Spanking Does More Harm Than Good Essay

Although most would condemn spanking publicly, the idea of corporal punishment has long been ingrained in the human mind. The earliest accounts of spanking are from the Hebrew Bible. Sailors were spanked as a punishment for not attending to their duties. Up until the twentieth century, spanking was a form of discipline that was accepted by society. Only recently has spanking been frowned upon. The earliest person widely known to question the practice was Benjamin Spock in the nineteen forties. Spock was concerned about the issue of child abuse and theorized that there was a connection between corporal punishment and child abuse. Many people today still approve of corporal punishment despite the evidence that suggests that spanking is not as harmless as some of us would like to believe. Although Spanking has long been accepted as normal, it is harming todays children, and needs to
Dr. Elizabeth Gershoff listed many negative effects of spanking in her article “More Harm than Good: A Summary of Scientific Research on the Intended and Unintended Effects of Corporal Punishment on Children”. Spanking leads to aggressive behavior. Spanking sets the example for children that violence is an acceptable. Children who are spanked are more likely to resort to violence when in difficult situations because it is what they have seen their parents do. Catherine Taylor, Community and Health Sciences professor at Tulane University, states that spanking can increase a child’s odds of being aggressive by fifty percent (Park). Spanking can also result in antisocial behavior. Children who are spanked are more likely to be distrustful of others, less likely to be empathetic, and have less self-esteem. This goes back to the issue of spanking breaking the trust between a child and parent. Children who are distrustful of their parents at an early age are more likely to be distrustful of other people later on in their