The Long Fall of the Ball from the Wall Reflections on Child Maltreatment

Abstract

This chapter focuses on The Long Fall of the Ball from the Wall. The novel narrates, among other things, a story of child maltreatment. The type of child maltreatment narrated in the book is insidious: it is happens in a relatively privileged middle-class unsuspected family, and leaves no evident traces on the child’s outward appearance. The novel enables us to see the pervasive and long-term damage of not-so-obvious forms of abuse. Despite growing awareness of children’s needs, the rates of child maltreatment are high and growing in affluent societies. Taking Boylan’s book as a starting point, this chapter reflects on the possible reasons for the systematic failure of child agencies to identify and prevent child maltreatment. This chapter suggests that pervasive high prevalence of child maltreatment in affluent societies challenges certain paradigms that appear deeply entrenched in the fabric of liberal pluralistic societies, particularly around the rights of the adults (the right to non-interference in one’s private life, the right to large discretion in matters concerning the upbringing of ‘our’ children), and around the assumption that usually parents are best equipped to make decisions on what is in the best interests of ‘their’ children (indeed, that children are somehow ‘theirs’). Without serious reconsideration of the adults’ parental rights it might not be possible to tackle child maltreatment effectively.

Keywords: child maltreatment, liberal pluralism, family privacy, structural injustice, right to non-interference