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Effectiveness of corporal punishment
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“Whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.”
-Jesus Christ (Scofield Reference Bible , Matthew 18:6)
A parent’s right to spank their child has been an issue of great debate for a long time. On one side of the debate are people who feel that to strike a child in any way automatically constitutes abuse. The opposing side believes that parents are within their legal and, more importantly, their moral rights to discipline their child as they see fit. As one can imagine, the former are routinely portrayed to be overly humanistic and ultra-liberal, while the latter are almost always smeared as right-wing bible thumpers and uneducated miscreants.
The main issue, as is so often the case with controversial subjects has been lost along the way. Everyone has become caught up in the right vs. left fight and ensuing name calling so few people are truly paying attention to the children themselves. America already has enough laws. What parents need most is education and support, not legislation. Also, those without children need to mind their own business and stick to subjects they have experience with, not just opinions. Having been a child does not give one insight into how to raise a child.
Proponents of spanking bans have a tendency to label spanking as corporal punishment. They then categorize it along with many abusive activities. Psychologist Kerby Alvy explains corporal punishment as, “pinching, pulling ears and hair, shaking, slapping, smacking, spanking, swatting, hitting, kicking, punching, paddling, using switches, hair brushes, belts and ironing cords, and having children kneel on gravel or ...
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...ould Be Illegal." Child Abuse. Ed. Heidi Williams. Farmington Hills: Greenhaven Press, 2009. 21-27. Print.
Dobson, James. The Strong-Willed Child. Wheaton: Tyndale House, 1978. Print.
Gershoff, Elizabeth, et al. "Parent Discipline Practices in an International Sample: Associations With Child Behaviors and Moderation by Perceived Normativeness." Child Development 81.2 (2010): 487-502. Academic Search Premier. Web. 23 April 2011.
Harvard Medical School . "The Spanking Debate." Harvard Mental Health Letter (2002): 1-3. Academic Search Premier. Web. 23 April 2011.
Reading, Richard. "Speak softly - and forget the stick: corporal punishment and physical abuse." Child: care, health and development (2009): 286-287. Academic Search Premier. Web. 23 April 2011.
Scofield, C.I., ed. Scofield Reference Bible. New and Improved. New York: Oxford University Press, 1909. Print.
Our society allows police, council officials, and other busy bodies dictate how parents should raise their children. A scolding, smack in the face, and a spanking on the butt are all forms of punishment. A punishment is a tool used by parents to discipline their children for misbehavior. Abuse is a commonly thrown around term that offers an inflated meaning to punishment. bell hooks states in her article that a parent cannot “love” if they are “abusive.” Care for individuals’ actions is love; if a child is not reprimanded for bad behavior then the parent is further being abusive. Each and every parent loves their child and to have people dictate on how to raise their child is acceptable to a point. bell hooks deals an absolute, which is any form of physical punishment is abuse.
There is a point raised by the author on the article “Spanking children isn’t abusing them” that children in residential schools had horrible and often fatal beatings (2015). Furthermore, while reading “Corporal punishment by parents and associated child behaviors and experiences: A meta-analytic and theoretical review” Gershoff asserts, “Behaviors that do not result in significant physical injury (e.g., spank, slap) are considered corporal punishment, whereas behav- iors that risk injury (e.g., punching, kicking, burning) are consid- ered physical abuse. ” (2002) As it was stated on the previous point, reasonable force has its limits, and limits the parent and care givers to discipline the child without degrading them or causing physical or psychological harm.
Mel Robbins [ The Author ] deliberately blurs the lines between child abuse and discipline in her article “ Spanking isn’t parenting; it;s child abuse”. Not only does the author use personal experiences to connect her point with those in question, but she does not portray herself as professional writer, due to her tone and ignorance within her writing, despite her credible ethos. The authors deafening opinions in relation to the topic dull her ability to reason, thus making her use only Red Herrings to prove her points, also the author only states one side of the facts, deliberately uses worst case scenarios, and uses random
Spanking is an important aspect of a child’s social development and should not be considered an evil form of abuse. In her argument, Debra Saunders says that there is an obvious difference between beating a child and spanking a child, and parents know the boundary. Spanking is the most effective form of discipline when a child knows doing something is wrong, but the child does it anyway. A child who is properly disciplined through spanking is being taught how to control her or his impulses and how to deal with all types of authorities in future environments. Parents can control their child’s future behavior by using spanking in early childhood, because if...
Because the beliefs, education and cultures of people vary so much, along with the age of the child, methods of child discipline vary widely. The topic of child discipline involves a wide range of fields such as parenting, behavioural analysis, developmental psychology, social work and various religious perspectives. Advances in the understanding of parenting have provided a background of theoretical understanding and practical understanding of the effectiveness of parenting methods.
The use of spanking is one of the most controversial parenting practices and also one of the oldest, spanning throughout many generations. Spanking is a discipline method in which a supervising adult deliberately inflicts pain upon a child in response to a child’s unacceptable behaviour. Although spanking exists in nearly every country and family, its expression is heterogeneous. First of all the act of administering a spanking varies between families and cultures. As Gershoff (2002) pointed out, some parents plan when a spanking would be the most effective discipline whereas some parents spank impulsively (Holden, 2002). Parents also differ in their moods when delivering this controversial punishment, some parents are livid and others try and be loving and reason with the child. Another source of variation is the fact that spanking is often paired with other parenting behaviours such as, scolding, yelling, or perhaps raging and subsequently reasoning. A third source of variation concerns parental characteristics. Darling and Steinberg (1993) distinguished between the content of parental acts and the style in which it was administered (Holden, 2002). With all this variation researchers cannot definitively isolate the singular effects of spanking.
We have all encountered this situation: A small child is standing in the middle of a department store throwing a complete temper tantrum demanding a toy. His mother, exasperated threatens him with time-outs and other deprived privileges, but the stubborn child continues to kick and scream. In the "old days," a mother wouldn't think twice about marching the defiant child to the bathroom and giving him a good spanking to straighten him out, but these days, parents have to worry about someone screaming child abuse. Whether or not to spank a child has become a heated issue in today's society.
Every parent has a different idea or definition of what spanking is and what is acceptable. The problem is not that kids are getting spanked; it is the kids who are not getting spanked, or spanked enough. It is like the children are “little CEOs” of their home when the parents should be the “CEOs.” Parents should put their child in order and make sure that they are in a child’s place. It is happening everywhere, not only in one place. It may be a sensitive subject in some homes, but it is about disciplining a child. Others may call discipline as violence. There is a huge difference between discipline
The issue of spanking is whether it is justifiable or an act of child abuse. Some child specialists, such as Christine Walsh and Michael Boyle, argue that if a parent must administer a spanking, it should not be through anger and only as a last option when other forms of discipline have been deemed unsuccessful. They say that for a spanking to be instructive it must be...
The term corporal punishment means the intentional infliction of pain on the body for purposes of punishment. "Spanking can be defined as the use of physical force aimed at causing children to experience pain but not injury, for the purposes of correction and control of youthful behavior"(https://www.123helpme.com/preview.asp?id=32539). Spanking is a controversial topic and should not be taken lightly.
For decades, parents around the world have been seeking out effective ways to discipline their child. Many parents have tried everything, from spanking to timeouts, in order to find the disciplinary action that their child best responds to. Nowadays, people are beginning to question whether or not spanking is an acceptable form of punishment for a misbehaving child. No matter what someone else believes, it is truly up to the parent to decide the proper form of discipline for their child. In bell hooks article “Justice: Childhood Love Lessons,” she provides many reasons as to why spanking is never acceptable. As a matter of fact, she fails to call it spanking, rather she repeatedly uses the term “abuse.” Although bell hooks has many good
Spanking is an extremely controversial form of punishment which experts are effortlessly trying to push parents to establish other effective
...E. (2000). Child Outcomes of Nonabusive and Customary Physical Punishment by Parents: An Updated Literature Review. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review. doi:10.1023/A:1026473020315.
"Summary of Research on the Effects of Corporal Punishment." End Corporal Punishment. EndCorporalPunishment.org, Apr. 2013. Web. 12 May 2014. .
Any parent who has threatened to spank a child to modify behavior has observed the immediate change in demeanor. Psychologists tell us, however, that corporal punishment has no more of a desired effect on a child in the long term than alternative disciplinary methods such as a timeout or revoking privileges. Sweden proved that corporal punishment is no more effective than alternative methods and law enforcement officers are no more burdened by the laws put in place to protect the physical integrity of children. If in fact opponents and proponents are both right, their methods both work equally as well as the other, which one is the right one? Can they both be right? Unless we are going to make it legal to go around hitting each other for being snarky, rude, disrespectful, not paying attention, or just out of irritation due to undesirable behavior, the right thing to do is protect the most innocent of our kind. The right thing to do is give our children the same rights we give our family, friends, neighbors, and strangers. The moral thing to do is lead by example. The answer is