The Effects of Corporal Punishment on Children
Corporal punishment harms the child physically and
psychologically:
* The deliberate infliction of pain and fear by an adult
responsible for a child's care is inevitably harmful for that child,
irrespective of the rationale and motivation behind the adult's
behaviour. Corporal punishment often harms the child physically and
always harms the child psychologically. In addition to the risks of
physical injury, evidence is mounting that the physiological effect
of repeatedly stressing a developing child can negatively impact upon
their brain neurochemistry, causing deficits in brain development,
concentration and learning, their ability to modulate their emotions
and their ability to cope well with future stress. Thus, much of
the harm caused by corporal punishment is not immediately obvious...
When children who have been hit by misguided well-intentioned
parents are later able to reach a well adjusted adulthood, it is
because of the love, nurturance and appropriate limit-setting not
because of the physical violence they received.
The wrong lessons learned:
* In that hitting offers such a poor model for handling
conflict, perhaps it is not surprising that too many children who are
physically punished learn the wrong lessons all too well. They
quickly learn lessons about dominance and submission in
relationships, and are then expected to refrain from applying these
lessons by hitting other children at school or by becoming a victim
to another's bullying. They learn that "might makes right". They may
readily learn to obey out of fear rather than learning true
co-operation based on mutual respect and a healthy social conscience.
They often learn to hide their anger, resentment and shame. They may
even learn to lie to protect themselves, to cheat when they can, and
to steal some tokens of fairness out of life. Moreover, it is not
uncommon for children who are often hit on their buttocks to learn a
powerful subconscious association between genital sexual arousal and
being hit that can become problematic for them in years to come.
(*)
The right lessons unlearned:
* You will find that adults who were hit as kids, while believing
that it did them "no harm" can seldom articulate any way in which it
helped them. Corporal punishment cannot teach a child the
self-discipline which is based on true respect for self and others.
Furthermore, children's experience of physical punishment generally
includes their awareness of the adult's inability to fully understand
the hurt they are causing to the child. When children experience
insufficient empathy for themselves they often find it more difficult
to learn empathy for others. In turn, unless they receive sufficient
help they can then grow up unable to appropriately empathise with
their own children, and too often become part of the next generation
of physically abusive parents. Most parents who have not developed
the ability to understand their child's experience of corporal
punishment have never recognised this connection with their own
experience of corporal punishment as a child. For the parent,
"smacking" readily becomes a bad habit, as it often has a short term
gain of relieving the parents anger and immediately shocking the
child into stopping the behaviour (as would an electric shock)