spanking

Spanking your Children Spanking is the most common forms of punishment used today for younger children. 67% of parents today use some form of physical punishment. Spanking is the use of physical force to cause pain with the intent to control the child. Mothers are primarily the ones to spank, because they are the ones who are with the children more. Young parental age and lower income seem to predict spanking in children. Children that were spanked as a child are more likely to repeat the pattern whenever they have children. Spanking is thought to help control children but research from numerous studies show that this is not the case. Children who were spanked more are more likely to misbehave in school, have behavioral problems and start using drugs. Spanking is a huge debate among the child development field. Most parents support that spanking is ok, while researchers who study the effects of spanking suggest that spanking has some negative effects on children. Society is constantly putting forth these ideas that it is ok to use force when you are trying to establish but in reality all we are doing is teaching the children and people that it is ok to use force to get what we want. In actuality the reaction to spanking is a cultural differences in physical punishment. Facts have shown that white children are more likely to develop outward behavior problems but this is not the case for African American Children. Toddlers who were physically punished between birth and two years old only showed behavior problems if they were white, this does not affect African American or Latino children. Some of the reasons people believe this to be the case is because African Americans value respect more of their elders than do white Americans. Other facts have proven that Spanking is commonly accepted and that African American children and parents may not see it as being harsh or unfair. Latino’s were shown in this study to not use physical punishment as much as African and White Americans. This is just suggesting that physical punishment may have negative effects on white children, but it may not apply African Americans or Latino’s. This shows that in different cultures there are different views on spanking and also different effects on a child’s development.
There are three different views of spanking that stuck out to me. First view is pro-corporal punishment; this view fits with the biblical view of “spare the rod and spoil the child.” The second view is the anti-corporal punishment this view states that spanking is detrimental to the child and that “violence begets violence.” The third view is that of conditional corporal punishment, this view states that spanking is neither bad nor good but it rather it depends on the conditions. For all these views most individuals will fit under one and stick to one.