Table of Contents (5) - Flipbook - Page 16
Like all effective efforts to reframe an issue, the story involves
multiple organizations. Research from Prevent Child Abuse America
(PCA America) found that children were at the forefront of public
concern when it came to addressing social issues, so it
commissioned FrameWorks to work together on a series of research
projects to find out if public thinking about abuse and neglect might
be limiting progress. This work shed light on some of the deeper
assumptions shaping Americans’ thinking about child development.
The findings highlighted the need for major efforts to shift
understandings and attitudes. People’s mental picture of child abuse
was that of a rare, sensational crime, attributed to exceptionally “bad
parents” or monstrous perpetrators. People also held outdated,
inaccurate models of young children’s emotions and behaviors. The
widely shared, harmful assumption that babies and toddlers had
manipulative “intentions” or “agendas” normalized punitive or
neglectful responses to child behavior—even for children as young
as one year.
There was little reason for people to think that these early
experiences would have any lasting effect, as the general
understanding was that if children didn’t remember an experience, it
didn’t “matter”—a belief at odds with the science. People also shared
a widespread idea that children’s minds were like passive containers
that were “filled” by adults, mostly after children began talking.
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