Child Abuse And Corporal Punishment Research Paper

Living in the twenty-first century you rarely ever see someone spank their child or hear the word spank come out of a parent’s mouth. I see too many parents today that are too self-righteous to “spank” their children, because many people see spanking as form of abuse. Many parents in today’s world use more reasonable punishments for their misbehaving children. Some parents put their children in time-outs, deny them of their freedom, take toys away and ground them. I have seen parents use these methods because there are more reasonable ways of punishing their child for being disobedient. However, not everybody in today’s world uses these methods for punishing children; some parents use the act of spanking for punishment. Spanking was a popular punishment back in the 1900s, but is a very debatable topic in today’s society.

Spanking is not evil, nor illegal, but parents need to be wise about how and why they are spanking their children. This past year, I learned that punishing a child must be done with the mindset of improving the child’s behavior, not out frustration because the child is not behaving correctly. Punishing a child too severely can lead to negative effects for the child rather than an improvement on their behavior.

While reading Cleverley & Phillips ' Visions of Childhood I found that many views of the past relating to corporal punishment have changed significantly. During my readings I read things that instantly stood out to me. The first being how many issues and their solutions revolved around religion. John Wesley, was the founder of the Methodist Movement, and he believed that children were born with sin and that it was the parental duty to discipline the unruly child, starting at an early age. During this time period, corporal punishment was a common practice. Wesley used reference to the Bible verse in Proverbs to declare, “Spare the rod, spoil the child”, (Cleverly and Phillips, 1986) in turn parents believed they were doing God’s will with their harsh punishments.

Once considered an appropriate parenting strategy, corporal punishment is progressively being deemed as a risk factor to children’s development by health professionals (Durrant, 2008). Corporal punishment does have detrimental effects on a child’s development (Gershoff, 2012). It models aggression, impairs cognitive and emotional development, and establishes antisocial behavior in children (Straus, 1999; Gershoff, 2012).

A physical punishment, or in other words physical discipline, inflicted by adult partakers aimed to impose physical pain on minors. Minors are persons under a specific age, generally under the age of majority, the age of adulthood, that is standardized or stated by law. For example, in Ontario, Canada, the age of majority is set at 18, but in other Canadian provinces and territories the age of majority differs. Corporal punishment can be inflicted by partakers in home, schools or other locations to reinforce discipline. There are many ways in which corporal punishments can be inflicted by such as spanking the buttocks of a minor with bare hands, or with sharp objects, flogging, whipping, beating, etc.

Children need discipline, but corporal punishment is not the answer. In an article by Susan Perry a meta-analysis is studies and proves that corporal punishment is a problem to children. This specific study is centered around spanking, and it showed that children were more aggressive, had a negative relationship with their parents, more likely to have mental health issues, low self esteem and lower cognitive abilities. This research also proved that corporal punishment did not improve the behavior of children and also proved that corporal punishment led to

Many studies have come out with negative effects that can come about from using many forms of corporal punishment. As parents we need to ask ourselves are we able to control ourselves when we are upset at our kids? Are we able to be fair to our kids? Can the things we do to our children come back and turn out to be used against us and others? “Corporal punishment

Discipline is one of the basic things a child learns from his parents before he or she faces the outside world to learn more about life as a whole. Teaching this trait can depend on how the parent shows it to their child and how they explain the importance of having this trait both in and out of their homes. Misbehaving children cannot be avoided as they are curious little beings and they have a tendency to explore. But there are some parents, even teachers, who do not tolerate misbehaving and they resort to corporal punishments such as spanking to make sure the child never forgets how painful it is to misbehave as they will remember the punishment entailed to it and become more disciplined. However, not all children would understand the

There have also been dissenting views regarding the use of corporal punishment; some scientists hold the view that there is no correlation between spanking and delinquent behavior among children; they assert that delinquency comes about when there is excessive abuse by parents, but when punishment is meted in moderation, there is no impact on the child’s psychological growth. A Canadian study showed that children who were spanked by their parents also were most likely to have been assaulted by the said parents, either through kicking or punching as compared to their counterparts who were never spanked. An American study also indicated that infants spanked by their parents were more likely to end up with injuries, “infants in their first year of life who had been spanked by their parents in the previous month were 2.3 times more likely to suffer an injury requiring medical attention than infants who had not been spanked” (Durrant and Ron).

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.

Corporal punishment of children is becoming a worldwide topic of discussion. Policies have been developed in 53 countries prohibiting corporal punishment in all aspects; unfortunately, the United States is not included in this count (Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment of Children). Unfortualy in the united states Prohibition is still to be achieved in homes, some alternative care, some daycare, some schools and some penal institutions. State laws confirm the right of parents to inflict physical punishment on their children and legal provisions against violence and abuse are not interpreted as prohibiting all corporal punishment in childrearing. “The near universal acceptance of corporal punishment in “disciplining” children necessitates a clear statement in law that all corporal punishment, however light, is prohibited and the repeal of all legal defenses for its use” (Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment of Children) The number of countries prohibiting corporal punishment continues to rise, as well as the amount of research looking at the effects of corporal punishment. Corporal punishment has been shown to have adverse effects on children in many ways including increased anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and antisocial behavior.

Corporal punishment is hared way for children. According to Carol Bower, in the article "Positive Discipline and a Ban on Corporal Punishment Will Help Stop Cycles of Violence." parents rely on corporal punishment on their children because violence is an acceptable way to solve problems. “The data showed that 57% of parents with children under 18 used corporal punishment, and 33% used severe corporal punishment in the form of beatings” (Bower). Many parents chose to use corporal punishment on children by giving harsh spankings. This research paper will show the corporal punishment against children by Spanking. Corporal punishment is inhumane and goes against human rights. Parents must not use corporal punishment on their children, so parents have to define the best way to avoid corporal punishment by using a nonviolent way of discipline.

Mankind has successfully survived the pitfalls of the natural world and escaped extinction for thousands of years; moreover, though humanity has evolved within the technical world extraordinarily, human nature has remained stagnant. From Athens and ancient Egypt, to pre-Columbian America, children were hit in every great civilization without exception (Maurel). The United States of America, a country founded upon the ideals of freedom and individual liberties, has long practiced the time-honored method of corporal punishment, most effectively: spanking. Though this age-old method of discipline has been present within nearly every pivotal society and civilization to date, many nations have taken the initiative to federally ban the use of corporal

When I was in middle school at St. Mary’s Catholic School, in Ethiopia, I used to see our teachers using different techniques to punish my classmates. I remember an incident in middle school where a friend of mine was punished in a harmful way because he failed to answer a question. Although the use of corporal punishment in schools is intended to change the behavior of the student, teachers should not be allowed to use this method to punish their students as it is not effective for the child’s behavioral change, and it affects the student’s behavior psychologically and physically.

Every effort is made to distribute our findings so that all of the public cannot ignore the wholesale infliction of pain and suffering onto our school children, and the role “paddling” schools play in teaching our children that physically aggressive and coercive resolutions of conflict are legitimate. Contributing to the problem of violence by making children feel rejected and isolated, corporal punishment is unsafe in and of itself, but its discriminate application may be co-incident with problems unique to racial and gender identity and esteem, as well as academic and social confidence and competence.