corporal purnishment

Corporal Punishment and Spanking in children
Spanking and the use of Corporal Punishment are the most common forms of punishment used today for younger children. 67% of parents today use some form of corporal or physical punishment. Spanking and Corporal Punishment is the use of physical force to cause pain with the intent to control the child. Mothers are primarily the ones to spank, because they are the ones who are with the children more. Young parental age and lower income seem to predict spanking in children. Children that were spanked as a child are more likely to repeat the pattern whenever they have children. Spanking is thought to help control children but research from numerous studies show that this is not the case. Children who were spanked more are more likely to misbehave in school, have behavioral problems and start using drugs. Spanking and the use of Corporal Punishment is a huge debate among the child development field. Most parents support that spanking is ok, while researchers who study the effects of spanking suggest that spanking has some negative effects on children. Spanking and the use of Corporal Punishment should be if at all possible steered away from because it causes too many negative effects on children and on their development. If it is at possible one should find other ways to discipline their children instead of using physical punishment.
Researcher’s view of Spanking
Wendy Walsh (2002) states that spanking in severe forms can lead to antisocial behavioral outcomes in children. Children who are spanked in my opinion seemed to have this type of behavior especially if I knew that they had been spanked frequently and severely. McCord (1996) suggests that physical punishment gives children pain and with that it may lead the child to believe that it is ok to treat others that way and to cause harm to others. This is why there are so many violent children in this world, because we have parents who spank and hit their children and this is what the children see all the time. Of course these children are going to do what they have seen done to them their whole lives and this viscous cycle of physical punishment is kept in swing. Some research has even shown that parent’s use of spanking actually works against what they are trying to accomplish. Children do not learn anything from being spanked. I can say this from experience. The only thing that spanking does is stops the behavior right away. Parents will try to spank the child to make them behave but ten minutes later the child has gone and misbehaved again. Why you might say? The answer is because the parent never really taught them in the first place they just gave them a spanking and did not put forth the effort to teach them why they did something wrong.
According to the Cultural Spillover Theory, created by (Baron and Straus 1987;Baron, Straus, and Jafee 1988; Straus 1985) the more we as a society use force to secure a pleasing end the more we will have individuals who will use force to attain to their own goals. Society is constantly putting forth these ideas that it is ok to use force when you are trying to establish but in reality all we are doing is teaching the children and people that it is ok to use force to get what we want. In the 1975 National Family Violence Survey showed that children who were physically punished showed that they had physically assaulted and hurt their siblings more than three times during the year. I believe this just stands to show that violence does begat violence because look at how many times it showed the children hurting their siblings.
According to (Larzelere, 1986; Lefkowitz, Eron, Walder, &ump; Huesmann, 1977; Maurer, 1974; Parke &ump; Slaby, 1983; Straus, 1991) the most common of stressors known from spanking is that it increases the violent behavior for that child. Once a child has seen violence that is what he or she knows so that is what he or she will be prone to do in the future.
Several studies conducted by (Homes &ump; Robins, 1988; Maurer, 1974; and Straus 1994) show that the use of physical punishment leads to more depression in children. Bryan and Freed ( 1982) showed how college students who were physically punished showed higher levels of depression, fewer friends and more negative social interactions. Some research has shown that the authoritarian style of parenting, which is harsh, controlling and low in warmth has children who are more aggressive. This makes sense because think about it if a parents is strict and harsh towards their children and that is what they see displayed in their home all the time then that is what the children are going to do they are going to look towards their parents and model after what they have seen their whole lives.
Christina Rodriquez (2003) states that when children grow up in homes with very severe punishment they will more than likely experience anxiety symptoms. Because of all the severe punishment these children learn to be more anxious and on their toes all the time. Some children may even be afraid to talk to their parents because they know that if they say something wrong then they will get punished for this behavior. Also from Rodriquez (2003) she informs us that harsher discipline resulted in higher rates of depression among children. I would sometimes see these children in school and wonder what it is that has happened in their home life to make them so depressed all the time. From a study results have shown that when children are faced with overwhelming physical punishment they might be prone to develop maladaptive exploratory cognition(Rodiriquez 2003), which is:
According to the cognitive view, the individual's negative and distorted thinking is the basic psychological problem in the depressive syndrome. The distorted cognitions are supported by maladaptive cognitive schemata, which involve immature "either-or" rules of conduct or inflexible and unattainable self-expectations. These schemata are probably acquired early in development and, if uncritically carried into adulthood, serve to predispose the individual to depression. Since these schemata are long-term identifiable psychological patterns that influence attitude and behavioral responses, they may constitute a cognitive dimension of the depression-prone individual's personality ( Beck &ump; Kovacs 1978, 525).
From other research it has shown that there are cultural differences in physical punishment. Lisa Berlin et al(2009) states that white children are more likely to develop outward behavior problems but this is not the case for African American Children. She also points out to us in a study conducted by (Slade and Wissow 2004) on toddlers that those who were physically punished between birth and two years old only showed behavior problems if they were white, this did not affect African American or Latino children. Some of the reasons they believe this to be the case is because African Americans value respect more of their elders than do white Americans. Eric Slade and Lawrence Wissow (2004) found that Spanking is commonly accepted and that African American children and parents may not see it as being harsh or unfair. Latino’s were shown in this study to not use physical punishment as much as African and White Americans. This is just suggesting that physical punishment may have negative effects on white children, but it may not apply African Americans or Latino’s. This shows that in different culutures there are different views on spanking and also different effects on a child’s development.
This same study conducted by Berlin et al(2009) found that one third of the one year olds and about half of two year olds in the survey had been spanked in the last week which indicates that there was a considerable of spanking in low income families. The reasons for this are primarily stress in the home, when the parents are low on money and have bills to pay and the children are running around being kids it adds stress to their lives so they spank their children more often.
Benjet and Kazdin(2003) give us three different views of spanking. First view is pro-corporal punishment; this view fits with the biblical view of “spare the rod and spoil the child.” The second view is the anti-corporal punishment this view states that spanking is detrimental to the child and that “violence begets violence.” The third view is that of conditional corporal punishment, this view states that spanking is neither bad nor good but it rather it depends on the conditions. For all these views most individuals will fit under one and stick to one. Benjet and Kazdin(2003) informs us that spanking is linked with antisocial behavior in children, criminal activity in adults, a poorer relationship with parents and it increases the likely hood of being a victim of abuse or of abusing a partner or children. (Kazdin, 2001) tells us that you can use better forms of discipline such as reinforcement techniques without the use of any form of punishment. I have seen these techniques work but it does take considerable amount of time for them to work because as a parent they have to put forth that extra effort to teach their children instead of just spanking them all the time. No one ever said that parenting was going to be easy so as parents one should learn this and put to use good practices and techniques that will work for that child.
In a study conducted by Eric Slade &ump; Lawrence Wissow (2004) they found that spanking before the age of two was a predictor of behavior problems in school age children, but this was only found on non-Hispanic white children. Non-Hispanic White Children who were spanked more than 5 times per week had a greater risk of developing behavior problems that required their parents to meet the teachers (Slade &ump; Wissow, 2004). In the same study Slade &ump; Wissow suggest that infants and toddlers do not have the capacity because they have not developed stress. (2004). I can see how this is the case because very young infants and toddlers brains have not developed enough to understand why it is that they are being spanked. It is always sad to hear about a child under the age of two being spanked when all you have to do for infants is take care of their needs and for toddlers redirect their behavior.