Corporal Punishment: Parents should be allowed to physically punish their children.
Corporal punishment is the deliberate infliction of pain intended to punish a person or change one person’s behaviour. Historically speaking, most forms of punishment, whether in judicial, domestic, or educational settings, were of a corporal basis. Corporal punishment is still widely approved by parents in the United States, but as of 2008 it has been legally banned in 23 countries.
The above statement asks us whether parents, as the primary caregiver and role model of a child, should be allowed to physically punish their children. It is my stance that a parent has every right to punish their child, through any method they deem necessary.
I remember back to my childhood, where if I ever did something naughty, I’d get a stern smack on the arse and told to learn my lesson. What effect did it have on me? Well, it sent the message to me that to avoid the hard smacks on the arse, I’d have to rectify my behaviour and be a good child. I hear stories of my father, mother, and other relatives of when they were growing up and receiving the same punishments. To me, it reinforces the parents’ dominance over the child, sort of like in the animal kingdom, where if a juvenile lion is mucking around, being stupid, the lioness will punish it with physicality to teach it a lesson to wise up and behave accordingly.
If the modern versions of discipline become the chief form of keeping children in check, then I feel sorry for what the world will be coming to. From my own experiences, I see children today who have absolutely no respect for rules, authority, or their parents. The silly little methods of sending to “timeouts” and “naughty corners” do not work. The child will just sit their, thinking over what has happened, knowing they can continue to misbehave if all that will happen to them is to sit in a corner for an allocated interval of time. It sickens me to see teenagers of this day and age verbally abusing police officers, antagonise them to take action which can boil down into a frantic situation. Personally if a police officer comes near me, I feel intimidated and show upmost respect to the officer, which can be attributed to my upbringing.
The US department of Health & Human services reports 142,000 children are seriously injured from Corporal punishment every year in this country, 18,000 of them are permanantly disabled. Between 1-2,000 children die each year in this country alone from Corporal punishment. Nearly 70% of child abuse cases in CPS agencies result from corporal punishment. The defense of "discipline" is raised in 41% of homicide prosecutions when parents "accidentally" kill their children. 99% of people in jail were corporally punished.
It’s all fine and dandy to provide statistics, but it all boils down to the severity of the punishment that is being delivered, whether it ranges from a stern, open-palmed slap on the arse, to borderline child abuse. That is where the cloud of judgement comes in pertaining to the above statistics. The most common area targeted as it pertains to this form of punishment is the buttocks, where injury is not that frequent. A parent with any common sense would avoid striking the child on the head, or back, or abdomen etc to prevent any serious accidental damage arising.
The premise of corporal punishment is not about “I am bigger than you, therefore I can hit you.” It’s about teaching a lesson in life that the parent was taught by their parent, and so on. It’s meant to be a short, abrupt correction back into line. There is no difference between this method of punishment and a talking to method of punishment. Both have the same objective, but the corporal method is a more aggressive method aimed at learning the lesson quicker.
Helping a child clean a wall that they have drawn on, then explaining that they shouldn’t draw on it etc, is not going to get the lesson through to them. You are cleaning their misbehaviour, giving them the impression that you will always be there to cleanup their mistakes. If the child is given a stern smack, it will send a psychological message to them that drawing on a wall equals pain, so to avoid pain; I won’t draw on the wall.
In concluding, I reinforce that parents should be able to physically punish their children as I have found it is a more successful method of punishment than the modernised methods of talking and explanation that is, in my opinion, not working.