Since the birth of the nation Americans have wrestled about the topic of spanking children for discipline. We waver back and forth for a while it is okay and expected that we will discipline the children by using corporal punishment. Then everything changes and for years it is no longer acceptable. It has been the subject of many heated debates and will continue to do so as long as we have parents and as long as they raise children. In the long run we will find out if spanking turned out to be an asset or a liability but for the immediate future it is something America needs to go back to using for guidance purposes. We are seeing more violence in teenagers than ever before, the juvenile crime rate seems to be rising and for the last two decades or so spanking has been largely out of favor in many circles. It seems the longer we go without using spanking as a method of discipline the more violent our teens are becoming. Spanking when used as a form of discipline and not abuse is an effective tool.
Many Americans who are over the age of 30 remember being spanked as a child. Swats on the rear end as a form of discipline was used for everything from lying to talking to one’s parents with disrespect (Matrz, 2001). The number of swats and severity of the swats was usually directly tied to the seriousness of the offense. Following the era of free love and the me generation during the 1960’s and 1970’s Americans began to take a second look at the use of spanking for punishment and turned away from it. However, official’s courts around the nation have ruled over and over again that spanking is indeed an acceptable form of discipline (Matrz, 2001).
State officials and House of Prayer parishioners may not agree on much,...
... middle of paper ...
... can be severe, we are going to continue to deal with situations similar to Columbine.
Works Cited
Bayfield, Ted, (1996 July). Is our effort to avoid all `violence' creating our very violent society? Vol. 23, Alberta Report / Western Report, 07-29-1996, pp 44.
Head, John (2001 April). Spare the rod, spoil the child? Race, Region, and Gender Play Roles in Support for Corporal Punishment. The Atlanta Constitution, pp C1.
Jones, Elliot (2000 Nov.) idebate.org
Martz, Ron (2001 March). Welfare officials acknowledge value of spanking. , The Atlanta Constitution Journal, pp C1.
Schwarzbeck, Dr. Charles, (2001 Feb). No one wins when parent spanks child. , The Washington Times, pp D2.
Straus, co-author (with Denise A. Donnelly) of "Beating the Devil Out of Them: Corporal Punishment in American Children"
Dupper, David R. , and Amy E. Montgomery Dingus. "Corporal Punishment in U.S. Public Schools : A Continuing Challenge for School Social Workers." Schools and Children 30.4 (2008): 243-250. Print.
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.
The idea of physical punishment has been visible throughout our nation’s history. The 30’s, 40’, 50’s all encouraged the use of strong physical discipline towards children, it wasn’t until the 60’s and 70’s that this idea became taboo. “Many of us in the room had been smacked, whipped, or beaten as children...
Hurley, Jennifer (1999). Child Abuse Opposing Views . San Diego : Greenhaven Press, Inc. print.
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...
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...
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 general acceptance, and sometimes support, of corporal punishment as a method of discipline is an aspect of the American culture (Barnett, Miller-Perrin, Perrin 61).
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.
First of all, spanking does not lead to violence. Our surrounding world and media do. "The average sixteen-year- old has watched 18,000 murders during his formative years, including a daily bombardment of stabbings, shootings, hangings, decapitations, and general dismemberment" (Meier 34). It seems unjust to blame parents who are trying to raise their children properly for today's violence. If a child touches a hot stove he does not become a more violent person because of it, he just learns not to do it again because he learned a valuable lesson from the pain (Meier 34).
Winstok, Z (2013) ‘Israeli Mothers’ willingness to use corporal punishment to correct the misbehaviour of their elementary school children’, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, vol.29, no.1, p.44-65.
Smith, B. L. (2012). The case against spanking. American Psychological Association, 43(4), 60. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/04/spanking.aspx
I personally do not advocate spanking. I could not imagine losing my temper to a point where I thought I needed to spank my child. While I do anticipate that having children will be a real test of patience, I do not expect that I will lose my patience so much that I will spank my children. I find spanking to be a real contradiction to what most parents tell their children. Most parents do not allow their children to hit, whether they are angry or not. Even when kids think another kid did something wrong, or bad, they are still not allowed to hit. If a parent tells a kid this, and then turns around and spanks the kid when they do something wrong, how will the kid ever learn that hitting is wrong? In my opinion, there has to be a better way to discipline children. I think that sending a child to a room where they cannot interact with anyone else, and then taking away a privilege would be a better way of handling discipline. Also, when I was a child, I can remember that when I was angry, my dad would come in to my room after I had time to cool down and talk to me about why I was angry. I can remember these as really fond times with my dad. It helped me identify why I was so angry, and most of the time it was at my mom for not letting me have my way. When I could identify why I was angry, my dad and I could come up with a solution to solve the problem. I think that rather than spanking, this is a good way to discipline children.
"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