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Spanking: Why It Is Not An Appropriate Teaching Method In Child-rearing Quoc Phong, Le Coastline English 100 Prof. Davis July 7, 2019

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"Children's Health, The Nation's Wealth," the comparison was stated by Adrienne Ettinger (2004) as the title of her same name work published 2004. Children are the sprouts, the future of each country and nation. Therefore, the job of protecting, caring, and educating children should be especially concerned so that those green germs can grow firmly. Educating children right from a young age is a necessary job because it directly affects the formation and development of children's character and dignity. Currently, there are many methods to instruct children, but each child has a different background and personality so we cannot use the same manner applying for all. Nowadays, many families those parents chose to use whips in their education because they think it is the best way to teach their child is punishing them hard for their mistakes. However, with a different period of growth, children have various psychological and personality manifestations; so, whether using spanking while educate children is useful. Notably, the use of the whip is prevalent in Vietnam. Parents from Vietnam often punish by spanking whenever their children do something wrong, which derived from the long-held mind that light hit does not hurt children. I think that the use of spanking is more harmful than beneficial. This essay argues that parent should not spank their children because that negatively affects on parental behavior, the psychology, the perception, the physical body of the child, and influencing to their relationship skills as adults. To start, the parent must understand that there is a negative consequence that affects parents when they attempt to punish by hitting their children. Initially, hitting the child judges the wrong behavior of a child by giving gentle whips, and help their child acknowledge the truth. However, one of the parental difficulties is that they are unable to control their anger. Many parents try to teach their children how to control anger responsibly, but some cannot handle it; so the punishment is getting more and more powerful, and "reports from abusive parents suggest

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that many individual instances of abuse begin with an attempt to control a child's behavior through corporal punishment" (Barlett, 2010, p.67). Some parents think that they are always right, so they want to impose their thoughts on their child, and spanking would be used when their child behaves differently than their feelings. It means that parents are powerless in childrearing. A child sometimes suffers unjustifiable spanks neither because of their inappropriate words nor improper hostilities, but because their parents are frustrated or stressed. In social psychology, there is a term of "mere exposure," which was explained as our behaviors will become more extreme if we repeat any actions from time by time (Robert, 1989, p. 265). Thus, this escalation can lead to child violence in the future. Besides, as a human instinct, we have the habit of mimicking what we see; "It is widely known that individuals frequently imitate each other in social situations and that such mimicry fulfills an important social role in the sense that it functions as a social glue," (Genschow, Klomfar, d'Haene, and Brass, 2018, p.1). If spanking children is imitated, spread widely in our society, and become a new universal standard, then the remediation will be challenging to be conducted. By spanking children, parents will suffer more negative consequences than their thoughts. Secondly, the discipline by spanking negatively affects the psychological aspect of a child. Nowadays, many countries have issued a ban on physical punishment, in which Sweden is the first nation applying this law (Lansford et al., 2017, p. 44). Smacking children is mostly not useful in education; especially, children tend to be stubborn and likely to reverse their parents' intentions. They behave like that because they want to show their opposition and revenge on the punishments of their parents. Over time, this attitude of their children will develop into antisocial behavior; "the strongest causal evidence that customary spanking increases antisocial behavior is based on prospective studies that control statistically for initial antisocial differences," (Robert,

SPANKING Ronald, and Gail, 2010). Otherwise, an ineffective corporal punishment will lead to fighting and disruptive behavioral issues in the classroom. Physical discipline makes children's behavior worse, not better, and turn them into roughness, aggressiveness, and caginess. In the study of the Relationships between parents' use of corporal punishment and their children's endorsement of spanking and hitting other children, Dominique A.Simons and Sandy K.Wurtele concluded that: "Children whose parents approved of and used corporal punishment (CP) were more likely to endorse hitting as a strategy for resolving interpersonal conflicts with peers and siblings. Frequent spanking was the strongest predictor of children's acceptance of aggressive problem solving, above and beyond parental acceptance, parental experience of CP, and familial demographics," (Dominique, and Sandy, 2010, p. 639). That is why the use of physical punishment with a child is more harmful than our thoughts because it will change the physiological mind of children; especially, for who is in the period of worldview awareness development. The third disadvantage of spanking using is that it will change the awareness, and perception of our children deeply. Children who are smacked regularly are more likely to become violent adults in the future because they are taught that when an older person does not agree with any specific action or opinion, the elder can use some form of violence solutions to handle it. According to the research on this issue, Straus found the correlative relationship between spanking and national IQ; he stated that the national IQ of a nation, where spanking is prevalent, is lower than the others where smacking is banned. Besides, his analysis shows that the most crucial link between physical punishment and IQ is for those whose parents frequent to prank since they were schoolchild (Straus, Murray, and Mallie, 2009, p. 495). Moreover, researchers have observed that the child's brain will change when being hit often. Children who

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have been beaten frequently have less gray matter in some regions of the cerebral cortex, which affects their IQs, as well as their ability to make decisions and process information. Psychology Today proceeds to tell us that: "spanking may reduce the brain's grey matter, the connective tissue between brain cells. Grey matter is an integral part of the central nervous system and influences intelligence testing and learning abilities" (Molly, 2012). "Intriguing results are now emerging from neuroimaging studies, which suggest that physical punishment may reduce the volume of the brain’s grey matter in areas associated with performance on the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, third edition," (Tomoda, Suzuki, and Rabi, 2009, p. T66). Furthermore, adults who had suffered physical punishment at an early age are less likely to graduate from college and succeed in careers. Spanking seriously affects a child's brain, which limits their awareness or loss of cognitive ability. Next, corporal punishment may hurt the physical body of our children. Spanking and other physical punishment currently are legal and socially acceptable in many countries. In the U.S., 76% of men and 65% of women agree that “it is sometimes necessary to discipline a child with a good hard spanking” (ChildTrends, 2015); and 70% of mothers of two-year-olds report spanking their children (Zolotor, Robinson, Runyan, & Murphy, 2011). In the opinion of many adults, physical punishment is necessary to help children to obey, and it does not harm them. Even though some parents proudly show off that because of their pranking, their children are as successful. This escalation will lead to child abuse shortly; especially, if parents cannot control their anger, their children will suffer painfully from their parental corporal punishment. According to the Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect in 2008, there are more than 74% of physical abuse case started as corporal punishment (Trocmé et al., 2010); and "results indicated that those who reported having experienced spanking during childhood

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were also significantly more likely to have experienced childhood physical abuse" (Fréchette, Zoratti, & Romano, 2015). Thus, it'll increase the risk that our child will be injury or abuse if we continue spanking to teach our children Lastly, corporal punishment makes children build up anger and sadness, leading to destroy their relationship skills, especially parent-child relationship; the child will be more and more distant from their parents. The true spirit of cooperation that every parent desire can only be built and cultivated through a strong emotional relationship based on love and mutual respect. However, when using force to resolve conflicts, every connection will be unsustainable and corrupt. Besides, the anger that stored for many years may explode one day when the child is old enough to acknowledge the rights. "There is no dispute that early exposures are critical to later social habits. Relationships with adults at a very young age shape how we learn to relate. The degree to which violence and perceived respect enter into that relationship are important" (Hamblim, 2017). Top experts at two prestigious universities: Stanford and Harvard have voiced out against spanking; "Spanking can really squelch your relationship with your child," Michelle Borba, an Educational Psychologist, explains in Kid In The House interview (2018, p.1). Parental use of spanking makes children shun and upset. They will hide their daily stories, friend relationships, or their wishes, which eventually makes parents don't understand their children, and the parent-child link gradually gets worse. Therefore, spanking will destroy the relationship skills of our children; and as the first expression, it will ruin the bond between children and parents. Nowadays, spanking is still a common way of teaching that many parents use. According to a poll published by Corporal punishment of children in the USA in 2019, "In a survey of 2,286 adults carried out in 2013, 81% said it was sometimes appropriate for parents to "spank" their

SPANKING children and 19% said it was never appropriate" (Corporal punishment of children in the USA, 2019, p. 6). Proponents of this way of education often rely on their own experience to argue that smacking training can improve the academic performance and behavior of their children. The spanking-parents often assume that they have also been beaten as children, but they are still excellent when they grow up. However, they are still unaware that spanking has caused severe harms in which the most intense prejudice is the straightforward influence on the physiological development of their children. Therefore, we should not use corporal punishment in any way in the education and orientation of children.

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Bartlett, G. (2010). An argument against spanking. Public Affairs Quarterly, 24(1), 65-77. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.ccclib.nocccd.edu/stable/25704873 Robert F. Bornstein, "Exposure and Affect: Overview and Meta-analysis of Research, 19681987," Psychological Bulletin, vol. 106, no. 2 (1989), pp. 265-289. Genschow, O., Klomfar, S., d, H. I., & Brass, M. (2018). Mimicking and anticipating others’ actions is linked to Social Information Processing. PLoS ONE, 13(3), 1–11. Retrieved from https://doi-org.ezproxy.ccclib.nocccd.edu/10.1371/journal.pone.0193743 Lansford, J. E., Cappa, C., Putnick, D. L., Bornstein, M. H., Deater-Deckard, K., & Bradley, R. H. (2017). Change over time in parents’ beliefs about and reported use of corporal punishment in eight countries with and without legal bans. Child Abuse & Neglect, 71, 44–55. 10.1016/j.chiabu.2016.10.016 Robert E Larzelere, Ronald B CoxJr, & Gail L Smith. (2010, February 22). Do nonphysical punishments reduce antisocial behavior more than spanking? A comparison using the strongest previous causal evidence against spanking. Retrieved from https://bmcpediatr.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2431-10-10 A Simons, Dominique & Wurtele, Sandy. (2010). Relationships between parents' use of corporal punishment and their children's endorsement of spanking and hitting other children. Child abuse & neglect. 34. 639-46. 10.1016/j.chiabu.2010.01.012. Straus, Murray A. and Mallie J. Paschall. Corporal Punishment by mothers and development of children's cognitive ability: a longitudinal study of two nationally representative age cohorts. Journal of Aggression Maltreatment & Trauma, 2009; 18 (5): 459 DOI: 10.1080/10926770903035168

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Molly S. Castelleo (2012). How spanking harms the brain. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-me-in-we/201202/how-spanking-harmsthe-brain Tomoda, A., Suzuki, H., Rabi, K., Sheu, Y. S., Polcari, A., & Teicher, M. H. (2009). Reduced prefrontal cortical gray matter volume in young adults exposed to harsh corporal punishment. NeuroImage, 47 Suppl 2(Suppl 2), T66–T71. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.03.005 Child Trends Databank. (2015). Attitudes toward spanking. Retrieved from: http://www.childtrends.org/?indicators=attitudes-toward-spanking Zolotor, A.J., Robinson, T., Runyan, D.K., Barr, R.G., & Murphy, R.A. (2011). The emergence of spanking among a representative sample of children under 2 years of age in north carolina. Front. Psychiatry. Fréchette, Sabrina & Zoratti, Michael & Romano, Elisa. (2015). What is the link between corporal punishment and child physical abuse?. Journal of Family Violence. 30. 135-148. 10.1007/s10896-014-9663-9. Fast, Elizabeth. (2010). Trocme, N., Fallon, B., MacLaurin, B., Sinha, V., Black, T. & Fast, E. Et al. (2010). Canadian incidence study of reported child abuse and neglect – 2008: Major Findings, chapters 1-5. Public Health Agency of Canada (eds.). Ottawa, 2010. Hamblin, J. (2018, March 20). People who were spanked are more likely to be violent in relationships. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2017/12/thefourth-r/547583/

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House, K. I. (2018, June 30). Harvard and Stanford experts speak out against spanking at kids in the house. Retrieved from https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/harvard-andstanford-experts-speak-out-against-spanking-at-kids-in-the-house-275359261.html Corporal punishment of children in the USA (). Retrieved from https://endcorporalpunishment.org/reports-on-every-state-and-territory/usa/...