Child maltreatment and the judicial concept of Security in the light of the concept of the good-enough mother Daniel Wildt Rosa Faculties of Arts & Humanities and of Economics University of Coimbra, Portugal – University of Siegen, Germany
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Introduction
Contextualizing the child maltreatment concept
The purpose of this study is to relate the concepts of Child Maltreatment and of Security regarding how different fields, Health and Juridical Science, deal with similar issues on defining and constructing knowledge. The idea of the good-enough mother is introduced as a guideline to maintain the balance of measures identified as required to achieve the aims that both subjects address.
The concerns with child maltreatment address promoting health conditions that ensure a well-being state, allowing the achievement of a proper development of personality. Health is therefore perceived as beyond physiological concerns in the care of physical and mental health conditions which focus only on the absence of disease or infirmity. The Constitution of the World Health Organization (WHO) defines Health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being”, bearing also all the subjective aspects of its content.
A challenge for approaching child maltreatment As with Security, Maltreatment seems to be a sensitive and comprehensible notion that dispenses a formulated definition; it is an innate concept. Nevertheless, this concept is imprinted with subjective values and aspirations, which causes an epistemological lack that prevents or misleads political approaches and studies related to Maltreatment from being properly discussed and assessed. As a solution, a common language based on objective criteria over the maltreatment concept, which surpasses the typical subjective medical approach of focusing on the patient, must be adopted. Additionally, it is imperative to keep maltreatment as a wide concept, since it must evolve according to cultural and scientific progress issues, being able to respond to the yearnings of society in its various historical moments and spaces. The same occurs with regard to Security. However, on this matter, Social Sciences are more concerned with the collective, emphasizing homogeneous subjectivity besides social aspects, in detriment of the singular one (the patient).
Resorting to interdisciplinarity Interdisciplinary approaches are a growing resource to deal with complex subjects. They allow recognized patterns to guide solutions that overcome challenges of working with wide concepts. In the same way, well-established methods may be borrowed to solve problems faced at frontier studies of different disciplines. This relation is proposed between child maltreatment and the judicial concept of Security.
The contribution of Security and good-enough mother concepts In contrast to maltreatment, the good-enough mother concept implies, as a health condition, a sufficiency in attending to the child’s needs by building an adequate environment for his development. Thus, everything that is not innate to the child and can threaten his tranquility, hinder or prevent his protection, cause fear, and generate conflict, is an obstacle to a proper development of his personality, not allowing a goodenough environment. Nonetheless, this statement belongs to a widely well-accepted juridical concept of Security if referring to every human being.
The social craving for Security is to pursue an environment that allows the harmony in social relations, the quality of life of individuals and the means for the adequate development of personality. The idea of minimum (of sufficiency), inherent of “good-enough”, deserves to be emphasized because if, on the one hand, the shortage of care leads to deficiency, on the other hand the excess of assistance does not grant a proper development and can even become nocuous. Besides, propitiating more than necessary, implies less clear criteria, depending on subjective estimates, encumbering the concept of a theory for producing knowledge; and so, for establishing parameters to avoid child maltreatment and regulate child care. The foregoing presents the intimate relation between those medical and juridical subjects. The concept of the good-enough mother from Winnicott is broached as a guideline that refers to the sufficiency in the cares and means offered to achieve the goals of both subjects, avoiding extreme positions.
References Escola Superior de Guerra (Brasil). (2009). Fundamentos da Escola Superior de Guerra (Vols. I - Elementos Fundamentais). Rio de Janeiro: A Escola. Simmel, G. (1986). El pobre. In Sociología. Estudios sobre las formas de socialización (J. R. Pérez Bances, Trans., Vol. II, pp. 479-520). Madrid: Alianza Editorial, Revista de Occidente. Winnicott, D. W. (1958). Collected papers: Through paediatrics to psycho-analysis. Oxford: Basic Books. World Health Organization & United States. (2005). Constitution of the World Health Organization: Amendments to articles 24 and 25, adopted by the fifty-first World Health Assembly at Geneva May 16, 1998. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Dept. of State
Copyright © 2017 Daniel Wildt Rosa
