As a child, what you experience and how you are treated ultimately shapes your future as an adult, influencing your self-perception, self-worth, values, as well as your social and emotional skills. The mistreatment and abuse of children at a young age can result in the child experiencing permanent emotional and psychological difficulties, distrust of adults, reduced self-esteem, along with a higher risk of becoming aggressive and self-destructive, abusing drugs, and being an easy target for abusers in the future. Historically, majority of cases of child abuse have been ignored by society, with only the extremely severe cases resulting in an interference by authorities. Verbally abusing children in the contemporary era was viewed as parents simply disciplining their child, whilst sexual abuse was…show more content… Although Plath’s traumatic childhood permanently impacted her mental health and well-being, it influenced her writing and shaped many of her unique – and in several cases iconic - poems. In 1962, whilst struggling with the loss of her husband to another woman and the severe depression that shortly followed, Plath managed to write Daddy; one of the most-well known confessional poems that directly faces and acknowledges the lasting consequences of child abuse as an adult from the victim’s perspective. By exposing this hidden side of the story, Plath aimed to nudge the conscience of society and inform adults to make a difference to the lives of abused children; before they too, drown in
