Conceptions of physical child abuse in China: Listening to children and their parents on parental child battering in Beijing.

摘要

This exploratory study attempts to fill in a void in the understanding and definition of child abuse in the socio-cultural context of China, which is based on the experiences of the one-child families in urban Beijing. Using the qualitative methods, the author conducted two rounds of in-depth interviews with 20 parent-child pairs and three focus group discussions with another 20 children in 2004 and 2005. The study explores, from a socio-cultural perspective, how Chinese children and their parents understand physical child abuse by focusing on parental child battering, and tries to make sense of the similarities and differences in the views of children and their parents.;This study uses an analytical framework of parent-child relationship in the context of Chinese culture, starting with the analysis of affection and power relations between parents and child, and tries to understand the views of children and parents on child abuse. Findings show that the informants' understanding of child abuse differs markedly from the definitions of child abuse in Europe and America. Informants tend to regard as child abuse only those violent acts which have obviously malicious intentions, are unreasonable, occur very frequently and cause serious harm on the child either physically or/and psychologically. They generally do not regard child battering by "genetic parents" as child abuse. This manifests their "affectional construction" of child abuse and the Chinese cultural characteristics of "family-centeredness" and "relation-orientation". The finding that children's views are more similar than different from their parents reflects both a strong cultural identification and an internalization of parents' values by their children. On the other hand, the different views of children from their parents manifest an increase in the children's awareness of their rights and the influence of globalization.;The understanding and definition of child abuse is the basis for intervention in the child abuse problem. Therefore, it affects the protection of children's rights. Although the western concept of "child abuse" may not be completely relevant to China, its implications on protecting children should not be ignored, and violations of children's rights to a violence-free life in the family should be taken seriously.