There is a sufficient number of drawbacks in child development – physiological, mental, and social – that child maltreatment (CM) implies. Mainly, as postulated by Abdollahi et al., maternal depression and subsequent failure to take upon the entirety of parental responsibilities resulted in children having “acute and chronic diseases and their child used more daily medication four years after birth.” Even more significant are the results showing children are much more likely to have delays in “gross motor skills and personal-social domain.”
This happens because “children’s efforts to adapt to a maladaptive situation” impede their psychological investment in other areas, meaning that they invest too much energy in shielding from painful experiences when they must have been investing it into their development. The result of CM on development varies. However, most often, children start to experience delays in language acquisition, motor skills, and overall poor physical health.