Infanticide is the intentional killing of infants or offspring. Infanticide was a widespread practice throughout human history that was mainly used to dispose of unwanted children, its main purpose being the prevention of resources being spent on weak or disabled offspring. Unwanted infants were usually abandoned to die of exposure, but in some societies they were deliberately killed.
A child is a human being between the stages of birth and puberty, or between the developmental period of infancy and puberty. It may also refer to an unborn human being. The legal definition of child generally refers to a minor, otherwise known as a person younger than the age of majority. Children generally have fewer rights and responsibilities than adults. They are generally classed as unable to make serious decisions.
Life imprisonment is any sentence of imprisonment for a crime under which convicted criminals are to remain in prison for the rest of their lives or indefinitely until pardoned, paroled, or commuted to a fixed term. Crimes that warrant life imprisonment are usually violent and/or dangerous. Examples of crimes that result in life sentences are murder, torture, terrorism, child abuse resulting in death, rape, espionage, treason, drug trafficking, drug possession, human trafficking, severe fraud and financial crimes, aggravated criminal damage, arson, and Hate Crime, kidnapping, burglary, and robbery, piracy, aircraft hijacking, and genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, severe cases of child pornography, or any three felonies in the case of a three-strikes law.
Magical thinking, or superstitious thinking, is the belief that unrelated events are causally connected despite the absence of any plausible causal link between them, particularly as a result of supernatural effects. Examples include the idea that personal thoughts can influence the external world without acting on them, or that objects must be causally connected if they resemble each other or have come into contact with each other in the past. Magical thinking is a type of fallacious thinking and is a common source of invalid causal inferences. Unlike the confusion of correlation with causation, magical thinking does not require the events to be correlated.
George Herbert Mead was an American philosopher, sociologist, and psychologist, primarily affiliated with the University of Chicago. He was one of the key figures in the development of pragmatism. He is regarded as one of the founders of symbolic interactionism, and was an important influence on what has come to be referred to as the Chicago School of Sociology.
Imaginary friends are a psychological and a social phenomenon where a friendship or other interpersonal relationship takes place in the imagination rather than physical reality.
The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) is a British child protection charity.
In psychology, theory of mind refers to the capacity to understand other people by ascribing mental states to them. A theory of mind includes the knowledge that others' beliefs, desires, intentions, emotions, and thoughts may be different from one's own. Possessing a functional theory of mind is considered crucial for success in everyday human social interactions. People utilise a theory of mind when analyzing, judging, and inferring others' behaviors. The discovery and development of theory of mind primarily came from studies done with animals and infants. Factors including drug and alcohol consumption, language development, cognitive delays, age, and culture can affect a person's capacity to display theory of mind. Having a theory of mind is similar to but not identical with having the capacity for empathy or sympathy.
A missing person is a person who has disappeared and whose status as alive or dead cannot be confirmed as their location and condition are unknown. A person may go missing through a voluntary disappearance, or else due to an accident, crime, death in a location where they cannot be found, or many other reasons. In most parts of the world, a missing person will usually be found quickly. While criminal abductions are some of the most widely reported missing person cases, these account for only 2–5% of missing children in Europe.
Cognitive development is a field of study in neuroscience and psychology focusing on a child's development in terms of information processing, conceptual resources, perceptual skill, language learning, and other aspects of the developed adult brain and cognitive psychology. Qualitative differences between how a child processes their waking experience and how an adult processes their waking experience are acknowledged. Cognitive development is defined as the emergence of the ability to consciously cognize, understand, and articulate their understanding in adult terms. Cognitive development is how a person perceives, thinks, and gains understanding of their world through the relations of genetic and learning factors. There are four stages to cognitive information development. They are, reasoning, intelligence, language, and memory. These stages start when the baby is about 18 months old, they play with toys, listen to their parents speak, they watch tv, anything that catches their attention helps build their cognitive development.
Egocentrism is the inability to differentiate between self and other. More specifically, it is the inability to accurately assume or understand any perspective other than one's own. Egocentrism is found across the life span: in infancy, early childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Although egocentric behaviors are less prominent in adulthood, the existence of some forms of egocentrism in adulthood indicates that overcoming egocentrism may be a lifelong development that never achieves completion. Adults appear to be less egocentric than children because they are faster to correct from an initially egocentric perspective than children, not because they are less likely to initially adopt an egocentric perspective.
In philosophy, psychology, sociology, and anthropology, intersubjectivity is the relation or intersection between people's cognitive perspectives.
A children's hearing is part of the legal and welfare systems in Scotland; it aims to combine justice and welfare for children and young people. As of 31 March 2020, 8,875 of Scotland's children were subject to a compulsory supervision order.
Rachel Lyman Field was an American novelist, poet, and children's fiction writer. She is best known for her work Hitty, Her First Hundred Years. Field also won a National Book Award, Newbery Honor award and two of her books are on the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award list.
A bedtime story is a traditional form of storytelling, where a story is told to a child at bedtime to prepare the child for sleep. The bedtime story has long been considered "a definite institution in many families".
Children often acquire religious views approximating those of their parents, although they may also be influenced by others they communicate with – such as peers and teachers. Matters relating the subject of children and religion may include rites of passage, education, and child psychology, as well as discussion of the moral issue of the religious education of children.
The Office of theChildren's Commissioner for England is a non-departmental public body in England responsible for promoting and protecting the rights of children as set out in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, as well as other human rights legislation, such as the Human Rights Act 1998. The Children's Commissioner was established under the Children Act 2004 to "represent the views and interests of children", and the office was further strengthened by the Children and Families Act 2014 providing a legal mandate to promote and protect the rights of children. According to the Commissioner's website, the role's purpose is to facilitate long-term improvements for all children, and in particular for the most vulnerable, and involves “being the eyes and ears of children within the system and the country as a whole", as well as acting with political independence from government, children's agencies and the voluntary and private sectors. The Children's Commissioner also has a duty to speak on behalf of all children in the United Kingdom on non-devolved issues, which include immigration, and youth justice in Wales.
Laws against child sexual abuse vary by country based on the local definition of who a child is and what constitutes child sexual abuse. Most countries in the world employ some form of age of consent, with sexual contact with an underage person being criminally penalized. As the age of consent to sexual behaviour varies from country to country, so too do definitions of child sexual abuse. An adult's sexual intercourse with a minor below the legal age of consent may sometimes be referred to as statutory rape, based on the principle that any apparent consent by a minor could not be considered legal consent.
Special educational needs (SEN), also known as special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) in the United Kingdom refers to the education of children who require different education provision to the mainstream system.
Abusive power and control is behavior used by an abusive person to gain and/or maintain control over another person. Abusers are commonly motivated by devaluation, personal gain, personal gratification, psychological projection, or the enjoyment of exercising power and control. The victims of this behavior are often subject to psychological, physical, mental, sexual, or financial abuse.
