I wish that we gave the even the tiniest fraction of attention to the physical effects of child abuse on kids. When it comes to hitting, yelling, coercing, humiliating, isolating, and otherwise torturing kids Americans are all about parental rights and children’s supposed resilience.
But there’s a new study/story every week about the dangers of kids talking to their peers on a specific device or platform.
Child abuse reliably and demonstrably does damage to society but we just pretend there’s nothing to be done about it.
On a systemic level, our institutions have no regard for the rights, emotions, or experience of children when there is any conflict between an adult caregiver's impulses and the kid's needs.
Unless there's significant bodily injury, the child is at the mercy of their caregiver's whims with pretty much no recourse until the kid is big enough to be too difficult to physically force. Even then, more conservative communities will happily ask law enforcement deliver the physical coercion.
We're very far away from any significant rights protections for kids.