Cultural Determination of Child Abuses in Urban Nigeria: A Sociological Perspective

Child abuse is a grim global health challenge. Though, most studies on it were conducted in the ‘first world', there is growing suggestion that the phenomenon is shared with the rest of the world. This paper is aimed towards examining culture as a determining factor in the discussions of child abuse in Urban Nigeria within an unassuming perspective of sociology. To achieve this, the basic tenets of the Social Bonding Theory were adopted as the theoretical foundations for this paper. Child abuse was observed to appear in several salient forms in Urban Nigeria, and is reverberated by harmful cultural practices and givens. The increase of child abuse in urban Nigeria is attributed to poor social bonding, poverty, and a general breakdown in societal norms. Accordingly, child abuse has deep-rooted deleterious consequences for the child and general societal growth and development, as it results in severe social, psychological, economic, physical, educational and health injuries. The paper recommends, among other things, that the governments in Nigeria (i.e. Federal, State and Local governments) must expedite policies to fight against, poverty and its symptoms such as: ignorance and illiteracy, as this futuristic measure will go a long way in dissuading parents, guardians and care givers from engaging the children under their care in menial jobs, street hawking and farming as a coping mechanism for the family.