Learning how the environment a child grows up in and how it affects their development in the near future has always been something that interests me tremendously. After taking courses where I have learned how certain perspectives or situations that pertain to child care affect our development as people, there have been times when I myself have reminisced back on my own childhood and have applied different concepts that help me gain a better understanding as to why I am who I am or why I behave the way I do today. While reading “Miss America by Day: Lessons Learned from Ultimate Betrayals and Unconditional Love” by Marilyn Van Derbur, it was very interesting to me when it came to applying how her experiences as a child affected different aspects …show more content…
in her life such as family, school, and her community. The way Marilyn Van Derbur was raised was completely different than the way I was raised, especially the relationships she had with her mother and father. Coming from a family who did not abuse me in any way and supported me throughout my childhood and then to read about a woman who was sexually violated by her own father against her own will from the age of five to eighteen, it was devastating to even imagine someone going through such things. But as she fearlessly writes about her life and her experiences at the age of fifty-three, it amazes me to see how someone who has had the traumatizing past of incest and no real relationship with her biological mother, take matters into her own hands and not let any of these skeletons in her closet dictate her future. After reading about her experiences and being in complete awe about all her successes, the only word I can think to describe this woman is resilient. Although there were many difficult moments in her life that were effects of her continuing inner struggle, Marilyn Van Derbur demonstrates clearly how the elements of our atmosphere in our youth assist and impact our growth as people. Before reading this book, I had never known of Marilyn Van Derbur nor did I know that she was once crowned Miss America.
Stereotypically speaking, the image I carry of a Miss America is one who is amazingly beautiful and portrays themselves to be the closest thing to perfect. For crying out loud, you’re being crowned Miss America. Someone who represents this remarkable country we live in. That was an image I think she portrayed flawlessly. To the world she was beautiful, smart, intelligent, and a notorious motivational speaker who spoke in more than 225 cities. She was a picture-perfect successful woman. But what people didn’t realize or even see was the internal fight she had to conquer to even display the idea that she was only living a blessed life. Behind the mask of Miss America was a woman who felt guilt, shame, someone who wasn’t worthy of anything. In “Child, Family, School, and Community: Socialization and Support,” Roberta M. Berns explains how children who were sexually abused end up experiencing embarrassment and look at themselves as being filthy. More severely, children who are victims of incest find it very difficult to trust people, but at the same time are very vulnerable in trusting people easily (146). When the key concept Child Maltreatment of Abuse and Neglect came into context, it was very differing in the ways it impacted Marilyn. Being traumatized by the late nights her father came into her room and always having to feel a tense body, it made her …show more content…
afraid to sleep on her own room and even begin to not want to be home for the summer. She even started to give herself an alter ego and described her experience in two different lives; there was the night child who hated her father for forever scarring her, and then there was the day child who loved her father dearly and turned to him every time she needed guidance for another huge speech. I was in disbelief to see how the abuse caused for her to have a close relationship with the one person you would least expect, but then cause complications and emotional detachment with a man who had nothing but love for her, Larry. I found it to be the strangest thing to see who Marilyn found trust in and who she didn’t.
Even though I have no experienced incest myself, I did not think it would be possible for her to feel the love she felt for her father or did I even expect for her to even confide in him as constantly as she did. From an outsider’s perspective, it was frustrating to comprehend the fact that she gave Larry the hardest time throughout the years when he had been the one positive constant in her life. The personal battle she dealt with caused for her to be psychologically damaged resulting for her to turn away those who only wanted to help compared to those who are caused the suffering. Abuse alone is sufficient in causing for victims to only hesitate or refuse to ensure their trust to anyone, or sometimes even the wrong people. As Marilyn quotes the words of Oprah Winfrey back in October 23, 1995 and who was also a victim of sexual abuse, “What really upsets me and what you don’t seem to get, America, is there aren’t varying degrees of abuse. It’s about the abuse of power and trust. So whether you physically penetrate a child with your penis or your finger or an object, whether you just touch their breasts, whether you just fondle them or you just kiss them, it doesn’t matter. It’s an issue of trust and power…America doesn’t understand that it is the raping of the spirit and the soul” (qtd. In Miss America by Day, 411). Although she still cared dearly for her father, the secrecy of the
penetrations she went through as a child still endured for her to be mentally and emotionally broken with very few people to turn to. What made this even more difficult for Marilyn was the fact that she never truly did have a close relationship with her mother. She didn’t completely receive the nurturing of her own mother according to John Bowlby’s study in 1952, “The maternal love and care are the most important influences on a child’s future development…that any break in the early mother-child relationship could have severe emotional, social, and intellectual consequences” (Berns 163). Even when Marilyn was traveling from city to city as Miss America, her mother never advocated for her or even thought to put Marilyn’s personal needs first rather than those who were only interested in business. She clearly demonstrates how child advocacy or even the importance of a relationship with a parent figure is important when it comes to the care of a child. What I found to be so remarkable about this novel is that Marilyn Van Derbur is able to ensure her readers that no matter what kind of traumatic experiences anyone goes through, no matter the degree of the severity, they are able to overcome it and are still capable of making something greater of themselves. With everything she went through and the many obstacles she had to face due to the trappings of her past, she was able to leave it all behind and move on. She chose to take the negative in her life and turn it into something good and positive. Because she never really had an advocate, she takes it upon herself to be that person for others. She continues to motivate, inspire, and make people aware that every person should be able to live a quality life. She does an incredible job in using her capabilities to provide assistance for parents, victims, and those in youth involvement to make sure that they are knowledgeable and able to provide the best care they can possibly give.
Sandy Wilson, the author of Daddy’s Apprentice: incest, corruption, and betrayal: a survivor’s story, was the victim of not only sexual abuse but physical and emotional abuse as well, in addition to being a product of incest. Sandy Wilson’s story began when she was about six years old when her birth father returns home from incarceration, and spans into her late teens. Her father returning home from prison was her first time meeting him, as she was wondered what he looked like after hearing that he would be released (Wilson, 2000, p. 8). Not only was her relationship with her father non-existent, her relationship with her birth mother was as well since she was for most of her young life, cared for by her grandmother and grandfather. When she was told that her birth mother coming to visit she says, “…I wish my mother wouldn’t visit. I never know what to call her so I don’t all her anything. Not her name, Kristen. Not mother. Not anything (Wilson, 2000, p. 4).” This quote essentially demonstrated the relationship between Sandy and her mother as one that is nonexistent even though Sandy recognizes Kristen as her birth mother.
Sexual abuse is maltreatment in which a person forces, tricks, or threatens a child in order to have sexual contact with him or her (Child, Family, School, Community). One of the studies of sexual abuse of children studied by David Finkelhor and the Director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center, they have found out that one out five girls and one out of twenty boys are victims of child sexual abuse and twenty percent of adult females and five to ten percent adult males recall a childhood sexual assault or sexual abuse incident (Child of sexual abuse) such as a victim named Marilyn Van Derbur. The essay will review the overall concept of Marilyn Van Derbur’s Miss America by Day, my review of the book and relate to my personal
Cases of incestial rape by father's upon their daughters, where actually rarely reported (Brown, 131). Most mother's and daughters kept incidents like these secret from the public or rarely even confronted their husbands and fathers for fear of experiencing further harm. Not to mention that it was a hard crime to prove (Brown, 112). Incest has been against the law for a long time- so the father of a household could be jailed a short while for the crime, but shockingly, girls only needed to be older than ten years of age to give consent to sex (Brown, 60). Thus making it easy for defense attorneys to establish reasonable of doubt rape and making the father guilty of incest instead (Brown, 89).
Secret Survivors by Sue Blume is a paper uncovering the incest and it’s aftereffects in women. Throughout this paper, Blume makes some points that are very hypocritical and bias. She is a private therapist, social worker, and diplomat in social work, but she has never been a victim, and her opinions make for a worse argument.
She feels that caregivers don’t trust their children and that they rather than giving their child commands. I see some similarities of my life and experiences that I found in the text. When I was growing up, I pretty much had a childhood. Me and my sister will play outside and do things without being supervised by my parents. We were able to explore outside and make up games to play with other kids. When it rain and snow me and my sister will use our imagination and create games such as house or school. My parents didn 't control our childhood they didn 't create activities, nor tell me what to do with our free time. I was pretty much free. But as I got older, parents started to be involved in my life and started to plan my future. The concepts of the worldviews, biases, and assumptions that are used in the text is that parents make it difficult for their children to interact with their surroundings because it ends with the consequences. Ellen claims that a child should learn how to use their imagination instead of following the rules. The worldviews that are found in my personal and education life is that the author’s perspective about how she see the world relates to
“She represents the type of womanhood America needs, strong, red-blooded, able to shoulder the responsibilities of homemaking and motherhood. It is in her type that the hope of the country rests” (Martin & Watson, 2004, p.3). This was Samuel Gompers sharing his thoughts about the very first “Miss America”, Margaret Gorman. The Miss America Pageant was established in the most fitting of all decades: the 1920s. During a time when women were just starting to experience newfound independence and rights, the Miss America Pageant strengthened the idea that women had more freedom to express themselves. The competition began as a simple tourist attraction, but the fact that the Miss America Pageant survived throughout the decades exemplifies that the competition was so much more.
Incest could occur. Many sibling offenders have also grown up in families with many children; the average being three. Some studies point to neglect as an underlying dimension of sibling incest and that an older sibling is using a younger sibling to satisfy emotional needs, rather than a need for sexual gratification (Hargett, 2007). Parental rejection is also found to be more frequent in a sibling incest group than in a non-sibling group (Walsh & Krienert, 2011). A substantial proportion of parents of sibling incest offenders had themselves been victims of sexual and/or physical abuse; this could pa...
Mayer, Adele. Sexual Abuse: Causes, Consequences and Treatment of Incestuous and Pedophilic Acts. Holmes Beach: Learning Publications, 1985.
...as an individual, still finding a sense of closeness with their caregiver. The perceptions that are formed as an infant are progressively construed to structure who we are, what we do, and why we do the things we do. These long-term effects appear to grow and are constructive as internal working models which shape our behavior, self perception, sense of self, and our expectations of other people.
This unit, doing work around “All American”, helped me learn or understand more about how other people see it. Not everyone sees it like I do. To others, an “All American person” may be a specific image, but generally people think that it could be all different kinds of people. America isn't a country of one race, it's a country of diversity. Before this unit, I hadn't thought about what is considered “All American”, because I embrace my culture and I consider my family and I “All American people”. We live in America, my siblings and I were born in America, we've always thought about ourselves as “All American”. You could even say that I was blind towards racism, similar to Quinn in All American Boys. Unfortunately, that isn't always ideally what happens. People aren't always thought of “All American” or they feel displaced in society because they think they aren't the “American standards”, this unit taught me a lot and I understand the different viewpoints and learned to acknowledge them.
Woodhead, M. and Montgomery, H. (Eds) (2003) Understanding childhood: an interdisciplinary approach, Milton Keynes: John Wiley and sons in association with The Open University.
America has many programs for graduating students that are involved with education and children. While any college student can appreciate education, I suspect that few understand the importance of early childhood development. Having committed to apply for a position in Teach for America, I want to better understand why it is so important to "get 'em while they're young."
In the time of her living with her mother, Oprah was first sexually abused by a nineteen year old cousin while he was babysitting her. Then again by another cousin, a family friend, her mother's boyfriend, and her uncle during her stay. Oprah was sworn into silence by all of the predators that abuse her. At the age of 13 she ran away from home because of her past experiences of abuse. When she turned 14 she disc...
Gilmartin, P. (1994). Rape, incest, and child abuse: Consequences and recovery. New York, NY: Garland Publishing, Inc.
In order to promote the best outcome from the curriculum we must consider that each child is an individual in their own right. Tricia David (2001: 55) states that early childhood should be a time of “spontaneity and of exploration according to individual interests”. Thus accounting for the child’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as their likes and dislikes, provides a curriculum, which will promote optimum development. This is also known as a ...