What Is Child Exploitation and How Does It Impact a Child Mentally?

Child exploitation has been defined as “the act of using a minor child for profit, labor, sexual gratification, or some other personal or financial advantage.”1 There are many forms of child exploitation, including child labor, domestic servitude, forced child marriage, sexual exploitation and using children in war.

Each of these forms of exploitation causes trauma and other challenges in the lives of children, including the following:

Difficulties in social situations
– Children who are exploited often experience attachment disorders that impact their future relationships and friendships.

Poor emotional health
– Children who experience trauma have a greater risk of depression and anxiety that lasts into adulthood. Childhood trauma also negatively impacts suicide rates in adults.

PTSD
– Posttraumatic stress often causes irritability, anger, mood swings and more. According to Children’s Bureau, “PTSD in children can lead to depression, suicidal behavior, substance use, and oppositional or defiant behaviors well into adulthood, which can affect their ability to succeed in school, and create and nurture important relationships.”2

Passing along trauma
– Not all people pass on abuse they experienced in childhood, but they are more likely to.3

Lack of hope
– Exploited children have a difficult time seeing a better future for themselves. This is especially true in children who grow up in extreme poverty. They are often promised a better future, an education and meals in exchange for work. Instead, they are exploited and subjected to horrible working conditions with little to no pay. It’s hard for these children to see a way out of that situation and hope for a better future.


Click here, to read more about this article.

Click here, to read more blogs in Gospel for Asia.Com

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What Is the Poverty Cycle?

Image
The question, “What is the poverty cycle, or cycle of poverty?” is one that must be answered to address and end poverty across the globe. Put simply, the term refers to the trend where the vicious effects of poverty and deprivation pass from one generation to the next, with no seeming way out. [1] Someone born into poverty has fewer opportunities than their wealthier peers. They must focus on survival above all, leaving little room for anything else. One illness can wipe out a family’s savings, but the unclean water sources and lack of protection available to them invite sickness. Walking to retrieve water can be time-consuming yet must be a daily priority, and many children must work alongside their parents for the family to afford food. Thus, school is often a far-off dream. Having had few opportunities to acquire skills, the kids grow up to repeat the cycle of poverty with their own children. This story was all too familiar for Nalah. His father worked in the tea fields, trying to e...
Read more

Where Can I Learn How to Break the Cycle of Poverty?

Image
There are many methods for how to break the cycle of poverty which one can learn about. From education assistance to income-generating gifts like sewing machines or farm animals, there is hope for families who have been poor for generations. GFA World works in communities in all these ways through sponsorships and gift distributions, and one by one, we see lives changed as families escape poverty. Raina’s life had been dominated by poverty. She was part of a highly underprivileged people group that faced discrimination and deprivation from others in the region. Despite that, Raina had been able to attend school up until tenth grade, but she discontinued her education when it became too much for her parents to afford. Rather than receiving her certificates of completion, she had to join her parents in the field to earn money to put food on the table. After she married Ander, Raina continued to work in the fields to supplement his income with her own. In search of better job opportunitie...
Read more

Generational Poverty: A Cycle Not Worth Repeating

Image
The cycle of generational poverty can seem impossible to break. Children inherit what their parents teach and show them. a joint report from Ascend: The Aspen Institute and Bernard van Leer Foundation affirms this. “What young children learn from the adults who raise and care for them lays the foundation for future social, emotional, language, and cognitive growth,” the report says. 1 Children raised in a generational poverty mindset often lack the tools they need to succeed or achieve a better life than that of their parents. As adults, these individuals often then raise their children in poverty similar to that of their own childhoods, and the cycle perpetuates. It’s a cycle not worth repeating, yet it does time and time again. For the 736 million people worldwide living below the poverty line, earning $1.90 a day or less, the focus is frequently on mere survival. 2 Children are disproportionately affected by extreme poverty, says UNICEF, as “children who grow up impoverished often...
Read more