Most instances or forms of violence against Filipino children are attributed to poverty. The increasing reported cases of violence against children are the social manifestations of a long history of poverty, characterized by a chronic or cyclical condition of deprivation of basic services that include basic education, health and nutrition services, livelihood or employment opportunities, durable housing and clothing. Poverty has affected several generations of a lot of Filipino families that has resulted in inadequate parental capabilities, strained family relationship and corrupted values.

Violence Against Children: The Philippine Experience

In Congress a few months ago, a bill was being discussed in one House committee, something about penalizing corporal punishment on children. I didn’t quite follow the deliberations or how it had progressed. I just remember being told that we have to be cautious in supporting the bill in its present form, being a penal law, because it may become another poor man’s crime (the same way theft or vagrancy are).

Rampant forms of child abuse can never be eliminated unless the socio-economic conditions of families are addressed. The same way you can never address the problem of petty theft on the streets or the vagrancy of beggars unless you address the socio-economic issue of poverty in urban areas, we can never effectively prevent the abuse and exploitation of children in the Philippines unless we address the root causes of such exploitation. It is not merely a question of psychology, morality or the choice of means to discipline one’s children.

Indeed, campaigns to prevent child abuse has little relevance if it stops merely at raising awareness or penalizing wrongdoers or simply forcing government to implement child protection laws. Child abuse rarely exists as a natural phenomenon, or in a vacuum. Mothers and fathers, adults in general, are not biologically nor genetically programmed to hurt children. Many cases of child labor, vagrancy, child prostitution, verbal abuses, are borne out of unfortunate circumstances rooted in economic conditions. Thus, it is imperative that a campaign to end child abuse must be rooted on campaigns to uplift Filipino families from their present socio-economic conditions, and such demands political involvement in trying to change the present political and economic structures of Philippine society.

This is my contribution to the Blog Carnival on Child Abuse Awareness and Prevention.