PushThroughout the story of Push by Sapphire, the author writes about a teenage girl involved in psychological, sexual, and physical abuse. Clareece Precious Jones experiences all three forms of abuse throughout the book at the hands of her parents. Not only is she a victim of mistreatment, but she also suffers social injustice due to her socioeconomic status, race, and ethnicity. Additionally, we can apply Brofenbrenner's model to Precious' story and see how influential her environment is. Precious is a twelve-year-old African-American woman who experiences physical, sexual, and psychological abuse at the hands of her parents and social injustice at the hands of some of Push's characters. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay. Child sexual abuse can be defined as an adult touching a child inappropriately or involving the child in sexual activity (Hines, Malley-Morrison, & Dutton, 2013). There are many negative short- and long-term effects when a child is sexually abused. Short-term outcomes can affect a child's interpersonal, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral health (Hines et al., 2013). Additionally, these children are more likely to become anxious, suicidal, depressed, and aggressive than those who are not. victim of child sexual abuse. We see in Precious' story that she is the victim of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of both her parents. Her mother sexually assaults her while she sleeps by touching her inappropriately while she pleasures herself, while her father sexually assaults her by getting her pregnant a second time when she was twelve (Sapphire, 1996). Since Precious is twelve years old, her brain is not yet fully developed. According to Van der Kolk (2013), a child traumatized by sexual assault at a young age may eventually develop eating disorders, substance abuse, and lack of confidence because their brain is not yet fully developed. As a result, the child will have an underdeveloped brain. There are many risk factors in ecological systems that contribute to child sexual abuse. The macrosystem includes unemployment and low socioeconomic status while the exosystem consists of living in a rural area (Hines et al., 2013). One reason why living in a rural area increases the risk of child sexual abuse is that the family is socially isolated compared to families who live in urban areas and experience greater socialization. The microsystem includes gender, age, living with a non-biological parent, a dysfunctional family, lack of intimacy between parents, an emotionally unavailable mother, or a mother with a drinking problem. According to Hines et al. (2013), women aged seven to twelve are at higher risk of sexual violence. Additionally, girls who live with their stepfathers or who do not have the emotional attention of their mothers are also at risk because it leaves them emotionally helpless and defenseless against sexual predators. Finally, dysfunctional families are at risk because they are an unorganized family that leaves the child vulnerable due to the lack of closeness, flexibility, and cohesion (Hines et al., 2013). This makes them passive, needy, quiet, and socially isolated, making them more attractive to sexual predators. Physical abuse against children can be defined as when an adult physically kicks, hits,fisting, throwing or even pushing a child (Hines et al., 2013). Additionally, there are also short and long term consequences. The short term includes lacerations, burns, bruises, and bites, while the long term includes martial, emotional, social, financial, and behavioral problems (Hines et al., 2013). In Precious' story, we also see that her parents victimize her by physically abusing their children. When her father was raping Precious, he ordered her not to scream or she would suffer another beating (Sapphire, 1996). However, her mother is the main culprit for the physical abuse whenever she is abused. She ordered Precious to do whatever she asked and would beat her if she refused (Sapphire, 1996). For example, her mother hit Precious with a frying pan and forced her to give birth when she discovered the pregnancy. There are many risk factors that can explain why a child may be a victim of physical abuse. The macrosystem includes low incomes while the exosystem consists of poor quality neighborhoods (Hines et al., 2013). One of the reasons that unemployment and poor neighborhood quality contribute to child physical abuse is that poor neighborhoods tend to have single-parent families and can be unstable while low-income families are unhappy with their their situation and take out their frustration on their children. The microsystem includes a chaotic home environment as well as younger children. According to Hines et al. (2013), young children are at greater risk of physical violence, but this risk begins to decrease as children get older. Additionally, a chaotic home environment can contribute to physical abuse of children, as they are generally not cohesive and do not communicate well with each other (Van der Put and Ruiter, 2016). They tend not to communicate or work together, which limits family cohesion. As a result, young children from lower socioeconomic status and living in chaotic home environments are at greatest risk of physical abuse. Psychological child abuse is described as denial of emotional responsiveness, isolation and verbal abuse (Hines et. al, 2013). The result of this child abuse includes lack of impulsive control, distractibility, negative emotions, low self-esteem, angry behavior, and difficulty learning and problem solving, leading to physical aggression in the child. 'child. Precious is also a victim of emotional abuse towards her children because her mother verbally insults her using degrading words such as cunt, nigger, bitch, slut and other offensive language. People think that psychological abuse is the neglect of least concern, but it is actually more harmful than physical and sexual abuse (Hines et al., 2013). Psychological abuse of children has long-term effects that can carry them into adulthood. We see this in Precious' story because she struggles with learning and reading. Rather than go to school, she is placed in an alternative learning center. Precious's learning difficulties show that she may have been a victim of emotional abuse, explaining why it is so difficult for her to learn and why she becomes angry quickly. There are many risk factors that explain why a child is a victim of emotional abuse. The macrosystem includes poverty while the exosystem includes private relationships with extended families and social isolation (Hines et al., 2013). These factors ofRisk contribute to child psychological abuse because families living in poverty may not have the time or energy to help their children. Parents may spend all their time and energy working countless hours, leaving the child alone. Additionally, families with low socioeconomic prestige, households earning less than fifteen thousand dollars a year, alcohol and drug problems, and living in rural areas are at risk. Additionally, parents who do not work and do not have advanced degrees are more likely to neglect their children (Hines et al., 2013). Parents addicted to alcohol and drugs may psychologically neglect their child because they are constantly high or drunk. Additionally, poor families with children are at higher risk because the pressure to provide for the family can lead to denial of emotional awareness and oral abuse. According to the World Health Organization (2016), violence is defined as the deliberate use or threat of physical force against someone which may or may not result in death, injury, psychological harm, deprivation or maldevelopment. Precious's story is a great example of the World Health Organization's definition of violence because she was a victim of violence. Both of Precious's parents used their physical strength to hurt her as she grew up. Her mother hit her if she refused an order and her father threatened to beat her if she refused to have sex. According to Brofenbrenner's ecological systems theory, there are four different systems called macrosystem, exosystem, mesosystem, and microsystem (Krase, 2015). Precious is involved in all four ecological systems in the book Push. Under the macrosystem, Precious is affected as she lives in poverty throughout her story. She has two babies and is on welfare, but the checks go directly to her mother. On her first day of alternative school, she didn't have enough money to eat so she had to steal fried chicken on the way to school. Also, her classmate bought her fifty cent chips because she couldn't afford them. Under the exosystem, Precious is affected due to the poor quality of her neighborhood. Evidence of a poor neighborhood includes single parents and insufficient social resources. Under the Mesosystem, Precious has formed relationships with several people at school throughout her history. They include her alternative school teacher Blue Rain and her close friend Rita. Under the microsystem, her mother directly influences Precious. Her mother does nothing at home except watch television and collect her welfare benefits. Additionally, she orders Precious to prepare food for her, otherwise it will result in a beating. The three spheres of violence include interpersonal, institutional, and structural violence (Contreras and Cano, 2016). Precious is also part of these three spheres of violence because of her parents. As part of interpersonal violence, his mother and father commit sexual violence against him. In the institutional sphere of violence, her mother continually beats her whenever she does not listen. In the structural sphere of violence, Precious tries to stand up to her mother's hierarchy, but she is always submissive until she finally moves away. Many deterrent policies are in place today to combat child abuse. The main goal is to stop the violence and keep families together rather than simply removing the child from the home. Some of the strategies for preventing mistreatment and abuse towardschildren is about providing better economic support, developing positive parenting to promote healthy growth of children, and providing excellent care and early learning in life (Altafim and Linhares, 2015). To provide greater economic support, the approach is to start by strengthening the economic security of families through family-friendly employment policies. Developing positive parenting to promote the healthy growth of children requires addressing and teaching the family different parenting skills so that they learn how to raise their children. Providing excellent care and learning for children from the beginning of life involves the family engaging in preschool development and improving the quality of child care through accreditation and licensing. Today, formal systems, such as child protective services, are designed to respond by first investigating a report submitted by an individual (Milani, Vianello, Cantoni, Agostoni, Fossali, 2016). They then send a social worker who interviews family members and those involved to gather information to make a decision. Once completed, the decision may include reasons to believe abuse or neglect occurred, ruling out abuse or neglect, failure to investigate because the family could not be located , inability to determine, and administrative closure because the information is unjustified (Milani et al., 2016). In addition, if the worker decides that the child is safe, the file is then closed. If threats are discovered, the family will then have the opportunity to fix it before intervening. However, if the social worker finds him unsafe due to significant safety concerns, he or she may file a motion to protect the child. In Precious' story, we see that the system of child abuse did not work well. . When she lived with her mother, no one noticed that she lived in an abusive home. Additionally, when she left the hospital with her second child, she had no choice but to stay in a homeless shelter with a newborn (Sapphire, 1996). In today's society, if someone saw a young teenage girl walking around breastfeeding her child, there is no doubt that someone would call social services or any type of program that could help her. Additionally, police officers, school officials, and medical personnel are now trained to detect and respond to any suspicion of child abuse (Jud, Fergert, Finkelhor, 2016). This is a step forward in their policy from the days of Precious. However, Precious lived in the 1980s, which means racism during that time could also be extremely high. One of the reasons why no one helped Precious could be that she was a poor young African American woman, especially when she asked the nurses at the hospital for help. Instead of helping their patient, they referred her to a homeless shelter (Sapphire, 1996). This shows that racism may have played a major role in Precious not receiving the help she needed until later. Precious has been in contact with many people throughout its history. They include his parents, teachers, nurses, classmates and civil servants. Nurse Butters, also known as Lenore Harrison, did not respond to Precious's cry for help (Sapphire, 1996). After Precious gave birth to Abdul, she explained her situation to Lenore and asked her for help, but she told Precious that she was off duty and had to go pick up her daughter, there..