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It is the natural scheme of life. Human beings produce children and thus are classified as parents. It is and has always been the parent's job to raise and nurture the child, to teach it right from wrong, and to protect it from the harshness of the surrounding environment. However, when the child strays or behaves in a destructive manner, what steps should a parent take to correct such behavior? Some psychologists suggest that a good old-fashioned spanking is just the ticket.
Others say that such action will emotionally damage the child later in life. With the parent ultimately responsible for the child, it's hard to know what is right or wrong when your 3 year-old is beating his head against the floor in a full-blown temper tantrum. 25 years ago, parents would have picked the child up, spanked it, and taken care of the tantrum effectively. Today, parents are more apt to try anything other that a swat on the behind. Reason, however, doesn't impress a 3 year-old so the behavior is often ignored because passive parents don't want to risk mentally scaring their child. The experts have basically made a huge issue out of something very simple. If spanking is as harmful as they say it is, then every human being over the age of 30 is a mental case.
Spanking is not the answer for everything, but in some cases it is the only answer. The growing trends for passive discipline in the United States stem largely from the revelation that there were people out there that severely abused their children. As more and more abuse cases were brought to light, laws were changed to protect the child. 1 Psychological issues soon began to crop up and spanking soon came under fire, being called a form of child abuse and in some cases punishable under the law. Researchers have studied the effects of spanking and the effects are not to be taken lightly. First of all, the experts claim that spanking doesn't teach a child self-direction. The child learns to do what the parent says or else face the consequences.
This leads to other issues, including lying and cheating to avoid a spanking, which in some cases result in a spanking as well. Instead of regulating the behavior, it just trades one form of bad behavior for another. Second, and probably the most talked about consequence of spanking is that it can lead to hereditary violence. In other words, a child who is spanked could display violence with siblings and classmates, and as adults with spouses and their own children. Psychologist Terry Luce of the University of Tulsa 2 says his research in aggressive behavior shows that children as young as pre-school age will hit other children as a result of being spanked themselves. Spanking also sends a disturbing message.
It tells the average child that hitting is a way to solve problems and that it is all right for a big person to strike a small one. Another effect experts say spanking can have is that it erodes the parent / child bond. A large part of that bond is the child's desire to please the parent. The more the parent spanks the child, the less likely it is for that child to want to please the parent.
Desensitization is also a factor here. Parents that spank may feel they have to spank longer and harder to get the same message across and eventually the child stops responding all together. Along with this, a child may be too young to understand the lesson that a spanking is trying to get across. Also, spanking your child can lead to a gradual increase in the severity of the abuse. Sociologists say that one-third of the parents that spank children with an open hand on the bottom move on to using belts and paddles, then to hitting on the face and head, then to punching, kicking, and beating. 3 The number one cause of infant death according to Luce is parents who beat them under the guise of discipline. Still, in spite of all of this, every state in the union has laws that allow parental corporal punishment. 4 Finally, a study published by the American Medical Association in 1997 suggests that the more a parent uses corporal punishment on a child, the worse his behavior will be over time.
Report author Murray A. Straus who is a sociologist at the University of New Hampshire says that this is the first study that has been able to prove that spanking is not as productive as people think it is. 5 Straus used data from 1986 to 1990 collected from interviews with 900 mothers. The research showed that over that 4 year span, the behavior of the children whose mothers didn't spank them was better. Mothers who spanked their children once or twice a week had a higher instance of misbehavior in their children.
The highest of all were mothers who spanked their children 3 or more times during the week. Their behavior actually got worse over that 4 -year period of time. In addition, anti-social behavior, which Straus defined as lying, cheating, bullying or being cruel to others, was 14 percent higher in the frequently spanked group from 1986 to 1988. 6 In short, spanking is said to be the easy way out, taking care of the problem for the time being, but having adverse effects down later in life. People who are against spanking have come up with a variety of alternative methods of teaching children right from wrong.
Experts say that one of the reasons people spank is because they are unaware of alternative methods of changing undesirable behavior. Since each age group responds differently to different stimulus, these alternatives are broken down in that way. For infants, the best way is to keep it simple. 7 If a child is about to touch something dangerous, grasp the infant's hand instead of slapping it. If the child has something that it shouldn't have, parents can try trading the item for a toy instead of taking the item by force.
The child will only hold on tighter if you try to pull the item away. For toddlers, the key is diversion. Avoid direct clashes with the child, which will only frustrate both parties. Something funny or unexpected, such as tickling a cranky child, or offering the child something different to divert its attention from the undesirable behavior are excellent ways to ease the situation.
In older children, their minds have developed enough that they can listen to reason, so the most widely used alternative is "time-out." Also, since this age group has begun to reason, the punishment should be appropriate and reasonable. The parent should explain why the child is being punished, and what the correct form of behavior is. For children of all ages, good behavior should be reinforced and supported. Hugs and praise go a long way.
The idea of spanking a child for wrong behavior can be traced as far back as the Old Testament of the Bible, and this is one of the premises that parents base their decision of disciplinary tactics. 8 Also, spanking seems to be hereditary. In other words, "my parents spanked me and I turned out just fine, so what's the problem?" While these seem to be shallow reasons to spank a child, there is a certain grain of truth in the latter statement. Anyone who can read a newspaper or turn on a television can see the outbreak of violence among the youth of today. Children born in the last 10 - 15 years have been involved in crimes ranging from fighting and vandalism, to murder and arson. In fact, since 1991, the juvenile crime rate has risen 20 percent and violent crimes among youth have risen 12 percent. 9 That period of time, coincidentally, coincides with the beginning of the passive discipline movement. It doesn't take a degree in sociology or psychology to see the correlation here.
The point is not that spanking can prevent juvenile violence. The point is that spanking presents the child with a viable consequence for his actions. A child must be taught this lesson because when he reaches adulthood, there will be consequences for everything he does. 10 Therefore, the premise that spanking is a short-term solution is totally unfounded. Aside from the need to teach children that there are consequences to every action they commit, there is really no proven positive to spanking. The reason for this is that there has never been a need to defend it, so no positive research has been done.
According to Montgomery, Alabama pediatrician Den Trumbull, when you look at the anti-spanking research, it doesn't quite ring true. 11 For instance, Dr. Straus' research that stated that spanking caused anti-social behavior was widely criticized by Trumbull. First off, the mothers polled in Straus's tudy ranged in age from 14 to 21, ...
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Research essay sample on Anti Social Behavior Period Of Time
