As a nation we are guilty of practicing moral hypocrisy when it concerns our children. I don't think I've ever seen more people who are aware that something fundamental has come lose in this country. Our children are dying like flies. I am sick and tired of begging people not to hurt children. We are mistaken if we believe that abuse of children is limited to those who live in poverty.
Abuse pervades all social classes and all cultures.
Also at all levels of society are parents who themselves were abused as children and now have become abusers. Consideration of abuse should logically begin with the mother-infant relationship and the beginning of life. But underneath our common beliefs about mothers lie two myths that shape our perception and our policy and impede our search for new and more effective solutions to the escalating problem of child abuse. The two myths Birns discusses are The Nuclear Family and Bonding and Attachment . With the advent of scientific knowledge about fetal development, we know now that inadequate nutrition, smoking, disease, and toxic substances such as drugs and alcohol seriously harm a fetus.