I keep a bumper sticker on the shelf in my office that reads: “It’s NEVER OK to HIT A CHILD.” A few weeks ago, a colleague – a wonderful, kind woman with an Ivy League education who is the mother of three boys – was in my office. She read the bumper sticker out loud and then took issue with its message.
Children can be so frustrating, she said. Sometimes it might be okay to spank a child, she suggested.
Hitting children is deeply ingrained in our Judeo-Christian ethic. Many parents rely on the biblical admonition “spare the rod and spoil the child” to justify hitting their children, usually in a well-intended effort to discipline them. In most states it’s legal for a parent to hit a child for disciplinary purposes.
But when does hitting a child – euphemistically referred to as “spanking” – constitute child abuse?
Some years ago, I was appointed by the court to represent a 7-year-old girl whose father, a Deputy Sheriff, “spanked” her with the heavy leather belt he wore with his uniform, because she rather obviously and ham-handedly changed a grade on her report card. She needed more than a dozen stiches to close the cuts he caused on her buttocks, the backs of her legs and her lower back. He was indignant that children’s protective services had intervened in his parenting choices and sought legal protection for his daughter. After all, he said, he’d been spanked as a child and turned out fine.
These memories rushed back to me last when I saw reports of an article that summarizes five decades of research about the long-term effects of corporal punishment on children. The bottom line: they are not good.
Ironically, children who are spanked are more likely to defy their parents than to comply with their directives. The new report, which reviews research on the outcomes of more than 160,000 children makes clear that spanking is linked to a number of poor life outcomes including: “increased anti-social behavior, aggression, mental health problems and cognitive difficulties.”
That sentence, from the University of Texas news release announcing the study, caused me to think of a Flint, Michigan boy I represented in a delinquency case a few years ago. He was charged with assaulting another boy and taking some money from his wallet. As we talked in the detention center, he said, “nobody puts their hands on me but my people.”
That is the kind of statement I’ve heard literally hundreds of times in more than 25 years of representing children in Michigan’s juvenile courts. As we talked, he explained that his father had been in and out of prison most of his life – mostly in. His mother had been addicted to crack cocaine for as long as he could remember. So he had bounced from relative to relative. He told of how his Uncle Tony had repeatedly “whooped” him with an extension cord. I asked if he had any marks from these “whoopings.” He showed me one on his wrist, then one higher up on his arm. Then he stopped.
“Do you have other marks?” I asked. He said he did, on his back. I asked him to show me. He hiked up his shirt to reveal a dozen or more loop shaped scars where Uncle Tony had hit him. Beneath his beautiful smile and charming exterior was a hurt, angry and rageful abused child.
The court sent the boy to live with his aunt and ordered that he receive counseling. But he was too angry and too taken in by the street culture. He got hold of a gun and, with several other boys, broke into a house, assaulted an elderly woman and robbed her. At 15, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Now, some will say these are extreme cases. That’s a fair point. There will, no doubt, be debates and disagreement about the point where discipline ends and child abuse begins. I’m sure that like the Sheriff’s Deputy, Uncle Tony was well-intended. But we should not be surprised when the children we teach to hit, hit us – or others – back.
Frank Vandervort is a clinical professor of law at the University of Michigan. He cofounded the Juvenile Justice Clinic in 2009, is the president of the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children and serves as a consultant to Trauma Informed Child Welfare Systems, a federally funded training and technical assistance program.
By Guest Writer This post New Study Confirms Link Between Hitting Children and Poor Outcomes appeared first on The Chronicle of Social Change.
Written By Chronicle Of Social Change
New Study Confirms Link Between Hitting Children and Poor Outcomes was originally published @ The Chronicle of Social Change and has been syndicated with permission.
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I am a macro social worker who works in the field of clinical research. I am currently managing a project working with substance abusing parents who have involvement with child protective services for child maltreatment. While I am not an advocate for corporal punishment, I do think spanking on occasion is not abuse and it is acceptable. However, we must clearly define spanking vs beating/ hitting because there is definitely a disconnect between the definitions of the two. I do not promote spanking to any parent I work with or any other parents I may speak with and this is because there is personal interpretation of what is spanking and what is abuse and sometimes the interpretation sounds the same. We have most parents who parent the way they were parented until they open their mind up to accept there are other ways of discipline. When people tell me they were spanked and they turned out find. My first question to them is usually; “did you parents also hug you, praise you, spend quality time with you, talk to you and listen to you?” If their answer is yes to any or all of those questions, my next question is, ” well if they did all of that in addition to spanking you, how do you know the spanking is what made you come out fine, couldn’t it have been the other positive things they did with you?” That is usually food for thought and it tends to change their outlook on how they view spanking. I may spank my grandbaby from time to time, but I am careful to explain to her why she is being spanked and I make sure she understands fully. However, that is just occasionally and not a regular occurence. Therefore, I would like to read the article that was referenced in this story because I truly believe the poor outcomes in the title of the article is referring to abuse and not spanking in its most true definition. Furthermore, all of the cases that was referenced by the author in this story, truly sounds like abuse and not spanking; therefore, I understand their outcomes.
I agree that there are different degrees of spanking, and as someone who has a history of working with abused children, I agree with the legal definition of spanking “open hand on the buttocks”. I have five nephews, and on occasion when they were younger, they may have received one swat on the bottom to get their attention if they were acting out, and that was enough to stop them. I wasn’t spanked as a child, so I know that you can raise good children without spanking them. However, it is important to teach discipline and not just use spanking as your only source of discipline.
I agree!