False Resporting

VOCAL, and groups like it, maintain that it is too easy for false accusations about child abuse to lead to the removal of children from their parents and their homes. False reports of child abuse can come from children seeking attention or attempting to avoid reasonable forms of discipline. False reports of child abuse also may result from animosity between parents, such as when parents are in the midst of divorce and custody battles over their children. The evidence of child abuse is sometimes nothing more than a young child's testimony. Proponents of child abuse law reform maintain that police and other officials can easily manipulate a young child to support allegations of child abuse. The ramifications of a false report of child abuse can be serious: officials may remove children from their homes and place them in foster care or permanent new adoptive homes, emotionally scarring both children and parents.

Discipline and Abuse

Another difficult issue in the arena of child abuse concerns discipline. There are many different views regarding what constitutes discipline and where the line should be drawn between reasonable parental discipline and child abuse. For example, some parents feel that spanking or hitting a child is abusive behavior; other parents rely on spanking, or the threat of a spanking, to teach children to obey and behave. Using physical measures to discipline children is known as corporal punishment. In trying to prevent child abuse, legal and governmental agencies attempt to balance the parents' right to raise their children in the manner they feel is appropriate with the child's right to be safe and unharmed.

Neglect and Abuse

Some forms of child abuse are caused not by a parent's willful abuse, but rather, by a parent's negligence. One common, and oftentimes tragic, form of neglect occurs when a parent accidentally leaves a sleeping baby in a car on a warm day. In the sun, the interior of a car can heat within minutes to more than 100 degrees, temperatures that a baby cannot survive. Whether to charge parents in these situations with child abuse is a divisive issue. Some people maintain that careless parents should be prosecuted; other people believe that a parent who loses a child due to the parent's mistake suffers enough without being prosecuted.