Corporal Punishment and Children Essay

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Against Spanking as a Way of Disciplining Children

Spanking is a subject that has sparked controversy for a long time. The debate has been raging in academic circles, among caregivers and psychologists alike. The idea of spanking is blended with cultural views, religious beliefs, laws imposed by government and a myriad of other factors. The practice of spanking has immense effects that are both psychological and physical. The issue of whether spanking is right is still controversial in both lay and professional realms (Kazdin & Benjet, 2003). The argument presented in this paper is to the effect that since spanking is subject to abuse and the fact that the act seems to send a wrong message to children and is likely to lead to a less than ideal relationship between children and their parents, it should be avoided. It should be avoided because it leads children to act out of fear rather than reason.

There is a lot of research that has focused energies on spanking as part of corporal punishment, its negative effects and the extent to which it can be regarded as helpful in changing children's behavior. Corporal punishment is linked to a number of negative adult behaviors. Some of the problems that have been cited include psychological disturbances, physical aggression tendencies, depression and delinquency. Physical punishment seems to teach children that it is acceptable to inflict pain on other people. There is an indication that spanking may be counterproductive. Further, research has shown that spanking triggers aggression in children and a myriad of maladaptive tendencies (Walsh, 2002).

Ideally, corporal punishment amounts to a form of cruelty directed towards children. Indeed, studies show that the act may be the requisite ingredient for creating cruelty in future generations. Such cruelty spans across a range of social malpractices including violent crime, egregious violations of human rights and even terrorism. The recognition of corporal punishment therefore implicates both the well being of children and the future of the human race. Meting corporal punishment on children has, for a long time been considered by those who care to know that it is a violation of the rights of children under international conventions. The global community must have had compelling reasons to have arrived at such a conclusion. Many nations have ratified this convention by instituting prohibitions to protect children against corporal punishment locally. We cannot overstate the essence of such adjudication (Bitensky, 2006).

Spanking carries gratuitous infliction of pain in children and serves no beneficial purpose. In any case, there are other ways of directing children to act in desired ways. Child experts postulate that spanking does not help the cause of trying to lead children to a conscientious recognition of right from wrong and moving towards peaceful conflict resolution.

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It seems that the only gain from spanking a child is a provisional halting of their transgression because they have been stunned. Yet, the transitory good is laced in a dark cloud as far as behavior change goes because the child is bent on analyzing the bizarreness and outrageousness of the smacking act than on correcting their behavior. Thus, there is a tendency for children to repeat the same mistakes in time. It is therefore accurate to say that spanking children is a temporary solution that either only serves the gratuitous inclination of the care giver, or just gives them respite for a moment and is an opportunity to let off steam and imagine that they are in control (Bitensky, 2006).

I strongly hold that any intentional infliction of pain to anyone; children or otherwise and irrespective of the perpetrator is utterly, ethically repugnant. The source of such misguided acts is irrelevant and does not alter the facts behind it and can never excuse it. We should therefore consider looking at matters from the perspective of the child subjected to such treatment once we recognize that spanking is gratuitous and intentional infliction of pain. We should recognize that the reaction of children to such treatment in similar anguish that many adults feel. Further, corporal punishment implicates the facets of right and wrong because it is unfair to subject children to violent treatment that we consider wrong when it is directed at adults and when adults are protected against such heinous aggression. The outright unfairness of such treatment is brought out most clearly when viewed form a historical perspective. People recorded to have been subjected to legal corporal punishment in history have outstandingly been slaves or simply in oppression of untold proportions (Bitensky, 2006).

Several outrageous adverse outcomes suffice among children when they are spanked. Firstly, it is documented that there is a link between corporal punishment to children and the resulting violence that manifests in their adulthood. It is thought by experts that such eventualities are reminiscent of the modeling that children get when adults show aggression towards children. It gets even worse because in some cases, some adults are said to have lost their capacity to empathize as a result of being subjected to corporal punishment when they were children. Such is a dangerous recipe for people harming others with no compunction. The aggression does not always wait until adulthood. The correlation of spanking also leads to an observation that children subjected to corporal punishment are likely to turn their lack of empathy towards animals and consequently victimize them. They may do the same to other children and adults too….....

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