Intensification of the phenomenon of violence in the family environment of teenagers.

Abstract

Childhood and adolescence are the periods of life when the experience of violence accumulates. As socially weaker individuals, children and teenagers are exposed to violence. The factors that increase the risk of child maltreatment include, above all, social and cultural factors and the stress that family suffer from. The literature on this subject distinguishes four categories of child maltreatment, namely: emotional, physical, negligence and sexual abuse. The survey involved 250 representatives of high school teenagers aged 15-20, including 145 girls and 105 boys. The research method was the survey estimating the Scale of Battered Child Syndrome (for teenagers and adults). The results show that a big group of teenagers admitted to having experienced at least one of four kinds of domestic violence. The group is not uniform, however, and the socio-cultural factors that affect the kind and intensification of the phenomenon of violence have been revealed. The most frequent reasons for using violence are: low level of education, unemployment of parents and material status connected with this fact, low frequency of attendance to religious services, alcohol abuse, and place of living. On account of the intensification of the phenomenon of violence in the domestic environment and both direct and distant consequences of the phenomenon in the form of mental and physical disorders of individuals as well as the dangers for the proper development of the society that result from it, there is a need to continue doing research on this phenomenon.