Doesn't it feel so satisfying to beat a child's buttocks raw when they've done something awful and angered you?
The old saying, "This is going to hurt me a lot more than it hurts you" just simply isn't true. Hitting is great stress relief. It's a way to excise aggression. And when it's used to punish a child who has embarrassed or otherwise angered you, it can be considered a parental duty. Discipline.
We can't pull our belts off and beat the ass of the snooty lady in the Ford Explorer who whipped into "our" parking space after we'd waited 10 minutes for it and shown clear intent, via a turn signal, to use that spot. How great would it be if we could bend the old biddy over our knee and just let her have it?
What about when a conniving coworker takes credit for something we've worked diligently on for days? Wouldn't it be delicious to be able to take that ping-pong paddle in the bottom drawer of our desks and smack and smack until we felt calm?
Let me interject a little disclaimer here: I think that parents should have the right to use measured physical punishment as discipline if they choose. This is not a "we need a law!" post. It's more of a "think about this" post.
My children are still young. My parenting experience is limited. I've educated myself a fair amount through college study on child development, through reading parenting books and magazines, through talking with other parents, and through attending several free parenting classes offered by the Army. In spite of this, I realize I don't know it all. And I cannot know whether the discipline tools I currently use with my children will continue to be appropriate or if they will help them grow into respectful, hard-working adults with integrity.
However, it is my belief that spanking and other forms of corporal punishment do less to benefit a child through instruction and more to benefit an adult through stress relief.
Spanking is easy. It's the easy out.
It doesn't require thought. It doesn't require that you monitor the child for several minutes or even days or weeks as they complete a fleshed out discipline regimen. It doesn't require the parent to miss a movie or a trip to the ice cream shop. It's easy.
It also, as I've previously mentioned, provides the parent with a much-needed outlet for his or her anger.
Does a child learn life long self-discipline and personal integrity through spanking? Child development is such that in the younger years, a child lacks empathy. They have a difficult time understanding how their actions affect other people. They are egocentric and it is possible to stop a bad behavior by giving them a negative consequence that they will want to avoid.
However, they do not have the memory capacity that adults do, and so punishment must immediately follow the infraction or they will have no clue why this person they depend on to meet their needs is hurting them. This also means that a spanking for pulling the cat's tail last week doesn't stand a good chance of being a deterrent memory for this week.
My personal choice for disciplining very young children is that spanking (a swift swat, more scarily surprising to the child than painful) is an appropriate tool when a child who is too young to understand natural consequences when they are explained to him has done something physically dangerous. Example: running out in the street. This will not always keep them from running into the street again, something which is best avoided through parental vigilance, but it often will work as a deterrent in the short term when it is imperative that a behavior be stopped.
Very young children benefit more from distraction than actual discipline. Because of their limited understanding of natural consequences, inability to understand how their behaviors may harm someone else, and their memory capacity, the most effective way to get them to stop an undesirable behavior is to distract them with something else. This requires effort on the part of the parent, but works well for stopping bad behavior in the moment. It is not a long-term solution, but at a very young age, children operate in the moment, without much, if any, thought for future or past consequences.
As children grow and develop, avoidance of negative consequences is their primary motivating factor (not yet empathy or understanding of how their behaviors affect others). Spanking could work in children who have reached this level of development.
However, spanking fails to address natural consequences, which children need to start becoming familiar with. When discipline reinforces natural consequences, children learn that the rules are not arbitrary, but have a purpose and that adhering to the rules is in their best interest. Children need to see the connection between their behavior and choices and how those negative choices affect themselves and others. An example of discipline that reinforces natural consequences is making a child who has intentionally broken a friend's favorite toy give the friend their own favorite toy. The punishment is relevant to the infraction, works as a deterrent, and demonstrates the real life consequences of destroying the property of others (restitution).
Natural consequence-based discipline requires thought and effort and sometimes even personal sacrifice on the part of the parent, but I believe that it is much more beneficial for the child by way of character development. More than just a punishment, it is also a lesson.
Older children are able to empathize with others and understand how their choices and behaviors may bring negative consequences for themselves and others. They are not driven primarily by selfish avoidance of pain or other more direct punishments, but can be deterred from undesirable behavior simply through knowing that a certain behavior will disappoint their parents or others. When children reach this point in their development, many more discipline tools and methods are effective in deterring bad behavior. A word of caution, though...just because a punishment or discipline deters bad behavior does not mean that it builds character or integrity in a child. A form of discipline can be effective and still physically or psychologically damaging to a child.
Another concern with spanking is that it teaches a child to hit in order to demonstrate their disapproval of the actions of others, thus encouraging violence.
My oldest child is eight and neither of my children are delinquents or have any major discipline problems. I know that the method I've advocated (which I've very much simplified here) works up to age 8 with MY children. Every family is different, and every child is different. Unfortunately, so much of parenting is trial and error. And you don't get to eat the mistakes, haha. We all have to work out the discipline plan that we feel best serves our children.
For me, that plan does not center around spanking, which I feel is primarily an aggression outlet for parents and teaches children nothing except "don't get caught or you'll get beat" and "I can do what I want and then just take my licks...it's worth it".
I was spanked as a child...all the way up to even my mid-teens. When I did something bad I'd get the choice of grounding or spanking. It didn't take me long to figure out how easy it was to take a spanking and go on my merry little way. It just wasn't a deterrent for me. It was easy. Easy for my parents to administer, and easy for me to take. A few minutes of pain was a small price to pay for the deliciously awful stuff I did.
In my experience, spanking, while it remains a parent's right, is just not a real discipline plan. It's a parent lashing out at a child rather than instructing him. Spanking is lazy and should be replaced with more effective forms of discipline that actually teach a child how to behave and become a decent adult.
We teach our children ways to deal with their anger and provide them with safe, appropriate outlets. What kind of message are we sending when we can't do the same?