For teenagers, neglect usually means parental failure to sustain contact or to provide realistic supervision. Neglect is distinct from abusive forms of maltreatment because it is not identified with inappropriate physical contact between a child and a caretaker and on the surface may appear more passive than active. But many neglected children and adolescents seem to be harmed just as severely as victims of more active sorts of abuse. Indifference, forgotten promises, and withdrawal are all inappropriate parental behaviors, damaging to children and teenagers who may feel they are not worth their parents' concern and care. Neglect of this sort may lead its victims to very self-destructive behavior.
Privacy provides a fertile medium in which all three grow.
What is more, privacy works against natural healing forces and makes it more difficult to deliver help as well as to ask for it. Let us be clear in recognizing that traditional kinship and neighborhood relationships exact psychological costs. The sense of obligation, guilt, dependence, and intrusion weighs heavily on many. There is little privacy. As isolation increases, so does the possibility of child maltreatment.