What I think about hitting children.

[Trialbyfire]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2008-02-27-spanking_N.htm

 

Here's an article from earlier this year that discusses some of the implications of spanking:

 

Study: Spanking may lead to sexual problems later

 

Children whose parents spank them or otherwise inflict physical punishment may be more likely to have sexual problems later, according to research to be presented Thursday to the American Psychological Association.

The analysis of four studies by Murray Straus, co-director of the Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire-Durham, suggests that children whose parents spanked, slapped, hit or threw objects at them may have a greater chance of physically or verbally coercing a sexual partner, engaging in risky sexual behavior or engaging in masochistic sex, including sexual arousal by spanking.

 

"It increases the chances of sexual problems," though "it's not a one-to-one causation," Straus says.

 

Elizabeth Gershoff, an assistant professor of social work at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, who reviewed 80 years of spanking research in 2002 in the APA's Psychological Bulletin, says Straus' work appears to be the first to link spanking with sexual problems.

 

Gershoff says that though many children have been spanked (85% in one 2007 survey), problems may depend on how they process the spanking.

 

"They may internalize that to mean that in loving relationships sometimes there's pain or physical aggression," she says. Another possible lesson is that "whoever is stronger and has more power can overpower the other person and use physical aggression to control the other person's behavior."

 

But linking sexual problems with spanking is a "big leap," says human-sexuality researcher John DeLamater of the University of Wisconsin. "It's probably one of many elements that might contribute to sex problems or risky sex, but it's a long leap."

 

Most children who are spanked escape from long-term harm, says Straus, 81, a sociology professor who says he occasionally spanked his own children but later became a staunch critic of spanking. His work on violence in families is regarded as landmark research.

 

He is scheduled to present the studies today at the psychological association's Summit on Violence and Abuse in Relationships in Bethesda, Md. Three are yet unpublished; one has been submitted to a journal. He plans to include two in a book this year. The fourth was included in a 1994 book.

 

The two most recent studies examine sexual coercion and risky practices among 14,252 college students between 2001 and 2006. The third study, of 440 high school students from New Hampshire, examined risky sex, such as premarital sex without a condom. The fourth study, of 207 students from the Northeast, focused on masochistic sex.

 

In each case, Straus found that those who had experienced corporal punishment had increased probability of coercing sex, risky sex or masochistic sex.

 

The literature on effectiveness of spanking to correct behavior is still "very mixed," says Robert Larzelere of Oklahoma State University, who has studied parents' disciplinary methods.

 

"Like any discipline tactic, it depends on how it's used," he says.

[Trialbyfire]

And an older study done by Dr. Gershoff PhD in 2002, with 62 years of data. The quoted text is only an excerpt. Read the full article in the link:

 

http://www.apa.org/releases/spanking.html

 

Corporal Punishment Leads to More Immediate Compliant Behavior in Children, But is also Associated with Physical Abuse.

 

Should Parents be Counseled For or Against Spanking?

 

WASHINGTON -- Corporal punishment remains a widely used discipline technique in most American families, but it has also been a subject of controversy within the child development and psychological communities. In a large-scale meta-analysis of 88 studies, psychologist Elizabeth Thompson Gershoff, PhD, of the National Center for Children in Poverty at Columbia University, looked at both positive and negative behaviors in children that were associated with corporal punishment. Her research and commentaries on her work are published in the July issue of Psychological Bulletin, published by the American Psychological Association.

 

While conducting the meta-analysis, which included 62 years of collected data, Gershoff looked for associations between parental use of corporal punishment and 11 child behaviors and experiences, including several in childhood (immediate compliance, moral internalization, quality of relationship with parent, and physical abuse from that parent), three in both childhood and adulthood (mental health, aggression, and criminal or antisocial behavior) and one in adulthood alone (abuse of own children or spouse).

 

Gershoff found "strong associations" between corporal punishment and all eleven child behaviors and experiences. Ten of the associations were negative such as with increased child aggression and antisocial behavior. The single desirable association was between corporal punishment and increased immediate compliance on the part of the child.

[Nemo]

The new study has its weaknesses,

For starters, you can't study spanking in the randomized double-blind way you can a medication. It would be ethically inappropriate to divide a bunch of kids into two groups, spank some, spare others and then compare how they fare 10 or 20 years down the road. And double-blind? Impossible to disguise spanking in a dummy pill. So there's no way to absolutely prove cause and effect. The study also relies on students' own recollections of their childhood experiences. Straus says he controlled for people covering up mistreatment by their parents. On the other hand, the students could also have exaggerated. "It's possible," says Strauss,

http://www.newsweek.com/id/116788/page/1

[Nemo]

Robert Larzelere, a human development researcher at Oklahoma State University, says that "conditional" or "backup" spanking in two-to-six-year-old kids can be useful. The spanking needs to be nonabusive (two open-hand swats on the behind from a parent who's not "angrily out of control") and it needs to be used not as a first line of response but as a backup to other kinds of discipline, like timeouts, grounding and reasoning. "Under these conditions, the evidence suggests that it's effective," says Larzelere. Too often, he says, spanking research lumps corporal punishment into one big group, failing to draw the line between overly severe punishment and a couple of taps on the buttocks. His conclusion: conditional spanking isn't more harmful than any other kind of discipline. The key, he says, is that parents need to discriminate between "inappropriate and appropriate use."

http://www.newsweek.com/id/116788/page/2

 

Exactly what people have been describing on this thread.

[carhill]

One anecdote:

 

Spanked at home; paddled at school....

 

Positives: Never have hit another human being, ever, in anger. Sexually very particular; few partners. Love children and animals.

 

Negatives: Ditched church at school; blew toilets up. Philosophical anarchist; all social structures should be destroyed; mayhem and chaos rule.

 

Father decided it better to purchase rubber room rather than grave plot. Smart man

[amaysngrace]

What I do wonder is what happens when the smack on the bottom doesn't work. Is it followed up with a harder smack? A series of smacks? If mild physical pain doesn't teach the child a lesson, does that mean it's time to administer more severe pain?

 

I guess I am lucky in that I don't have the answer to your question.

 

It's always been effective in my instance. I have stated that I can count on one hand how many times I've smacked either of them. They are ten and eleven. That is less than one smack every two years.

 

I guess the different opinions we are getting here are from those who were beaten badly growing up, those who have never gotten smacked, and those who had it done on occasion to establish boundaries.

 

I suppose if I was beaten badly growing up or never hit at all I can see why I'd be dead set against it.

 

That's not the way it was for me and I adore my parents beyond belief. My sister has her masters in child psychology. She has praised my parents because although they never read up on parenting, they have done so many things by the books according to the experts she has studied.

 

But that's the key now isn't it...doing more good than harm?

[Trialbyfire]

http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11455006

 

Spare the rod, say some

May 29th 2008

From The Economist print edition

 

In rich countries at least, parents and teachers are steadily losing the right to discipline children by force

“AS PART of their daily lives, children across Europe and the world continue to be spanked, slapped, hit, smacked, shaken, kicked, pinched, punched, caned, flogged, belted, beaten and battered in the name of discipline, mainly by adults whom they depend on.” But in some places, it happens less than before, and there is a chance to stop it altogether.

That is how the Council of Europe, a 47-country body that is supposed to promote civil liberties from Dublin to Vladivostok, explains its campaign to abolish physical punishment—to be launched in Croatia in mid-June with a flurry of debates, puppet shows, television spots, pamphlets in many languages and stirring calls to “raise your hand against smacking”.

As is often the case with such worthy efforts, the council's rhetoric seems torn between stressing the horrors of the present day and promising that things can easily improve if everybody tries a bit harder. And in a world where children face such horrors as forced labour, sex trafficking and military conscription, devoting energy to outlawing parental smacks may strike some people as the wrong emphasis. But a consensus against hitting children is clearly gathering momentum in the developed, law-governed parts of the world. Also growing is the belief that a light parental cuff and serious forms of child abuse are points, albeit quite far apart, on the same spectrum. Some parents may still insist that their right to dissuade a toddler from doing very dangerous things is also worth protecting; but they are losing the argument.

Only 23 countries (18 of them European) have banned corporal punishment completely. But there are 106—including many places where it was common only a generation ago—which have put a stop to corporal punishment in schools.

Countries where teachers still use force include the United States, where a Supreme Court ruling in 1977 (concerning two pupils whose beatings with a wooden paddle caused medical harm) found that a constitutional ban on “cruel and unusual punishment” applied only to judicial proceedings. That left individual states to decide; in 22 of them, corporal correction in schools occurs in at least some districts.

Elizabeth Gershoff of the University of Michigan, an expert on (and opponent of) physical correction, says the practice remains common in American classrooms and homes. Most American children have been corporally punished at home by the time they reach adolescence, and in a recent year, nearly 300,000 were physically punished at school.

In Europe, by contrast, smacking has nearly vanished from schools (even in Britain and Ireland, where it was rife) and the movement to stop parents and other adults hitting children is gaining ground. In 1979 Sweden became the first country to outlaw all violence by adults on children. It was controversial at the time, but after a two-year drive to publicise the law and the thinking behind it, which included putting advice on milk cartons, smacking itself, and belief in its value, declined fast.

Just over a year ago New Zealand became the first English-speaking country to ban smacking. A lobby group, Family First, is agitating to reverse that change, saying at least half the population supports the right to smack. But few people expect the ban to be overturned. The police were reassured when they won the right to apply the law with discretion, and there have been no silly prosecutions. Some of New Zealand's pro-smackers lost support because their religious rhetoric—talk of loving corrections, followed by prayers—sounded weird.

A smack of desperation

In recent years, several European countries (Greece and Portugal, for example) have quietly abolished parental smacking after a Swiss-based lobby group challenged them for being in breach of the European social charter, a Council of Europe treaty. Three Latin American states (Chile, Uruguay and Venezuela) joined the non-smackers last year. Although nobody expects corporal punishment to vanish soon from traditional homes in Africa or the Middle East, the United States could soon stand out in the Americas, and among rich countries, as a refuge for the spanker.

Indeed, it is the only country, along with Somalia, which has failed to ratify a United Nations convention on children's rights, which since 1990 has protected children from “all forms of physical or mental violence”. American officials helped draft the document, but it faces stiff opposition in some quarters of the United States.

Some Americans regret this. In a paper last year, Ms Gershoff and Susan Bitensky, of Michigan State University, said their country should bow to the combined pressure of a growing world consensus against smacking and scholarly evidence that it is useless or harmful. Summarising scores of studies, they conclude that smacking fails in one of its main aims: to make a child see that some things are wrong, and change its long-term behaviour.

Lots of studies, however, find a correlation between corporal punishment and aggressive, delinquent behaviour. It is hard to prove that the smacks cause the behaviour, rather than vice versa, but Ms Gershoff insists that by rigorously combing the data, one can show that parents are most to blame for this vicious circle.

Other scholars, such as Robert Larzelere of Oklahoma State University, defend the role of smacking in disciplining younger children, though he agrees that it is counter-productive for older ones.

Still, for countries wanting a halfway house, defining the permissible is tricky. In Britain parents can strike, not bruise; in Canada children aged 2-12 can be struck, but not with objects or on the head: “minor corrective force of a transitory and trifling nature” is allowed. And regardless of the law, social changes seem to be making parents in rich countries cautious about smacking. Many Americans who oppose a ban on corporal punishment say they don't consider the practice desirable.

But diehard American spankers may take comfort from defying the latest piece of Utopian dottiness from the UN: a campaign to end the corporal punishment of children, all over the world, by 2009. Whatever the merits of a ban on smacking, this wildly unrealistic goal is hardly the top priority for an organisation that has failed to crack down on far worse forms of abuse by its own blue-helmeted soldiers (see article).

 

 

[Trialbyfire]

http://alpha.fdu.edu/psychology/corporal_punishment.htm

 

Corporal Punishment:

Physical, Psychological, and Cognitive Effects for Children

Beth O'Boyle Ph.D.

 

The Use of Corporal Punishment in the Home

 

Corporal punishment appears to be an even more common method of discipline among American families. Eighty to ninety-five percent of high school and college students report that they were spanked at some point during their childhood. Similarly, 61% of mothers with children between the ages of 3 and 5 report spanking their children an average of three times a week (Giles-Sims, Straus, & Sugarman, 1995). This averages out to a single child being spanked more than 150 times a year.

 

Psychological, Behavioral, and Cognitive Effects on Children

 

Given the frequency with which corporal punishment is administered in the U.S. (within both homes and schools), the consequences of such "discipline" must be examined. One consequence of corporal punishment is physical abuse. When physical punishment fails in it's intended effect (the reduction of undesirable behavior), it is often intensified, resulting in serious physical injury to children (Carey, 1993). Corporal punishment has also been associated with a variety of psychological and behavioral problems in children, such as anxiety, depression, increased aggressiveness, modeling of punishing behavior, social withdrawal, delinquency, substance abuse, and impaired self-concept (Rohner, Kean, & Cournoyer, 1991; Straus, Sugarman, & Giles-Sims, 1997).

 

Physical discipline has even been negatively correlated with levels of cognitive ability. Researchers at the University of New Hampshire (Strauss, M) found that children of non-spanking parents scored significantly higher on tests of cognitive ability than children whose parents spanked them frequently. It is possible that non-spanking parents spend more time reasoning with their children (explaining to their children why certain behaviors are wrong) than parents who chose to discipline their children physically. These types of verbal parent-child interactions, in fact, are believed to play an important role in promoting cognitive development.

[Ocean-Blue]

Most of the time, parents use violence as a last resort. It's rarely done without any emotion.

 

I can't imagine hitting my child. I think it's deplorable.

[amaysngrace]

Most of the time, parents use violence as a last resort.

 

Going with the definition of violence, I think more would use it as a first resort.

[Nemo]

I used to fry ants with a magnifying glass. It's a miracle that I didn't move up the chain to small mammals. I do so wish somebody had the guts to spank me, and save all of those innocent lives.

[amaysngrace]

I do so wish somebody had the guts to spank me, and save all of those innocent lives.

 

No worries...I use to feed ants sugar out of my mom's good sugar bowl...the one that went with her fancy dishes.

 

I probably got spanked for that.

[Ocean-Blue]

When I was a little girl, going to school in South Asia, all the kids around me used to get beaten at school. We're talking hard knocks on the knuckles and stuff like that. These kids also got beats at home, on a regular basis.

 

After a while, I started to feel abnormal. So I asked my mother to please beat me with a comb. I just didn't think was right for my peers to experience this and not me.

 

The few times I did get at school, my mother ripped the principal a new one... I was mortified.

[Taramere]

I guess the different opinions we are getting here are from those who were beaten badly growing up, those who have never gotten smacked, and those who had it done on occasion to establish boundaries.

 

I do get where you're coming from. My feeling is that a healthy, well adjusted person won't be particularly influenced in their views by a thread like this. They're not going to start hitting their kids for fear of looking like wusses if they don't, and neither are they going to book anger management therapy because they've occasionally smacked their child on the bottom. I guess they'll see it as you do, that people vary in their approaches to this subject, and that parents can only do the best they can by their children, with the knowledge they have.

 

Loveshack's a place many people initially come to because they're experiencing some form of trauma or because they're hooked on drama. I guarantee that there are people who participate (actively - or passively, by lurking) on this site who go way over the score in disciplining their children. Lurkers who lose the plot and troll wildly and abusively as though they're 3 years old. People who lose their tempers badly when they're stressed...who maybe turn to drink and get downright mean with it. Who regard themselves as victims and believe that entitles them to victimise and humiliate others. Including, perhaps, the children who are dependent on them.

 

That's what bothers me when I read a thread like this. Not healthy, well-adjusted Jo or Jenny Bloggs who smacks their child on the bottom once in a while to remind them of the boundaries. I'm thinking of the people who are out of control - and what meaning they're liable to take from the pro-smacking arguments. Telling people like that that an occasional smack on the bum does a child no harm may well be the equivalent of telling an alcoholic "a glass of wine with dinner does no harm. Everything in moderation..."

 

When someone who was severely beaten as a kid boasts on a board about how they use physical chastisement in moderation on their own child, it sometimes comes across as being less about doing right by the child, more about proving something to themselves about themselves. "I'm in control of my temper. See how I can hit my child without losing the plot? What a winner I am!"

 

 

That's not the way it was for me and I adore my parents beyond belief. My sister has her masters in child psychology. She has praised my parents because although they never read up on parenting, they have done so many things by the books according to the experts she has studied.

 

But that's the key now isn't it...doing more good than harm?

 

Yes. I couldn't agree more.

[laRubiaBonita]

Loveshack's a place many people initially come to because they're experiencing some form of trauma or because they're hooked on drama.

 

egh... no, some people just like to see what chaos other's live's bring.... more of a learning curve for dealing with society.

[Dexter Morgan]

I, too, think that an occassional good ol' smack in the behind goes a long way in forming character in kids.

 

Marlena, I don't agree with you much at all, but on this I do.

 

I'd never do anything other than a little spank on the tush. Nowhere else on the body and never with a balled up fist.

 

My parents spanked me, and it kept me in line. And I didn't turn out to be a bully and love them just as much today.

[Dexter Morgan]

I am a single parent of a 13 year old and I never have spanked her.

 

I don't believe in it. I feel it is demeaning and counterproductive.

 

I used time outs

 

And your child may have been different. But what would you have done with positive reinforcement, talks, and "time outs" don't work?

 

What would you have done if you put her in a time out, and she kept getting up telling you she'll do what she wants to do?

 

I think I have only had to spank my 8 year old twice because he refused to do as he was told.

[Dexter Morgan]

I'm offended when they AREN'T disciplined in public......that's just me though...

 

yes, because then everyone else in public has to put up with their behavior.

 

All I have to do is tell my kids I'll take them to the bathroom, and they know what I mean and pipe down.

[amaysngrace]

Loveshack's a place many people initially come to because they're experiencing some form of trauma or because they're hooked on drama. I guarantee that there are people who participate (actively - or passively, by lurking) on this site who go way over the score in disciplining their children. Lurkers who lose the plot and troll wildly and abusively as though they're 3 years old. People who lose their tempers badly when they're stressed...who maybe turn to drink and get downright mean with it. Who regard themselves as victims and believe that entitles them to victimise and humiliate others. Including, perhaps, the children who are dependent on them.

 

That's what bothers me when I read a thread like this.

 

I understand that because I've experienced trauma too as a child and I have zero tolerance when it comes to those types of offenders.

 

But from someone who is not emotionally charged by the subject I can say that I've read this entire thread and I haven't detected any statement from any poster that would send shivers down my spine.

 

Although I think if I were you I maybe would have.

[bentnotbroken]

Spanked both of mine, they are great young adults and I wouldn't change a thing. My siblings and I were spanked, not by just our parents, but by the village if they thought we had done something wrong. And my parents never questioned others discipline. They knew that everyone had our best interest at heart. I guess that was the advantage of growing up in small town USA, the village helped raise every kid and most of us turned out pretty damn good:p

[Taramere]

I understand that because I've experienced trauma too as a child and I have zero tolerance when it comes to those types of offenders.

 

But from someone who is not emotionally charged by the subject I can say that I've read this entire thread and I haven't detected any statement from any poster that would send shivers down my spine.

 

Although I think if I were you I maybe would have.

 

It's not just an emotional thing. I've worked in Child Protection and on a Child Helpline before. A lot of the calls I took were from parents who were really stressed out to the point where they were afraid they would harm their child (the helpline was anonymous, so it was safe for them to make that call without being investigated).

 

You didn't always catch the stressed out feel of it straight away. Someone might call up sounding quite chirpy and very sensible. Wanting to discuss the spanking issue. I'd respond along the lines of "is there a specific incident that's happened, that you're wondering how to deal with?" the conversation continues for a bit, then suddenly you get that silence interspersed with sniffling and choked attempts to speak.

 

Lots and lots and lots of calls like that. Many women left on their own with a baby who just won't stop crying, a toddler who's throwing tantrums and trying to rule the roost....a teenager who recently turned into the most despicable, offensive creature on the planet.

 

It transpires that this isn't just a telephone call to have a chat about spanking. It's a cry for help from someone who feels an inch away from picking that baby up and shaking it, or whacking the toddler around the head...or hurling their horrible teen onto the street in the middle of the night and locking the door on them. And they can tell you about all these feelings because the call is anonymous and untraceable.

 

I often wonder, with this site, if there are people in that situation reading this site. It strikes me as the kind of site that might attract people who are looking for a bit of temporary escapism from the screaming baby or the shrieking, demanding toddler. And with those people in mind, the pro-smacking posts worry me.

 

No doubt lots of parents who can calmly and unemotionally deliver a short, sharp smack on the bottom as a reminder...but not everyone falls into that category. At the other end of the spectrum are the inadequate, Jerry Springer Show parents I mentioned earlier, who see violence and screaming as the solution to everything.

 

Then in between those two extremes....a vast number of normal people who just want to do a good parenting job. But who, like many other people who won't necessarily admit it, can be prone to outbursts of anger during stressful times. Who might go further - sometimes much further - than they intended to in hitting their child. Who'll keep the violent thoughts to themselves for fear of other people's judgements.

 

As a child, I felt totally unable to talk to anyone (other than my brother) about my dad's violence, because I knew fine well that they'd make all kinds of judgements about him that I didn't agree with. Violent, horrible child-beater who hated his own kids. No, actually - very caring and loving father most of the time, who had major problems in controlling his temper. And because it's so taboo for people to admit that, they don't. They pretend they have it all under control, when it isn't necessarily so.

 

Threads like this do tend to turn into a polarised discussion of people like me expressing fear about what people really mean when they talk about smacking their kids, and people who are at pains to reassure a bunch of strangers that they are calm, competent parents who can spank without anger and find it an effective form of punishment.

 

At times, it can be a little Truman Show like. And yes, I suppose that does give me the shivers a little...because for many people out there that just isn't the reality.

[Dexter Morgan]

Spanked both of mine, they are great young adults and I wouldn't change a thing. My siblings and I were spanked, not by just our parents, but by the village if they thought we had done something wrong. And my parents never questioned others discipline. They knew that everyone had our best interest at heart. I guess that was the advantage of growing up in small town USA, the village helped raise every kid and most of us turned out pretty damn good:p

 

Yes, well according to Lizzie60, you are uneducated and weak.

[Rooster_DAR]

I think people should be allowed to spank their children if they wish too, it's a form of discipline that works well for many people.

 

I was spanked by my father with a belt, and it did not adversely affect me. I knew what to stay away from because of it.

 

I did not spank my own son however, I learned how to use other tactics that worked just as well.

 

Cheers!