Children in danger: Coping with the consequences of community violence

✍ Scribed by William E. Roweton

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1997
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 24 KB
• Volume: 34
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0033-3085
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1520-6807(199710)34:4<377::aid-pits13>3.0.co;2-e

✦ Synopsis

Children in danger is a tragic psychological narrative about young Americans struggling to mature in spite of threatening communities, violent families, and a stratified culture, now unmistakably divided into the rich and the poor. Given inhospitable roots, debilitated early developmental results. The authors attempt to answer the question: ". . .what happens when danger replaces safety as a condition of life for a child?" (p. 1).

Children surviving in spite of violent communities, like war orphans fending for themselves, concentrate and memorize poorly, play aggressively, act "tough" emotionally, and cling disparately to their mothers-when they are around. Inconsistencies color all their young lives, and these children weather badly Erik Erikson's psychosocial travails: "The 'normal' development of children suffers when the conditions of life are themselves 'abnormal'" (p. 66). America's young, urban warzone victims are all around us, on our streets and in our schools.