Urban Tribal Societies

A significant body of psychological theory and evidence reveals that a child’s conscience emerges out of the attachments it forms with its parents. When that attachment is warm and nurturing, the child feels loved and secure. Thus, the core of a child’s conscience has been formed when the awareness of its obligation to others, and sense of responsibility for its own actions, are sufficiently strong to deter it from wrongdoing even when detection and punishment could be avoided. Child neglect and abuse are crimes that are difficult to discover and prevent. With or without actual punishment, shame is the penalty a child endures when it disappoints or disobeys the parents it loves. Legal and clinical distinctions between the two may be useful in some contexts, but they tend to blur the devastating impact both have on children. Children suffer from neglect almost as frequently as they suffer from abuse.