The Issue

Child neglect is a form of child maltreatment. Child neglect is a deficit in meeting a child’s basic needs. Furthermore, child neglect is the failure to provide basic physical health care, supervision, nutrition, emotional nurturing, education or safe housing. Society generally believes there are necessary behaviors a caregiver must provide a child in order for the child to develop (physically, socially, and emotionally). Child neglect depends on how a child and society perceives the parents’ behavior; it is not how the parent believes they are behaving towards their child.

Parental failure to provide when options are available is different from failure to provide when options are not available. Poverty is often an issue and leads parents to not being able to provide. The circumstances and intentionality must be examined before defining behavior as neglectful. Child neglect is the most frequent form of abuse of children, with children that are born to young mothers at a substantial risk for neglect. In 2008, the U.S. state and local child protective services received 3.3 million reports of children being abused or neglected. Seventy-one percent of the children were classified as victims of child neglect (“Child Abuse & Neglect”). Maltreated children/youth were about five times more likely to have a first emergency department presentation for suicide related behavior compared to their peers, in both boys and girls. Children/youth permanently removed from their parental home because of substantiated child maltreatment are at an increased risk of a first presentation to the emergency department for suicide related behavior.

The causes of child neglect are complex and can be attributed to three different levels; an intrapersonal, an inter-personal/family and a social/ecological level. Although the causes of neglect are varied, studies suggest that, amongst other things, parental mental health problems, substance use, domestic violence, unemployment, and poverty are factors which increase the likelihood of neglect. Children that result from unintended pregnancies are more likely to suffer from abuse and neglect, they are also more likely to live in poverty. Neglectful families often experience a variety or a combination of adverse factors.

Neglect is notoriously difficult to define as there are no clear, cross-cultural standards for desirable or minimally adequate child rearing practices. Neglect is the least studied and most poorly described form of child maltreatment. This is due to many factors including the difficulty in defining and documenting neglect of children, internationally. Neglect is the most common form, and also the fastest growing category, of maltreatment in Malaysia.

Malaysians are generally not aware of negligence as a type of child abuse, how to identify symptoms and how to respond. This often triggers the reaction of turning a 'blind eye'.

In Malaysia, Child abuse (in any form) is widely regarded as a private family issue, which should not to be interfered with. Besides that child neglect issues are not often reported and public awareness activities only promote physical abuse, but nothing about child neglect. As for the victims, they do not know how, who, where to seek help from.

Neglect is the most common form of child abuse in Malaysia, followed by physical abuse and sexual abuse. Failure to provide care and supervision has become the most frequent cause of death among children. What is most disturbing is that many child abusers are parents, immediate family members, relatives or foster parents of the victims themselves.