Done for the right reasons, in the right context and the right way, it generates desirable improvements in behaviour.
But does it?
For some children, it can work. But for others it does not.
My one issue with corporal punishment, especially that in schools, is that we are using violence to teach children that violence and bad behaviour is bad. I find that discomforting. We have seen study after study say the same thing. The desirable improvement in behaviour is usually short term and will usually apply to that particular behaviour. But in the long term, we are teaching children that violence is somehow acceptable to get a desired result. Is that acceptable? I personally don't think it is.
Hitting children at the wrong time, in the wrong way, for the wrong reason may be an obvious abuse of a child, but I should like to see you demonstrate that it is more damaging than quiescent acceptance of inappropriate behaviour. Bad parenting is determined by outcome and intent, not by appearance.
There appears to be this inherent belief that by not smacking or hitting a child, that one is doing nothing and allowing the child to continue with the same bad behaviour. I don't smack my children but if they do something bad or behave badly, they stop after we speak to them and they don't do it again.
Why is that? Is smacking the only option available in the hope of correcting a child's bad behaviour?
My husband's best friend is a primary school teacher. He sees children in all shapes and sizes, who come from a variety of backgrounds. One thing he has noticed is that children who are smacked by their parents tend to have more violent tendencies. Some of these parents smack their children in the school when dropping or picking up their children. With some, any little thing results in a smack. Child does not get in the car fast enough, smacked across the backside. It is these children, as he has found, who tend to be more violent towards other children, in that when another child does not do as they want them to do, they smack them. A letter is sent home to the parents or the parent is advised of the violent episode when they arrive to pick up their child and what happens? They are then smacked for having hit another child. It doesn't work that way. Instead of explaining to the child why hitting is bad, they hit the child and tell them not to hit. What kind of message does it send to the child?
Children, far and wide, need solid encouragement and explanation, for pretty much everything. Simply resorting to a few whacks across the backside is an easy way out that sends a child the message that to get the desired result, one can simply use violence to achieve those means.
I have yet to see a single study that finds that smacking a child will obtain a desirable behavioural outcome
in the long term. Every study I have seen points to the complete opposite. That children are not only mentally scarred by the corporal punishment they faced, but that they then go on to repeat the same pattern of behaviour when they grow up and have children. It is a cycle and one we have seen time and again where violence in the household is concerned.
I was smacked rarely by my parents as a child. It didn't work to be honest. My behaviour did not change as a whole. It just made me more wary of my parents as a child. I was virtually beaten until I was black and blue at school by a teacher who used violence to get the desired behavioural attitude she felt was correct. If her students got things wrong or did not do things exactly as she commanded, she hit us. The worst and this was just before her actions were discovered and I was removed from her class before she was fired, was when I was hit with a ruler 46 times in a day. I was also pinched on both arms, until I had these raised bruises on my arms. The behaviour that sparked her need to get me to tow the line? I failed a maths quiz. Now, prior to said quiz, I was always whacked across the back and the back of my hands with the sharp end of a very long wooden ruler. So when it came to the math quiz, I was in such terror that I got 46 questions wrong out of 100. Prior to starting in her class, maths was one of my best subjects. I'd get one or two questions wrong, but usually came out with the equivalent of an A in each quiz. Once I entered her class, those one or two questions started to grow, simply because I was hit each time I got an answer wrong. I laugh it off now, but I will never forget this particular teacher and what she did to us in that classroom. They were her rules and she was allowed to set the behavioural rules in her classroom. The weird thing is that she was never angry when she hit us. She never yelled at us. The result of her attempts to correct us with corporal punishment? I have hated maths ever since. I never again got an A in maths. What was once a favourite subject became one that would quite literally have me crying as a child before each class and as soon as maths stopped becoming a compulsory subject, I dropped it entirely. And even now, 30 years later, I can still feel the sting of each time she hit me with the sharp edge of that ruler across my back and backside and across the back of my hands. It is entirely psychological and I accept that and I try to laugh it off. But the damage she did to me as a child is still carried by me now, even 30 years later. She was not arrested for it. It was her classroom and therefore her rules. She was dismissed for being a bit too forceful with said rules.
I can't accept that resorting to violence against child is the answer. As adults, we consider being smacked assault. But for some bizarre reason, we seem to accept that it is okay to use the same type of violence against children. I have asked Neverfly this question several times now in this thread, and he has avoided answering it each time. Why is it assault to smack an adult but not assault to smack a child? There are countless of studies that states corporal punishment has a detrimental long term affect on children. Yet we still allow it and justify it as a means to correct bad behaviour. It reeks of hypocrisy.
