Sould Spanking be Outlawed?

About 60% of parents in the United States use spanking as a method to discipline their young children. In most cases parents believe that spanking is the only effective way to discipline their children. According to the “International Encyclopedia of Marriage and Family”, spanking is often referred as; “one or two flat-handed swats on a child's wrist or buttocks, but would not include a beating with a whip or a belt, for others, spanking also includes slaps and pinches to the leg, arm, back, or even the head, as long as no marks are left”. While some parents favor spanking children, others are against spanking children because they feel that teaching them and giving them consequences is the way method for a child to behave. I believe that parents should not spank their children because it is not only an incorrect way to punish their children, but because spanking can bring psychological damage to the child.

Spanking. It is a hotly debated topic, and everyone who has an opinion seems to have a strong one. It is either child abuse or it is a fundamental form of discipline. It is traumatizing or it is character-building. It is repugnant or it is commendable. Many have difficulty removing their emotions from such a controversial topic. I, myself, struggle to consider objectively a situation I’ve always deemed moral and paramount to a child’s development, but with the cruciality of raising the next generation, objectivity is imperative. Because children are wayward and often misunderstand instructions, parents must decide early on how they will discipline their child. This raises the controversial question: Should parents use corporal punishment

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).

From helping them read and write, to teaching them right from wrong, parenting is a huge job and adds a lot of pressure on parents because they want their child to succeed. However, different parenting styles brings on different characteristics and reactions out of their children, which is why when it comes to parenting, one is entitled to their own opinion on how to discipline their children accordingly. When it comes to disciplining, it can be done by taking away television time, phone time, or even taking away a favorite snack, but what about spanking as a form of discipline? Spanking by far, is considered the biggest controversy when discipline is being discussed, and there are many opinions on if spanking helps or hurts the child. With

Brigitte Vittrup and George W. Holden surveyed 108 children aged six to ten years old after they watched videos of children being disciplined by either spanking, reasoning, withdrawing privileges, or time-out. The results show most children rating reasoning as the fairest form of punishment, and spanking as the least fair. This research illustrates that when parents spank their children, they are doing so in a manner that the children think is unfair, and therefore unnecessarily antagonize the child as opposed to disciplining him or her in a way that is

Social tolerance of spanking has been the norm for thousands of years. The most widely accepted source coming from the bible. He who spares the rod hates the son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline (New International Version, Proverbs 13:24). Religion and culture have been a very common excuse for the spanking of children world-wide. “Hitting children is intertwined with religious beliefs, cultural views, and social policy… (Kazden & Benjet). However, the world has changed and evolved into a much more civilized society. In this country alo...

In this article, the author expresses the effects that spanking your child as a form of punishment at the age earlier ages of toddlerhood such as to the effects it has on the child when he or she becomes older. Spanking is a very common form of punishment at this age and used frequently across the United States as well as other countries. Many parents do not understand the effects that spanking has on their children now and what effect it has on their future and that there are other forms of punishment that can leave the same impact but cause less emotional and physical damage.

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...

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 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.