Is Corporal Punishment In Any Context Ever Justified?

[javero]

Posted: 8/5/13 at 6:12pm

Please take a look at the map depicting the blue state-red state divide as it relates to school corporal punishment in the US. The thread on the woman who took her son to Wal-Mart wearing a pink headband prompted me to reach out to a few family members in the old south for their views on parenting, child discipline, and picking out children's attire.

Everyone roundly condemned the men who assaulted those children described in the other thread. But they all attributed what they perceive as rampart behavioral problems by children and teens in public spaces today to in the following order: (1) removal of God from public schools by the government, (2) the pernicious influence of tv, cable, and the Internet, (3) single-parent households, (4) parents giving up control to children instead of putting heat to the seat, and (5) N.E. liberals undermining teachers by vilifying school corporal punishment.

I don't miss anything about life back in rural NC least of all the numerous azz whackings I received from grade school teachers. There was a neighbor lady who was my 5th grade homeroom teacher. She used to zestfully tear into my azz with her custom-made paddle. Her health is now deteriorating. I nearly lost it when my mom suggested that I pay her a visit when I was down there a month ago. My exact response was "yeah, I'll visit that b*i*t*c*h with paddle in hand".

It's a different world down there folks!

All 8 of my elderly family members queried balked at the notion of putting a pink headband on a boy period.

Edited to Cleanup:



School Corporal Punishment in the US

Updated On: 8/5/13 at 06:12 PM

[N2N Nate.]

Posted: 8/5/13 at 6:25pm

I think CP is only fine when it's between 2 adults in a kinky sex game. Have I been a naughty boy? ooh Spank my naughty bad boy butt. Make me see heaven!

[ErikJ972]

Posted: 8/5/13 at 6:28pm

Corporal punishment is child abuse.

[javero]

Posted: 8/5/13 at 6:46pm

Also, as a non-Catholic I'd like to ask if anyone knows the Vatican's position on the topic of corporal punishment in parochial schools today. I'm not opposed to child-spanking by parents or guardians but hell-to-the-no by anyone else.

Posted: 8/5/13 at 6:49pm

Corporal Punishment is totally different than a random adult grabbing a strange child for something that he personally finds appropriate. Grabbing a headband off a child at Walmart is NOT "Corporal Punishment."

That said, the more I hear about the original incident at Walmart the roe convinced I am it never happened.

[artscallion]

Posted: 8/5/13 at 6:49pm

The only thing corporal punishment teaches a child is that you can get what you want through violence. That's a really bad thing to teach kids.

I hear people say that the one instance when it's okay is when the child is in danger and you need to really get their attention. But if your hand is close enough to hit a child, it's also close enough to grab and pull them out of danger.

Those 5 reasons your family cites are 5 of the 10 reasons I want the South to secede.

Updated On: 8/7/13 at 06:49 PM

[JerseyGirl2]

Posted: 8/5/13 at 6:50pm

I was paddled more than once in middle school. I would rather take the paddling than get detention. My parents had to know about detention.

[javero]

Posted: 8/5/13 at 7:18pm

'Corporal Punishment is totally different than a random adult grabbing a strange child for something that he personally finds appropriate. Grabbing a headband off a child at Walmart is NOT "Corporal Punishment."'

Joe, I in no way meant to conflate the two. I used the thread to get the reaction of a few elderly family members to the headband debate. A certain family member who is a retired school teacher with a prescription for every societal ailment deduced that the headband incident was avoidable had the mom exercised better judgment in dressing her tike. The others then chimed in with their gripes about the lack of home-training in today's youth and the inability of single-moms to raise boys to become well-rounded and protective men, yada, yada, yada.

Although neither would say it directly, what I can infer is that the group somehow believes that that headband-snatcher felt compelled to step up in the apparent absence of a responsible father who could intervene in the impending disaster of a life for the kid. In a truly sick and perverted way, he thought that he was doing the kid a favor.

I didn't want to share the whole back-story for obvious reasons plus I wanted to shift the conversation to the topic of corporal punishment which came out of the dialogue. Perhaps it appears that some of my threads are random but there is a nexus. There's more to that red state-blue state divide than a breakdown of electoral college votes. It tells the tale of one nation completely divided on most of the pressing social issues of the day.

[Eris0303]

Posted: 8/6/13 at 9:00am

The others then chimed in with their gripes about the lack of home-training in today's youth and the inability of single-moms to raise boys to become well-rounded and protective men, yada, yada, yada.

So he just assumes that there isn't a dad in the picture? That seems like a pretty far stretch. The original blog clearly states that her husband had work to do (whether that involves his employment or a "honey do list" isn't apparent or even necessary to the story). I don't even know where the "single mom" BS comes from if anyone actually read the original blog.

My grandfather ran out on my grandmother when my mom was two. She raised two children, a boy and a girl, while working full time to the best of her ability. My mother did the cooking and the cleaning and both her and her older brother came out unscathed. My uncle can be a bit of a ****but he's not my different than my older brother who had a stay at home mom for the first sixteen years of his life.

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 8/6/13 at 9:41am

Corporal punishment worked for me when I was a kid. I was spanked when I did something wrong and I learned from it. I was not "abused".

[Eris0303]

Posted: 8/6/13 at 9:58am

Did anyone else have the dreaded "wooden spoon"?

[~tiny~]

Posted: 8/6/13 at 2:55pm

Never.

[suestorm]

Posted: 8/6/13 at 3:13pm

Did anyone else have the dreaded "wooden spoon"?

that sounds dirty

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 8/6/13 at 3:17pm

Hurt people hurt people.

[GlindatheGood22]

Posted: 8/6/13 at 4:53pm

There was a wooden spoon in my family, but only as a running joke. We were threatened with it, but none of us ever got more than a tap on the butt.

I work in children's retail so I see a range of discipline every day. Corporal punishment is usually minimal since it's a public place, but we do see a lot of the drag-the-screaming-kid-out-by-the-arm routine, and that really freaks me out. How much effort does it take to pick your kid up?

Also, it's hard not to notice that a lot of the differences in discipline align according to ethnicity. Most of the white parents - I guess you'd call them WASPS - get down eye to eye with the child and tell them what they're doing wrong. We're on Staten Island so there's a lot of old school Italian parents, and most all of them just scream. I've never seen any spankings but there is a lot of hair pulling, slapping things out of hands, the arm drag, etc. It doesn't seem to me that any one ethnic group is more "corporal" than the others, but I do notice that the arm drag is particularly popular among Hispanic families. Of course this is not to say that they are rougher with their children than everyone else, but I chalk it up to a difference in cultures. I think the completely hands-off discipline thing is uniquely American, or at least more prevalent among younger American parents.

And for the record, I haven't noticed any great difference in the behaviors of the children. I've seen kids behave after a talking-to and ones that have kept screaming, as well as children who have responded to corporal punishment and children who have resisted it. The only completely ineffective method I've seen is the, "I'll just let you scream and flail yourself out while I shop."

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 8/6/13 at 5:05pm

My dad was beaten within an inch of his life as a kid--so my siblings and I were never spanked or hurt. We turned out (and I'm sure this is debatable) well.

I'm not pro corporal punishment--in the worst crimes it seems like too easy an out. That said--I'm a hypocrite. I would be fine if Hitler (or going to another thread) Putin had a bullet to the head. But I also would be fine if they had/were locked up with no chance of parole.

[Elphaba]

Posted: 8/6/13 at 5:46pm

We had the dreaded hairbrush, or rather my mother did. My did used the belt. I have mixed feelings on this. I do feel my brother (he was the eldest of three kids) was significantly changed by corporal punishment. I saw him constantly beaten down, and how it literally killed his spirit. My parents had no idea what they were doing, their parenting skills sucked, and I am not sure I could blame that on them 100%

I watched my brother become a sad individual, lose his will to achieve and do anything with his life, as I think he bought into their "you are nothing unless you obey" mentality. It was very sad.

On the other hand, I made sure never to allow them to do that to me. Some corporal punishment is okay, just not sure where that line should be drawn.

[winston89]

Posted: 8/6/13 at 8:12pm

My parents never laid a hand on me when I was growing up. I have always felt that there is always a better way to get your point across than hitting a kid. I find that to be child abuse pure and simple regardless of what the law states. Yes, I will admit that sometimes spanking a child is the more easy way to get your point across, but at the same time it may not be the best or more effective way.

For example, I currently work with pre school aged kids. One of them is someone that does get spanked if he misbehaves. However, I feel that this is teaching him the wrong lesson. I think that the parents are trying to teach him that spanking is a result of doing something bad. However, he takes it as if someone is doing something bad, he would get hit, therefore if another kid is doing something bad to him, it is okay if he hits them. Not quite the intended message I think.

[notsovirginmary]

Posted: 8/6/13 at 8:29pm

I teach a dance class for 4-6 year olds, and yesterday a little girl accidentally stepped on another little girl's toe. That little girl responded by hitting the other. I pulled her aside and told her that hitting was not the way to handle that, and she said "I didn't hit her, I spanked her."

[Jane2]

Posted: 8/6/13 at 8:31pm

My father hit me sharply twice in my life. Once for lying (I was a teenager) and once when I was in grammar school. I never lied again, and I didn't learn that hurt people hurt, or that you get what you want through violence.

[SNAFU]

Posted: 8/6/13 at 8:39pm

Corporal punishment has it's place. When a child does something that puts his or her life at risk, haphazardly running into traffic or playing with matches for example, a good hard spanking to help the child associate the action he or she were doing with pain I feel is acceptable. Used too often it loses it's power.
My Step father would beat us with a belt for the slightest of infractions. Caught stealing 25 cents for candy? 25 lashes on your outstretched hands. It became a challange for us kids not to cry. Crying was what he was after. The steeely face of resoution would fustrate him and usually he would give up. Some sick lessons to treach a child.

[notsovirginmary]

Posted: 8/6/13 at 11:01pm

I ran out in front of a car when I was four, and twenty years later I still remember everything that my very distraught mother said to me after she pulled me to safety. And she didn't have to strike me to make her point. I don't think that spanking automatically equals abuse, but if you can raise your kids without violence, why wouldn't you?

[SNAFU]

Posted: 8/7/13 at 12:23am

Notso, 4 is old enough to remember and to a degree intellectualize. I was talking about younger, 2-3 as far as corporal punishment goes.
I guess it goes back to the concept that a child needs to get burnt to understand what "Hot!" means. Rather then allowing the child to suffer a severe burn when playing with fire a reprimand and a firm swat on the butt will link that action to pain rather then them actually having to get burnt.
Corporal punishment occurs in almost every species when Mama or Dad are training their young. There are physical reprimands for behavior which is not acceptable or life threatening.

[ErikJ972]

Posted: 8/7/13 at 7:29am

It's easy to say "well my parents smacked me and I turned out ok". That's anecdotal. Just like I can say my parents never laid a hand on me and I turned out ok.
There are plenty of studies that show corporal punishment isn't just ineffective, it is harmful.
"While conducting the meta-analysis, which included 62 years of collected data, Gershoff looked for associations between parental use of corporal punishment and 11 child behaviors and experiences, including several in childhood (immediate compliance, moral internalization, quality of relationship with parent, and physical abuse from that parent), three in both childhood and adulthood (mental health, aggression, and criminal or antisocial behavior) and one in adulthood alone (abuse of own children or spouse).
Gershoff found "strong associations" between corporal punishment and all eleven child behaviors and experiences. Ten of the associations were negative such as with increased child aggression and antisocial behavior. The single desirable association was between corporal punishment and increased immediate compliance on the part of the child."
Is Corporal Punishment an Effective Means of Punishment?

[Jane2]

Posted: 8/7/13 at 10:59am

"It's easy to say "well my parents smacked me and I turned out ok". "

Yes, it was easy for me to say that.

Anyway, I'm curious as to what you would do if talking to your child and/or other non-hitting methods didn't work, what would you do?