Today with the wide spread issue of child abuse at hand, the question arises on the ethics of using corporal punishment in child rearing. Psychologists define corporal punishment as "the use of physical force with the intention of causing a child to feel pain but not injury, for the purpose of correction or control of the child's behavior." Most of you at some point of your lives plan on having children, so you as well as most parents today may be plagued by a difficult decision: whether or not to spank your children. If you don't use corporal punishment as discipline, will your children grow up spoiled? Or if you as parents use spanking as punishment, will you be causing your children an early childhood trauma that will branch into many difficulties as an adult? The choice of taking the right path in child development may cause so much frustration, that one may toss out any alternatives to corporal punishment on the notion that parents from previous generations hit their children, and they grew up fine.
Today I will prove to you that this ignorance can have an extremely harmful effect on children as corporal punishment is ineffective and does more harm than good. Corporal punishment has more negative effects than positive, is used improperly, and is unnecessary as there are more positive, effective alternative methods of punishment.
Popular belief may be that a child who is not spanked will become spoiled, or that pain builds character; a child needs corporal punishment to build strength, and to learn about the let-downs of the real world. In actuality, psychologists have proven that the pain felt from corporal punishment, both physical and emotional, can be seriously detrimental to the child's emotional well being. One of the foremost dangers of corporal punishment is that often, parents get carried away and blindly inflict serious bodily harm upon the child; for this reason, physical punishment frequently leads to physical abuse. There is also a truckload of emotional side effects that come along with corporal punishment. This type of punishment can suppress many responses besides the punished one. Wayne Weiten, a psychologist at Santa Clara University suggests, "some children who are frequently and severely punished become withdrawn, inhibited, and less active than other children." Often, corporal punishment will trigger strong emotional responses, including fear, anxiety, anger, and resentment. As documented by psychologists Parke and Slaby in a 1983 study, physical punishment often leads to an increase in aggressive behavior: children who are subjected to a lot of physical punishment tend to become more aggressive than the average youngster. This is exemplified in that many parents depend on physical punishment to punish a child for hitting other children by hitting the child. In this manner, parents are blindly serving as models of such behavior. The child therefore witnesses such aggressive behavior and learns to be more aggressive himself. Studies done by psychologist Jean Giles-Sims have also shown that having been spanked as a child is related to later psychological problems including as increased chance of being depressed and suicidal, or becomeing violent and delinquent. Also according to Dr. Wayne Weiten, it is common for punishment to trigger strong emotional responses, including fear, anxiety, anger, and resentment. Such strong emotions can temporarily disrupt normal functioning and generate hostility toward the source of the punishment, such as the parent.
In order for a child to learn, he or she must understand his or her mistakes. In the case of corporal punishment, many parents fail to administer the discipline properly. Physical punishment often goes unexplained or becomes a device of the parents' own frustration. Often times, children fail to realize the cause of the punishment. This is due to either a lack of explanation of the part of the parent, or a lack of understanding on the part of the child, especially in very young children. Sometimes, a simple explanation is not eough to get through to a child, or if the punishment is delayed, the child may have forgotten the cause. Thinking back to when I was a child, remembering the most severe episodes of corporal punishment, I was never able to recall what it was that got me into so much trouble later on. What good did corporal ever do me then? If the point of physical discipline is to teach a lesson, to give a child incentive to halt a negative behavior, how effective can it possibly be if the child fails to remember what the negative behavior was? If the parent chooses the easy way out and hits the child rather than sitting down and reasoning with him, explaining why the behavior was wrong, then nothing is being accomplished.
The worst way to administer corporal punishment is to combat one's own frusteration. All too familiar is the scene in the shopping mall where the terrible two year old jumps up and down screaming and whining to get his way, when the foreboding hand of Mommy or Daddy comes crashing down and whacks some sense into him. This reaction usually provokes an intensified screaming and whining and the child is now completely lost to insubordination. Nothing has been achieved and the parent is now exasperated to the point of frustration. What would have happened if the parent had just remained calm and let the child scream? Sure it would be the cause of minor embarrassment, but generally speaking, the child would have exhausted himself in a matter of minutes and would have been easier to handle. This idea may seem too easy and impractical, but the majority of the public would not have given it a try. Common belief is "spare the rod, spoil the child", that by ignoring this behavior will actually promote continued such behavior in the future. In actuality, by failing to reinforce it, with violence or appeasement, the behavior will extinguish itself. If the child does not get a reaction, he will get bored. Parents usually fail to realize this as they get caught up in their own frustration. The kid may be making an embarrassing scene, and the parent can't stop it. As frustration builds, anger becomes a tool against the child; the parent gets carried away, and this increasing rage becomes dangerous. Especially in this day in age where child abuse is becoming an increasing societal problem. Only one in fifteen in this class surveyed did not know of someone who had been abused as a child.
So now let's talk about alternative discipline methods to corporal punishment. All fifteen of you surveyed exhibited an interest in a better way, even those of you who do believe in corporal punishment. As an ineffective mean of discipline, psychologists suggest that even a vigourous spanking isn't felt by a child an hour later. In contrast, withdrawing valued priveleges can give children hours to contemplate the wisdom of changing their ways. When a child exhibits inappropriate behavior, to truly extinguish it from existence the parent must first engage in discussion with the child. The reason for the parent's disapproval must thoroughly be explained given the constraints of their age. How can a child be expected to discontinue his inappropriate actions if he does not understand. Granted the discussion alone won't be enought to stop the behavior, so the parent must then use some form of discipline. An enormous shortcoming of any sort of punishment is that it only tells thge child what not to do. On the other hand, reinforcing exhibitions of appropriate behavior usually hastens the elimination of inappropriate behavior. All in all, better methods of child discipline would be: Positive reinforcement, rewarding the child for the good things s/he has done; time outs, setting the child in solitude after doing wrong; the withdrawal of valued privileges; restriction, or grounding; or substitution of negative behaviour with positive behavior, when the child does something wrong, replace it with something right. Corporal punishment is a more serious problem than one may think. People are unaware of how frequently violence is used in the home. For most parents, according to psychologist Murray A Straus, spanking and slapping are mundane and taken for granted events and in most instances are likely to be forgotten. In his 1994 study, Straus found that 3 to 5 year old children are spanked a mean of more than 150 times a year, an estimate ten times greater than what interviewed mothers documented. Given the side effects of corporal punishment, and the frequency of which it is administered, our children are in danger. As a future parent, you can take into consideration the ineffectiveness of this harmful discipline method: know that it has more negative than positive aspects, know that it is used incorrectly, and know that there are other better ways to discipline your child. Thank you.