Children, Families and Violence: Challenges for Children's Rights Review

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(More customer reviews)Katherine Covell and Brian Howe have spent their life's work on advocating for the rights of children. As such, they are the perfect academics to create a resource for all of us who toil in the trenches trying to impact children's lives in our own small ways. How I wish I'd had this book years ago, when I was actively writing grant proposals, looking for reasons to offer programs not just to defined high risk families but to all families, and trying to increase awareness of toxic exposures to alcohol and more during pregnancy. This book is full of references to research on both the medical and political/policy side. Comparisons are made between the US, Canada, and Europe. Throughout, the authors link faulty child development to the presence of violence in society - both as cause and effect.
My first stop when I look at an academic book is always the bibliography. I want to be able to see that the authors have read widely, know what they are talking about, and can support their arguments. Covell and Howe exceeded my expectations, with a hefty and varied bibliography that would be a good starting ground for a reading course on the subject of children's rights.
Despite the multiple references, the text reads well and accessibly. The book is, in fact, hard to put down. Fact leads to fact leads to policy leads to the desire for action.
The first half of the book examines violence in the family on a micro level, looking at, amongst other topics, pregnancy, substance use, parenting, corporal punishment, maternal depression, and parental criminality. References here are constant, supporting statements about potentially controversial information with well-conducted studies.
The second half of the book focuses on the macro level: policy interventions, socioeconomic realities, child care policies, and more. Here the cross cultural discussions are fascinating and full of examples how different countries implement or don't implement family friendly policies, and how this fits within the context of their political and social cultures.
Howe and Covell are not unsympathetic to the challenges governments have in supporting the rights of the child, but they are also not unwilling to put government's feet to the fire. While the US comes in for a majority of the criticism, Canada doesn't escape, and no country is completely on-line. The authors emphasize that child-friendly policies include family supports (economic and other), a reformed child welfare program, and more focus on healthy child development. As the authors point out, there isn't a lack of support for the need for and benefit to be had from family friendly policies. "The essential problem is not the lack of research or advocacy but the lack of serious listening."(p. 221)
This book lays the groundwork for anyone interested in helping to increase that serious listening. Highly recommended for anyone working in the family support arena: public health nurses, social workers, physicians, obstetricians, midwives, community health centres, day care agencies, community development agencies, police services, psychologists. Also recommended for students of human rights, child rights, sociology, and public policy. And I wouldn't say no to recommending this also for military members who hope to impact the governments in various conflicts. Family friendly policies help prevent the perpetuation of violence.
A fairly extensive and very good index and an author index completes this excellent volume. Well worth the investment!

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This book examines the risk factors surrounding children at risk of experiencing and perpetrating violence, and looks at the positive role that children's rights can play in their protection.The authors propose that violence in childhood is not spontaneous: that children are raised to become violent in poorly functioning families and child-unfriendly environments. They may be exposed to toxic substances in utero, to maltreatment in infancy, to domestic violence or parental criminality as they grow up. Each of these risk factors is empirically linked with the development of antisocial and aggressive behaviour, and each reflects a violation of children's rights to protection from maltreatment. The authors show how respecting children's rights and safeguarding them from exposure to violence can shift the balance between risk and protective factors and, as a result, reduce the incidence and severity of childhood violence.This book will be essential reading for professionals working with young offenders, academics, students, practitioners and policy-makers.

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