents send their children to cross the border without accompanying them. Other cases have emerged where parents decide to accompany their kids to cross the border illegally while subjecting the kids to dangers and rigors that emerge during the journey. When they arrive at the border, the US government separates the children from their parents, where their parents are prosecuted (Bochenek, 2019). The paper identifies the greatest form of child abuse among parents sending their kids cross-border along, parents accompanying the kids, or the US government separating parents from their children.
When parents send their children to cross the border along, the act is a form of child abuse, particularly because it is an act of neglect. However, most of the parents do so to ensure their children can run away from the dangers they face at home with outweigh the dangers they encounter at home, including violence, dead-end poverty, or children being forced to join gangs. When it comes to parents accompanying their children to cross the border illegally, the act also serves as a form of abuse, particularly because they expose the kids to different dangers and rigors that emerge along the way. However, the parents do not have other choices, especially because they desire to distance themselves and their children from incidences of kidnapping, rape, sexual abuse, robbery, and other actual threat they face at home. From this perspective, the parents sending their children while others accompany their kids across the border illegally do not amount to significant acts of child abuse threats (Bochenek, 2019). The reason for this is that they seek to ensure that their children avoid the threats at home, which are graver compared to the ones they would experience at the border.
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Nevertheless, the act of the US government in separating parents from their children for persecution would serve as the greatest act of child abuse. Separating children from their parents is an unpardonable atrocity since the kids are removed from the care of their uncles, aunts, grandparents, and adult siblings. The act has the potential of resulting in long-term implications of toxic stress, including PTSD, anxiety, and depression. For the young kids, the trauma that emanates from separation can have significant repercussions on their attachment (Lind, 2018). Here, it becomes crucial to realize that separating children from their parents usually adds to the trauma they experienced in their home country, including violence and abuse before their flight, while others are sexually assaulted on their way to the border. As such, the children who reach the border are already traumatized while separating them from their parents makes the situation worse (Coyle, 2020). Such acts result in toxic stress with the children lacking trusted and loving caregivers to soothe and calm them when confronted by stressful effects, thus harming their health and wellbeing significantly.
In conclusion, based on the different scenarios related to child abuse on the border, the separation of parents from their children is the greatest type of child abuse. The practice results in severe long-term implications on the lives of the children, especially since they lack people to care for them while at the same time living in deplorable conditions. In this sense, the US government should consider revising its border immigration policy to consider the welfare of the children, especially young children. They should be allowed to live with their parents, especially if their parents do not have criminal records to ensure the kids grow up in caring and nurturing relationships, allowing them to cope with the trauma they experienced in their home country.
References
Bochenek, M. G. (2019). US: Family separation harming children, families. https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/07/11/us-family-separation-harming-children-families
Coyle, S. (2020). Children and families forum: The impact of immigrant family separation. Social Work Today, 18 (5), 8.
Lind, D. (2018). The Trump administration’s separation of families at the border, explained. https://www.vox.com/2018/6/11/17443198/children-immigrant-families-separated-parents
