PHYSICAL AND EMOTIONAL ABUSE AMONG CHILDREN.

Child abuse is a term used for maltreatment and neglect of children. Child Abuse may be formally described as all forms of physical and/or emotional ill-treatment, sexual abuse, neglect or negligent treatment or commercial or other exploitation, resulting in actual or potential harm to the child’s health, survival, development or dignity in the context of a relationship of responsibility, trust or power (Krug, et.al, 2002) The present study aims at assessing the impact of socioeconomic status and gender on physical and emotional abuse among children of Allahabad city. A total sample of 300 children comprising of 100 children each (50 boys and 50 girls) from lower, middle and upper socio economic groups were selected using stratified random sampling technique for the study. Socio Economic Status scale by Kuppuswamy (1962) revised by Kumar and Tiwari (2014) was used to ascertain the socio economic status of the selected respondents. To assess the physical and emotional abuse a self made questionnaire was administered on the selected children in the age group of 7-12 years. The study revealed a highly significant gender variation in emotional abuse among respondents belonging to lower, middle as well as upper socio economic groups, wherein girls were subjected to higher level of emotional abuse in case of all the three socio economic groups. In case of physical abuse a non-significant difference among boys and girls belonging to lower as well as middle socio economic group was found which determined that physical abuse was not influenced by the gender of the child both in lower as well as middle socio economic groups but the mean values indicate that girls experienced slightly more physical abuse in comparison to their male counterparts.