Pros And Cons Of Spanking An Appropriate Punishment
1709 Words7 Pages
Ashley Fritz
Professor Yeary
ENGL 101
10 October 2014
Is Spanking an Appropriate Punishment When most children would say a bad word, hit another person, talked back to or disobeyed their parents, they usually got punished. The types of punishments they would usually receive were a slap on the hand, a time out, soap in the mouth, or a spanking. Traditionally, it was okay to spank a child when they disobeyed to teach them a lesson or put soap in their mouth to make sure they would never say a bad word again. Today, some parents consider spanking a form of child abuse, while other parents see it as a good way to make the child behave better. Times have changed and evidence is starting to show that corporal punishments, like spanking, is affecting…show more content… Some people believe that because they were spanked as a child they grew up respecting others and were very well behaved children. Evidence is starting to show that children who are or were spanked act out or show more physical aggression toward others. In Elizabeth Gershoff’s book, Beating the Devil Out of Them, she did a study on physical aggression in kindergarten children. She interviewed the children’s mothers about how much corporal punishment they had used prior to doing an observation on how much aggression each child showed. In an article by Murray Straus, Gershoff states that “The children of mothers who used corporal punishment attacked other children twice as often as the children whose mothers did not” (Straus 2). Some other consequences of corporal punishment in children are: increase of anxiety or fear, decrease empathy, destroyed relationship between parent and child, lower self-esteem and it teaches the child that violence is the…show more content… Some of the characteristics are age and gender, economic status, and the culture through which the parents are brought up. One of the major causes that can influence the use of a parent using corporal punishment is their childhood history. Cultural influence can also make a parent use corporal punishment. When fathers spank they tend to spank harder than mothers do and that’s why mother spank more than fathers. Another factor why mothers are the main one to punish the child is because the mother the parent who is at home with the child when they are misbehaving and the father is usually