By which I mean that until there is a study that has decent bona fides, I am not going to accept out of hand a correlation not backed by good scholarship.
Let's get something straight here and now: I have never struck a child and I do not endorse corporal punishment as a rule. I particularly do not endorse it in the school system, where the teacher or principal has no idea of what the child is accustomed to in the way of correction and can do hideous harm.
One quick aside: My mother single-handedly put an end--occasioned by the use of a ruler on me once--to such nonsense in the parochial school that I attended. As she put it quite succintly and properly: "If you think that my child's behavior merits a punishment that you have no right to administer, you let me know and I shall deal with it accordingly. You have no right to lay a hand on a child! If my child's behavior needs a serious correction, it is your responsibility to let me, the parent, know so that I can try to understand it and deal with it appropriately."
However, I have intellectual trouble with blanket statements that do not allow for the "outliers." "Never" and "always" are dangerous words. As one of the studies cited mentioned, there is always the possibility that with some of the children, corporal punishment may have occurred because there was already a sociopathological problem that a parent sought to discourage by extreme means, having tried others. I do not endorse it; I offer it for intellectual consideration.
Think also of an example in a book I recently read--looking for the book, I think the title was Loving--in which a child drops her toys out the window onto the heads of passers by. They are not all light toys; she could have hurt someone. If this is your child, you try to stop her; you explain that she could injure someone and try to figure out why she is doing this. You close the windows and continue to make your disapproval and the reasons for it clear. You go to the bathroom and come out to see her opening the window and dropping your heavy frying pan on a pedestrian. She is testing you to see if you are serious in your disapproval, despite how earnest you were; she wants to see if it is control or whether you are serious that this is a "bad" thing, to risk hurting other people for amusement. You say, "Listen, sweetheart, this is something you cannot and must not do. It is this serious!"
Swat on the behind. "This is what you are doing to the people on whom you are dropping things. You are hurting them!" |
