[Professor]
Americans express different beliefs in the taboo idea of corporal punishment. Varied opinions exist in light of the said topic. Belief in using and even considering the importance of physical punishment as a method of child discipline has been an impending and resilient method throughout the generations of Americans from since the 17th century to the present. Currently, hundreds of years later, at the forefront of the 21st century, the American positivity on the use of physical punishment has been showing significant signs of decline (Gershoff, 11).
Physical punishment as defined by Gershoff is the use of physical force with the purpose of subjecting a child to acquire discomfort or pains in the body for the purpose of punishing or correcting the child's behavior. By this definition, it is understood that inducing light physical punishment methods as well as stronger physical force methods is considered as physical punishment (9).
However, physical punishment does not only refer to inflicting physical pain on children as a form of control; it also contains other practices that include aiming to cause physical discomfort in children to punish their negative behaviors. This punishment also includes making a child kneel on sharp or painful objects, putting hot sauce on a child's tongue, and washing a child's mouth with soap.
The National Data Program for the Social Sciences is formed as a data dispersion project and a function of indicators for social research. Data used for these researches come from General Social Surveys, administered interviews by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) to its samples using standard questionnaires. Aiming towards the main objective of the NORC as an effective indicator program, certain objects that have appeared since 1937 have been duplicated in the following General Social Surveys up until 2006. The search for popular items have led to published reports of the SRC (Michigan) studies, Gallup, Harris, the Detroit Area Study, Federal Commissions such as those on Violence and Pornography and NORC files.
Items used on the surveys are one of three types:
• Permanent types or the questions that show on each survey conducted
• Rotating questions or those questions that appear on two out of every three surveys (for example those surveys that happened on 1973, 1974, and 1976 or 1973, 1975, and 1976), and;
• Occasional questions such as the split ballot experiments appeared in single surveys.
It was in 1988 that items for the survey were no longer rotated in the following years but appeared in two-thirds of the surveys conducted. Among the topics discussed in the topic is the people’s attitude towards spanking. The question posed on the survey requires the sample audience to answer the question. This question poses the idea of whether they strongly agree, agree, disagree or strongly disagree that it is sometimes needed to discipline children with a good, hard spanking.
According to the Child trends data bank, 77 percent of men and 65 percent of women ages 16 to 65 in 2012 agreed that it is sometimes necessary to discipline a child using a good, hard spanking. Statistics such as those mentioned above has declined humbly since 1986 with women. On the other hand, the approval with males, after declining modestly in the early 1990s, remained still since then (1).
The Child trends data bank holds the survey’s importance because of the impact that discipline has on a child (1). One of the most frequent strategies used to discipline a child especially the younger ones is spanking. According to the same organization, about 94 percent of parents of children those with ages three to four in the United States report to have spanked their children during the past year.
However, the use of corporal punishment is connected to negative results for children. This result might be an implication of unsuccessful parenting (Child trends data bank, 1). Research also suggests that the number of negative behaviors seen during adolescence is linked to the number of spanking a child gets; as the child grows older, a stronger link is formed between the behavior of the child and spanking (1).
On the other hand, positive results are more likely to happen when parents avoid using spanking and other physical means of punishment. When parents control their children through effective communication that is nurturing, firm and reasoned. Recent research studies look at this type of discipline as a type that can foster positive psychological manifestations, such as cooperation with others, a high self‐esteem and, improved achievement in school.
The child trends data bank also discusses that the type of discipline that children receive from their parents is at times influenced by the reasoning ability and age of the child (1). An example would be; a younger child may less be able to react to a rational type of verbal discipline; a suggested substitute strategy is to redirect or transmit the child’s attention. On the contrary, older children may react more positively to a reasoned type of communication that is both nurturing and firm (Child trends data bank, 1).
Corporal punishment (CP) policies according to Menard, have developed within a larger context of spanking beliefs for Americans (3). The central purpose for Menard’s study was to investigate the said beliefs over time. An appropriate chance for studying the spanking beliefs of Americans is presenting them with survey prompts. An example of this is the survey prompt: “Do you strongly agree, agree, disagree, or strongly disagree that it is sometimes necessary to discipline a child with a good, hard, spanking?”
Also according to Menard, spanking was illustrated as an old-fashioned manifestation of control, and responses to the survey were investigated by a generational decade and cohort (1). Another question sprang regarding associations between spanking and numerous predictors. Three research questions guided the studies:
1. Do the majority of Americans believe that it is sometimes needed to control a child “using a good, hard, spanking,” and how have the thoughts regarding this matter changed over time?
2. Did American beliefs on spanking a change through a generational group and during the course of time within generational groups?
3. What trends are associated between the belief in spanking and several categories such as Gender, Educational Attainment Level, and Number of Children.
Majority of the earlier parenting techniques according to Menard were outdated by the changing times. However, physical discipline imposed to children is a long-standing landmark of the traditional American child nurturing (Menard, 4). Twenty-one of the fifty states in U.S.A. allow the use of corporal punishment in schools. In addition, 223, 190 students in the years 2005 to 2006 were referred to spanking or paddling at school at least once in their life as students (Menard, 4). Another notion by Menard states that eighty-five percent of the American middle and high school students were subjected to physical manifestations of control by their parents (4). Most of these incidents were self-reports of parents in a survey conducted by Gershoff, Larzelere, Baumrind, Marinescu, Straus and Paschall as reported by Menard (4).
A number of Americans agree that paddling or spanking children is sometimes needed. Tolerance of the American Nation in utilizing corporal punishment in schools is at odds with the 19 European countries and 106 nations that ban inflicting physical punishment in children. The Council of Europe, the United Nations, the European Union, and forty-five American organizations disagree in inflicting corporal punishment in students and children (Gershoff, 1).
It is believed that children are the most affected when the topic of child-rearing is discussed. No matter what type of control or nurturing is used, the behavioral manifestations of children are impacted. Different negative outcomes may happen if the tolerance of spanking of children continues. It is the best change to happen that belief in this kind of system is already showing a decline among Americans. This event is evidenced by the research found on the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. The research states that when parents implement corporal punishment to lessen the manifestations of antisocial behavior, there is a long-term effect that tends to show anti-social behavior. Results found while the research was if parents replace corporal punishments with non-physical types of discipline; the methods could reduce the pursuant effects of anti-social behavior among children and students. Doing such methods could also promote a non-violent American society (1). It is, therefore, concluded that there are better effects manifested by promoting the use of non-corporal punishments for disciplining children. There are other options to control bad behavior. It is never harmful to try an alternative tone or method to correct what is wrong.
References
Burt, Ronald. 'Network Items and the General Social Survey'. Social Networks 6 (1984): 293 - 399. Web. 2 Nov. 2014.
Child Trends Data Bank,. Attitudes Toward Spanking. 2013. Print.
Gelles, Richard J, and Donileen R Loseke. Current Controversies On Family Violence. 2nd ed. Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage Publications, 2005. Print.
Gershoff, Elizabeth. Report On Physical Punishment In The United States: What Research Tells Us About Its Effects On Children. Columbus, OH: Center for Effective Discipline, 2008. Print.
Menard, Lauren. 'Religious Preference And Spanking Beliefs: Implications For School Corporal Punishment Policies'. JARS International Research Journal 3.1 (2014): 1-13. Web.
Menard, Lauren. 'Should Discipline Hurt? Shifting American Spanking Beliefs And Implications For School Corporal Punishment Policies'. Northwestern State University, 2012. Print.
National Child Traumatic Stress Network,. Physical Punishment: What Parents Should Know. Los Angeles, CA & Durham, NC: National Child Traumatic Stress Network, 2009. Print.
National Opinion Research Center,. General Social Surveys, 1972-2006: Cumulative Codebook. Chicago, IL: The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, 2008. Print.
Nenia, Kendra. 'Alternatives To Spanking'. Print.
Straus, Murray, David Sugarman, and Jean Giles-Sims. 'Spanking By Parents And Subsequent Antisocial Behavior Of Children'. Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine 151 (1997): 761 - 767. Print.
