Parents Should Spank Their Kids

Introduction

Although there is no one definition of panking, it is generally described as the use of physical force with the intention of causing a child pain, but not injury, for the purpose of either correction or control of behavior. The term corporal punishment can refer to the act of striking another's body (e.g., spanking, slapping, caning, whipping), pulling or yanking a part of another's body, or throwing objects at another individual. However, the types of socially accepted spanking, the prevalence of spanking, and the population subjected to corporal punishment are continually influenced by changing cultural norms and public attitudes (Osofsky, 129).

Historically, spanking has been utilized for cases of adults by penal institutions and the military, as well as cases of children through juvenile courts, reformatories, schools, and parents. Today, however, the United States limits the use of corporal punishment to the disciplining of children, while most other Western countries have outlawed corporal punishment outright.

Discussion

Spanking is considered the oldest form of punishment known to humankind. Numerous acts of whipping and flogging can be found in the Old Testament, and the Laws of Moses reference the use of “up to forty strokes of the rod” as a punishment for a variety of offenses. In addition, King Solomon promised that parents who spared the rod would spoil their children.

In 1530, Henry the Eighth added the Whipping Act to English law as a punishment for vagrancy, whereby offenders would be tied naked to a cart and whipped in the marketplace until bloody. Whippings were administered for offenses such as peddling, being drunk on a Sunday, giving birth to a bastard child, and participating in or suspicion of witchcraft. In America, whipping was used as punishment for crimes of slander, theft, idleness, rioting, and prostitution and was used unmercifully as a punishment for slaves. It was not until the mid-1900s that the use of corporal punishment was deemed inhumane and thus terminated in the United States prison system.

According to Murray Straus and his colleagues, a large study by the National Family Violence Council found that a large percentage of American children have been hit at some point by at least one parent, with males being hit more often than females. Parents' use of corporal punishment often begins in a child's infancy, reaches a peak when the child is around age 3 or 4, and then declines. However, about one in four American children are still subjected to some form of corporal punishment through their teen years (ages 15-17). Parental attitudes about acceptable types of corporal punishment seem to be changing, as more severe punishments such as throwing objects are on the decline.

In 1977, in Ingraham v. Wright, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments on corporal punishment violating children's Eighth Amendment rights, but on a 5-4 decision declared that schoolroom corporal punishment did not constitute cruel and unusual punishment. However, since the Supreme Court decision, 29 states have banned spanking in U.S. schools, and states without corporal punishment bans have seen a continual ...