Forced adoption
Removing children of ethnic minorities from their families to be adopted by those of the dominant ethnic group has been used as a method of forced assimilation. The Stolen Generations in Australia involved Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. In Canada, the Canadian Indian residential school system involved First Nations, Métis and Inuit children, who often suffering severe abuse. As part of the Uyghur genocide, in 2017 alone at least half a million children were also forcefully separated from their families, and placed in pre-school camps with prison-style surveillance systems and 10,000 volt electric fences.In Switzerland, between the 1850s and the mid-20th century, hundreds of thousands of children mostly from poor or single parents were forcefully removed from their parents by the authorities, and sent to work on farms, living with new families. They were known as contract children or Verdingkinder.Most of the children living in institutions around the world have a surviving parent or close relative, and they most commonly entered orphanages because of poverty. It is speculated that, flush with money, for profit orphanages are increasing and push for children to join even though demographic data show that even the poorest extended families usually take in children whose parents have died and it would be cheaper to aid close relatives who want to take in the orphans. Experts and child advocates maintain that separating children from their families often harm childrens development. During the One Child Policy in China, women were only allowed to have one child.
Child abuse or child maltreatment is physical, sexual, and/or psychological maltreatment or neglect of a child or children, especially by a parent or a caregiver. Child abuse may include any act or failure to act by a parent or a caregiver that results in actual or potential harm to a child and can occur in a childs home, or in the organizations, schools, or communities the child interacts with. The terms child abuse and child maltreatment are often used interchangeably, although some researchers make a distinction between them, treating child maltreatment as an umbrella term to cover neglect, exploitation, and trafficking. Different jurisdictions have different requirements for mandatory reporting and have developed different definitions of what constitutes child abuse, and therefore have different criteria to remove children from their families or to prosecute a criminal charge. History
As late as the 19th century, cruelty to children, perpetrated by employers and teachers, was commonplace and widespread, and corporal punishment was customary in many countries. But, in the first half of the 19th century, pathologists studying filicide (the parental killing of children) reported cases of death from paternal rage, recurrent physical maltreatment, starvation, and sexual abuse.