Educated Parenting: What Is Corporal Punishment and Should It Ever Be Used In Raising Children?

January 26, 2006

What Is Corporal Punishment and Should It Ever Be Used In Raising Children?

The corporal or physical punishment of children refers to a wide range of actions intended to cause physical pain. These include such acts as:

pinching,

shaking,

slapping,

punching, and

with or without the use of objects like belts, cords or brushes,

spanking,

hitting, and

beating children.

Each act can be mild or severe, depending on its force and duration.

All such acts constitute violence directed toward children because violence is defined as an "act carried out with the intention of causing physical pain or injury to another person" (Straus, M., Beating the Devil Out of Them: Corporal Punishment in American Families and Its Effects on Children).

Before answering whether these forms of violence should ever be used in raising children, let's look at how many parents are already using them and with which age children.

National surveys show that with 4 and 5 year olds, over 90 percent of parents from all backgrounds and cultural groups admit using one or more forms of corporal punishment, and this percent has remained the same for the last twenty years.

The percentage of parents of school-age children who admit to using corporal punishment hovers around 60 percent and this represents a large reduction from ten years ago. So the use of corporal punishment with these children looks like it is on the decline. With infants and toddlers, about 35 percent of parents indicate using corporal punishment.

In terms of whether any parent should use these forms of violence, the answer is

NO. There is enough violence in this world already, and there are so many better ways of gaining the cooperation and respect of children (See video program for parents, Spanking, Shaking Hitting: What To Do Instead).

It is easy to be seduced into using corporal punishment because it often makes kids comply more quickly with parental requests. But the vast majority of research indicates that when parents make frequent use of corporal punishment, there can be serious, longer term effects, which parents have no way of seeing.

These longer term consequences include children becoming more aggressive outside of the home and becoming abusive with their children and spouses when they become adults.

The best thing for parents to do is to invest their time and energies in improving the overall quality of their relationships with their children, learning positive and non-violent approaches.

It is certainly time to stop using these ancient, discredited and violent practices.

Agree? Disagree?

January 26, 2006 in Parenting Research | Permalink