Is Corporal Punishment In Any Context Ever Justified?

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

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

Corporal punishment is child abuse.

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.

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.

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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.

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Did anyone else have the dreaded "wooden spoon"?

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Did anyone else have the dreaded "wooden spoon"?

that sounds dirty

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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."

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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.

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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."

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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.

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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.

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"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?

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