Spanking: Pros and Cons

Spanking is one of the most controversial discipline methods. On one side of the debate are parents who believe it is all right to spank their children. On the other side are those who think that children should never be spanked. Somewhere in the middle are parents who believe that spanking should only be used in particular instances such as when the child runs into the street. Part of the reason for the debate is that parents and experts often define spanking differently. To some, spanking means "slapping a child on the buttocks" (Straus, 1995, p. 5), while others consider spanking a generic term for any corporal punishment that does not cause an injury, such as slapping a child 's hand for touching something forbidden or dangerous.

The purpose of this is to explore some of the reasons for spanking to examine the effectiveness of spanking and why we should still enforce spanking children today.

While many adults would argue that hitting people is wrong, spanking children continues to be used as an acceptable form of discipline because many parents think spanking will teach children not to do things that are forbidden, stop them quickly when they are being irritating, and encourage them to do what they should. Some parents also believe that the nonphysical forms of discipline, like time-out, do not work. Spanking is also a practice used more in some areas of the country than others, primarily in the southern United States, and in some cultures more than others.

Now let 's look at the people that are against spanking and what they say as their argument. Hitting is wrong. To hit someone is a violent thing to do. Violence is a thing one person does to make another person hurt. We want to treat children in ways that do not hurt or harm them. We want to be kind and gentle, not harsh. We want to be tender, merciful and compassionate. There is no situation that changes hitting from a wrong to do thing into a right thing to do. There is no excuse that magically makes hurting children kind or merciful. Most of us do not say to our children, "hitting is right" or "hitting is a good thing to do." We do not really believe that it is a good thing to hit people. Most of us deny that we are in favor of hitting children. However, most of us behave as if it is a good thing to do. Most of us are in favor of spanking and physical punishment(Leach, 1996)..

The way a spanking looks and feels must be confusing for children. How can they tell what it means? Parents are their example of what is right and good. Parents ' behavior is their example of what love looks and feels like. Hitting a child seems to say that it is all right to hit people... even loved ones. When a person wants to control others, it must be okay to hit them, spanking seems to say. For children whose parents tell them that hitting is wrong, hitting might also seem to say that it is all right to do something that is wrong. It certainly does not show or say to the child what behavior is wanted.

There is no obligation or duty to hit children. No one of us can show that anything bad happens if we do not hit children. No one can show that children become less well behaved if we do not hit them.

Nothing good forces us to act aggressively toward our children. Yet, there seems to be some mistaken, unfounded sense of duty to do it. I believe that this sense may be the result of a self-conscious feeling that other parents in our family or social group know better than we what we should do. As children, we saw our parents and other adults do things that we remember as right and good. Spanking children is one of those things that we memorized. We copy that behavior with our own children. We think, therefore, that we are surely being a good and proper parent. We are following tradition. However, tradition and morality are separate standards.

It shows that 65 percent of all parents in the United States approve of spanking and that only about 31 percent do not approve of it. I think that that percentage has dropped dramatically from about fifty years ago. I know that back in those days parents weren 't afraid to swat their child. I guess you can tell because a lot of older people are well behaved and well mannered. Now days there are a bunch of kids running around with no respect to other people and they commit a lot of crimes that most people cannot even think about. I guess that I stand very firm on spanking children. I think that more parents should do it to their children. I am not talking about spanking them so much that they cannot sit down for a week. I am just talking about a couple slaps so that it gets you point across so the child doesn 't do the act that got them in trouble. I know that if I ever catch my child doing something that I wouldn 't want him to do, I will spank him a couple times. I will do this because it is the way that I was raised and it is what I think is the best way to deal with a situation like that.

Works Cited

Straus, Murray. (1995). "Beating The Devil Out of Them: Corporal Punishment in American Families." New York: Lexington Books.

Leach, Penelope. (1996, July 9). "Spanking: A Shortcut to Nowhere." http://cnet.unb.ca/corg/ca/e/pages/prevention^cruelty/spank.htm

Cited: Straus, Murray. (1995). "Beating The Devil Out of Them: Corporal Punishment in American Families." New York: Lexington Books. Leach, Penelope. (1996, July 9). "Spanking: A Shortcut to Nowhere." http://cnet.unb.ca/corg/ca/e/pages/prevention^cruelty/spank.htm