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Impact of corporal punishment on children
Impact of corporal punishment on children
Spanking as a form of corporal punishment
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This presentation was incredibly moving. I will admit that I was not agreeing with what she had to say at the beginning of the video. Spanking is something that is normal in my family. I did not look at spanking as child abuse. Consequences were normal when I was growing up. Those consequences usual involved spanking. I was once told that spanking builds character. My parents taught me that spanking would be required when I became a parent. Spanking was the way to gain respect from your kids. When I became a parent I could hear my parents voices in my head. If I did not spank my son, then he would not respect me. The few times I did spank my son it did not sit right with me. Being a young mother I did not know of any other way to discipline
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.
Spanking doesn’t allow children to learn the reasons why to act appropriately. When parents use physical punishment, such as spanking, to discipline their children, they do so in order to improve their child’s behavior. According to a report composed by a lead researcher in the field of pediatrics, spanking does not teach children the reason for why they are being punished or why their behavior was wrong. Spanking teaches children to act in a desired way only because of fear of being punished. Being a victim of spanking, I only feared the idea of being spanked, and that is why I changed my behavior for the time being. I did not actually understand the reasoning for why I was being punished. Spanked children do not understand the positive and important reasons for acting properly.
People say spanking can be harmful to a child’s health. They have placed laws in Washington State in regards to spanking and other corporal punishments. But why, why all the fuss, spanking couldn’t be that bad could it? There must be studies to prove that spanking can cause bad child behavior otherwise why would there be laws on this madder? What are the opinions of the experts, and their methods of disciplining children?
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...
...ginning of humanity. It worked then, and it works now. Critics have decided to re-define spanking as abuse. They would like for everyone to believe the propaganda. The truth is, however that spanking has its benefits. A little pain has positive long term results. Parents can expect a well mannered respectful adult to be the result. Parents should decide if they want to spank their children; not society. One parent’s choice of discipline has no value over another’s. The key thing to remember when it comes to discipline is to discipline out of love for the child. Never spank a child while angry. Explain to the child why the spanking has to be given. Afterwards, show some affection. This way the child will feel loved and understand reconciliation (Dobson). The child will have no feelings of resentment. When parents follow these steps, discipline will never be abuse.
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.
"There is a great difference between spanking a child and abusing a child. One is an act of love; the other is an act of hostility" -- James Dobson, MD
Finally, we need to know more about the personal resources of parents that can lessen the incidence of spanking. It is found that spanking sharply decreases as the parent ages. Despite ideological motivations, parents can and should be trained to understand alternative strategies of discipline (Day 93).
Spanking teaches the child that violence is a socially accepted behavior to attain a desired result. To better understand this concept, we must first look at how a child’s brain works. From infancy, children learn through observation and imitation. Studies have shown that infants as young as forty-two minutes can successfully replicate simple facial expressions (Metzloff, Decety 492). By eight months, infants can imitate basic motor movement, even after twenty-four hours have passed since the initial movement occurred. At fourteen months, children can apply an imitation to an external situation up to a week after the initial imitation. (Windell, 67-68, 221). A famous example of this is Albert Bandura’s Bobo doll experiment. Christopher Green of York University helps interpret Bandura’s experiment and results: While acknowledging that certain children may have inherited aggressive personalities, Bandura demonstrated that the majority of personality is learned. Adult models were escorted to a room and shown various toys to play with while child observers watched from outside the room. Among the various toys was a clown “bobo” doll. In some “play” sessions, the models demonstrated aggression toward the doll by punching, kicking, hitting and yelling at it. In other sessions, the models quietly pla...
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...
What do most people believe to be true about the topic? Spanking is the only resource that is most effective. Yet, there are several other types of punishments that can be used in place of spanking. In my opinion, spanking is not the most effective means of punishment. We tell kids growing up that “violence is never the answer” so why should violence, because technically speaking that is what spanking is, be the answer? Why not try to get a child to understand that their actions were wrong in a more non-violent way and not contradict ourselves. What are you trying to instill in your child, fear or violence because either one of those you will accomplish. Other than just the pain taking place during the spanking, the child could also experience
Swat! The entire store tries not to stare at the overwhelmed mother spanking her three-year-old whaling son. As if the screaming tantrum wasn't enough of a side show at the supermarket. This method, or technique perhaps, has been around for decades, even centuries. Generations have sat on grandpa’s lap and listened to the stories of picking their own switch or getting the belt after pulling off a devilish trick. So why then has it become a major controversy in the past few decades? The newest claim is that spanking and other forms of physical punishment can lead to increased aggression, antisocial behavior, physical injury and mental health problems for children. Brendan L. Smith uses many case studies and psychologists findings in his article “The Case Against Spanking” to suggest that parents refrain from physically punishing their children due to lasting harmful effects.
Spanking is a disciplinary act that has been used by parents for years now. It does not seem like a big deal at the time, but spanking does have long term effects that can affect the child even when he or she is a adult. Spanking whether it is appropriate for parents or any guardian of a child should be allowed to spank their child or not. There is a lot of controversy because parents say kids need to be disciplined when they are behaving badly. Others say parents shouldn 't spank their child because they long-term outcome is worse and they are not teaching the child a lesson. Some parents agree with these specialist and don 't spank their child but use other ways of discipline that doesn 't involve hurting
“It hurts and it’s painful inside – it’s like breaking your bones; it’s loud and sore, and it stings; it feels like you’ve been adopted or something and you’re not part of their family; you feel like you don’t like your parents anymore; you feel upset because they are hurting you, and you love them so much, and then all of a sudden they hit you and you feel as though they don’t care about you” (Pritchard 9). These are the feelings of those juveniles who suffer from corporal punishment. Corporal punishment has been one of the main topics of research in Psychology in last few decades. Although people had believed, “Spare the rod and spoil the child” but in the present age of science, research has revealed that the corporal punishment causes more harm to the children instead of having a positive effect on them. According to UNICEF, “Corporal punishment is actually the use of physical measures that causes pain but no wounds, as a means of enforcing discipline” (1). It includes spanking, squeezing, slapping, pushing and hitting by hand or with some other instruments like belts etc. But it is different from physical abuse in which punishment result in wounds and the objective is different from teaching the discipline. Although Corporal punishment is considered to be a mode of teaching discipline and expeditious acquiescence, however, it leads to the disruption of parent-child relationship, poor mental health of juveniles, moral internalization along with their anti-social and aggressive behaviour and it is against the morality of humans.
It has been said that “spanking trains children ‘in violence and domination’, even when it’s moderate” (Saunders 1)...