Spanking

Frequent spanking in early childhood is an established risk factor for later childhood behavioral problems as well as mental disorder in adulthood in Western societies, but the risks haven’t extensively researched in other societies. Recently a study was conducted in Japan to investigate the relatedness between spanking of toddlers and later behavioral problems in Japanese children.

Everyday parents are faced with the challenges of disciplining their children. We all wish there was an instruction booklet that we could magical pull out and get them back on the right path, but no such thing exists. Often times, your child pushes you to the edge of your personal limitations. At this moment it is often we correct our child’s behavior by spanking. Spanking is considered a form of discipline that is acceptable by most and an unacceptable to a smaller crowd. Spanking can lead to psychological problems in early adolescent, which long term can lead to emotional and anger retention.

Researchers have studied that spanking is effective for anyone’s child who had experienced the pain of spanking on their bottoms or any part of their body because it has shown that it has increased the aggressiveness as well as mental issues towards his or her families and peers. For instance, in a book that was based on a true story called “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” where Henrietta had a cervical cancer in her, so years has passed by she had died from the cervical cancer and leaving her children behind. The children had nowhere else to go but to live with their aunt’s house named Ethel. Later Ethel had decided to abuse these children because she had hatred towards Henrietta who Galen was interesting to be with her instead her wife, Ethel. Ethel starves Henrietta’s children by walking them at dawn and forcing them to do chores. In the summer she sends them to Clover to pick the worms off the tobacco leaves and if they ever stop she would beat them. Out of the most of who got abused was Joe Lacks who changed his name to Zakariyya because she would abuse him for no reason by forcing him to stand in the dark basement for hours on end. Over the years now that Ethel has completely crossed the line of abuse he had gotten downright angrier and angrier by having him to have mental disorders, aggressiveness as well as anger because of what he had experienced in the past now that it has permanently affected him for a while by having problems in his later life and becoming an alcoholic, getting himself in trouble as well as murdering someone. Many people say that spanking is a good example of punishing your child, however; parent’s need to realize that if they have crossed the line from spanking it is now considered as abuse

Lansford et al. (2012) used an experiment that was done beginning in 1987 called the Child Development Project in which 585 families with children going into kindergarten participated. In this experiment, mothers filled out questionnaires when their children were 6, 7, and 8 regarding frequency and severity of spanking and amount of externalizing behavior. The children's teachers also filled out a questionnaire regarding amount of externalizing behavior. Mothers were asked to rate the frequency that they spanked their child with their hand and the frequency that they spanked their child with an object on a scale of 0 to 4 with 0 meaning never, 1 meaning less than once a month, 2 meaning about once a month, 3 meaning about once a week, and 4 meaning about every day. Mothers also completed the Child Behavior Checklist which asked them to rate whether statements, such as "argues a lot," were very true or not true of their child (Lansford et al., 2012, p. 228). Teachers were asked to fill out the Teacher Report Form which consisted of the same format and similar statements to the Child Behavior Checklist.

The more a child is spanked between the ages of 3 to 5 the more likely they will become aggressive (Online Psychology). Spanking can cause mental health problems and can have anti-social behavioral issues. Children that get spanked tend to defy their parents and have cognitive difficulties. When parents spank they think it is to help their child now what is right and wrong, but spanking has accidental detrimental outcomes. You don’t have to hurt a child to punish them, in 2014 about 80% of people spanked their kids. If the parent was spanked as a child the parent is more likely to support spanking

Spanking Isn’t Child Abuse, It’s Common Sense, by Ruban Navarrette deals with one of the biggest controversies in parenting ever since the twenty-first century: spanking your child. Ruban’s main point in this article is that fear is essential to respect and children won’t do what we tell them to do unless they fear

1. (Tell the Story of my friend and his son rough housing) 2. Spanking children is an act where the parent and/or governing figure in the child’s immediate circle slap the child, mainly on the buttocks as a punishment. This is very harmful to the physiological and neurological development of children. 3.

Have you ever saw someone hit their child and thought to yourself was that abuse or discipline? Many people understand that punishment and abuse are different, but they don’t know what should or shouldn’t be considered abuse. Theres a big debate on if spanking should be considered punishment or child abuse. Studies have always shown that most abuse goes unreported. There is a point where discipline becomes abuse and that’s when discipline is unfair, anger driven, and inconsistent.

While this review of literature on spanking children is limited in finding evidence in supporting spanking, the research available that opposes spanking is rather compelling. The findings from the reviewed articles provide advice to parents, both new and long-time, on how to discipline their children if they want their children to have the best outcomes. The studies that have been reviewed are only a small amount of what has been published regarding the negative impacts that spanking can have on children. Additionally, this research may be a start for a move in society to begin viewing spanking as a negative child-rearing practice. While there is a lot more research that could be reviewed on this topic, high levels of aggression, behavioral problems, and

Editors remarked that in, “Spanking Your Children: Good or Bad”, the CED studied how spanking may be effective short term, but there may be consequences later in life. The more children are spanked, the less they are likely to be mannerly, and well- behaved in the future. They continued on by stating, “Spanking does not teach children why their behavior was wrong or what they should do instead; it teaches children that the only reason to behave appropriately is to avoid being punished.” (2017). This research has proven that there is not only a physical negative reaction, but a mental one too.

With new upcoming generations and a changing society, traditional practices of how people live are changing; arguably for the better or worse. Some of these changes include the controversial to spank or not to spank question, in which new studies are aiming to show the effects of spanking on children. “With more than 30 years of research, we can now visualize accurately how spanking can alter a child’s perception.” (Scrock 2009) Although spanking has been the “go-to” way of discipline, it is starting to be looked on as a form of child abuse. After all, there are great reasons as to why organizations like the American Psychological Association and American Academy of Pediatrics condemn spanking. We will talk about the problems spanking causes in children, the misconception on why parents do it, and how to properly discipline your child. This essay argues that parents should not spank their child and should instead turn to other measures of discipline.

S. Lee, J. Manganello, J. Rice, C. Taylor (2010) preformed a study to understand childhood aggression. The journal article of Mothers’ Spanking of 3-Year-Old Children and Subsequent Risk of Children’s Aggressive Behavior starts by saying that they are not the first to perform this research and many of studies have displayed connection between corporal punishment with children and child aggression. They are testing their research with new controlling factors, which have not been controlled together before. (Lee et al., 2010) The main goal of the article is to determine the association between the use of corporal punishment against 3-year-old children and recognize later aggressive behavior among those children.

Many studies on cases of adults who have tendency to perpetuate abuses, either as a victim or as an abuser, are traced in the pattern of violence experienced at home, and many are reportedly experience being physically violated by spanking during their childhood. Despite the information and advocacy available in almost all media these days, there are still parents who thought that spanking their children to emphasize discipline is still beneficial. The benefits cited by those supporting spanking as acceptable method of discipline varied across culture and race. Generally, there are three views or positions about spanking as a form of discipline (Benject C. & Kazdin A, 2003) : Pro-corporal punishment, anti-corporal punishment, and conditional corporal punishment.

Studies show that the age of the parents in relation to the child influences spanking behavior. The study shows that younger mothers spank much more frequently than older mothers; that younger children are spanked more than older children. The same study also says that higher levels of socioeconomic status are associated with the decreases in spanking. This study does not surprise me younger parents with less money undergo much more stress than older parents therefore they are more easily irritated by their children. Also spanking decreases as the parents age increases this could be because the parent is less motivated.

The authors also identify the known effects of spanking on childhood outcomes. They noted that most of the literature has been concerned with aggressive child outcomes, such as increased child stress reactivity (Bugenthal, Martorell, and Barraza, 2003). They also noted that studies are emerging on the connection between spanking and child cognitive outcomes. (Gershoff, 2010). They criticize these emerging works as suffering from a lack of "…adequate controls for the predictors of spanking, risk factors which themselves could be