Part of why child abuse is on the rise is the inscreased stress (in general) of living nowadays. I think we might also be getting more and more accurate measurements, or more and more people willing to talk about what's happening; stigma sure as hell still exists, but it is descreasing.
re: the stat on physical punishment and children being "subjected" to it- not all corporal punishment is necessarily abusive, IMO. But, the video is certainly an example of corporal punishment whichwas abusive. Hitting that girl wasn't about disclipline. It was an outpouring of rage on a victim who happened to be doing something the aggressor didn't want her to do.
In general there's at least one thing we could do systemically- won't, but we bloody well could- would be to improve the child protectove services we offer currently. By and large this would amount to having more, better people in that field. That won't happen because that would cost money (short term). DCF/DSS/whatever you call it locally tends to be full over overworked and underpaid individuals who have far more cases than they could possibly handle competantly. However, long-term I think it would save money, considering how (literally) expensive particularly traumatized/fucked-up people tend to be for the system later on. (I believe I remember a study directly linking better ratios of DSS workers to reduced incidences of foster home abuse, in a state-to-state comparison, but I can't find it right now; I believe they to some extent did account for some of the confounding variables in that data.)
