Spanking Social Problem

Introduction

A common social problem that must be addressed is parents using physical discipline or spankings as a way to punish or correct their children. To spank your child means to hit them any place on their bodies to correct the bad behavior. Spanking is a serious issue because parents are not aware of the affects of physical discipline on a child. The laws in most states are that parents are allowed to beat their children but they may not break skin or leave a mark. Many people do not understand the danger of spanking children, it can be damaging not only physically but also mentally. This problem relates to my area of interest because I would like to work within the Child Welfare aspect of social work. I believe that this issue is

serious and something that needs to be addressed.

Importance of Problem
This issue is very important because as a social worker you will experience cases where a child is being abused. Many parents do not see spanking kids as abusing them but many also do not understand to what degree they are allowed to spank children. This is why it is important to either eliminating spanking children all together, or adequately educated the parents on the dangers of spanking. Spanking kids affect can affect their physical body, their mental health and may even be fatal.
Who’s affected?
A common question is who are more likely to be spanked or who’s is more likely to be the spanker.

As results show it is more common that African American mothers spank their children in comparison to white women (Huang & Lee, 2008). Younger mothers under the age of 25 would spank children as compared to mother over the age of 25. Parents who were spanked will more likely use this style of discipline than those who weren’t, and also parents that are from the South and those of Christian faith, seem to use this style of discipline (Berlin, Ispa, Fine, Malone, Brooks-Gunn, Brady-Smith, Bai, 2009). Also it was more common for boys to be spanked before a girl. There also was a correlation with mothers who were in good health and had a good relationship with the fathers were less likely to spank children.

Spanking children can affect society as well by affecting the behavior of the child; spanking kids can have an effect on the behavior of the child (Levine, Rebekah, & Carnnao, 2014). Children may internalize and/or externalize behaviors. Some ways children will internalize the behavior maybe children become depressed, withdraw from others, changes within sleep patterns and many more. Children that are spanked before the age 1, do not understand why they are being spanked so they internalize behavior and are most likely to do the same the that was considered deemed for punishment (Maguire-Jack & Gromoske, 2012)

.
Children that are spanked before the age one was more likely to be aroused more often and intensely according (Gromoske & Maguire-Jack, 2012) .A way that children will externalize behaviors may be children began to hit others, and act out in dangerous lashes. This is very important because it affects the way a child will act in a society. Research has suggested that those who are spanked are more likely to engage in fights in grade school. This reasoning is the child has processed an idea that when someone does something wrong, I can hit them; just as the parent treats the child.