Hit me baby one more time
Does corporal punishment make for good discipline or does it just inflict unnecessary pain?
By Jin Paul de Guzman
The Biblical warning, traditionally ascribed to King Solomon, continues to ring true to a great number of parents: "Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and deliver his soul from hell (Proverbs 23: 13 - 14)." This has a number of variations. Cut the wayward branch to make sure the tree grows upright. Throw out the rotten tomato so the rest of the tomatoes in the bushel won't be spoiled.
But over time the primacy and effectiveness of this admonition have been subjected to criticism. The scenario of adults hitting fellow adults, some people point out, often has criminal consequences; why should adults hitting kids be exempt? They also ask: Is the infliction of physical pain, regardless of purpose or severity, a foolproof assurance that all children would grow up to be law-abiding, responsible, and moral adults?
Rod of Discord
History is replete with stories of children being subjected to physical punishment in the name of discipline. Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Richard Rhodes, in his controversial book Why They Kill: The Discoveries of a Maverick Criminologist, identified a number of practices and actual cases of mistreatment and brutality toward children in history. Rhodes quoted psychoanalyst Lloyd deMause: "[The history of childhood] is a nightmare from which we have only recently begun to awaken. The further back in history one goes, the lower the level of child care, and the more likely children are to be killed, abandoned, beaten, terrorized, and sexually abused."
Quoting deMause again, Rhodes pointed out that the Bible is something that endorses the "custom of brutalizing children." Said deMause: "When one actually reads each of the over 2,000 references to children listed in the Complete Concordance to the Bible you find lots on child sacrifice, on stoning them, on beating them, on their strict obedience, on their love for their parents, and on their role as carriers of the family name, but not a single one that reveals any empathy with their needs."
This is of course wildly debatable: perhaps no part of the Bible phrases it exactly like that, but compassion and kindness to children also figure significantly-maybe not so often as violence, but the fact is they are there-in the Bible. It would also be worth pointing out that "empathy with their needs" does not necessarily offer itself as a contradiction to the manifestations of a "custom of brutalizing children"-in fact, many of these acts of so-called brutality were believed as needs of children. Child sacrifice and the others are acts, and "empathy with needs" is an intent-and we all know the old chestnut that warns us about the illogic of comparing apples with oranges.
What is not debatable, however, is the fact that no matter the intent, children all throughout history have been subjected to varying degrees of physical punishment. For example, several generations of Pinoy kids can attest to the reality of such mythic spanking techniques as "isilid sa sako," "luhod sa munggo," and "dos por dos." But with beliefs and practices in child rearing changing, old practices now seem quaint-or cruel.
Once-Hit Wonders
Many of the things that humanity perceives as right or wrong, fair or unfair, change: slavery, once deemed natural, is now condemned; racial discrimination is an abomination; any hint of women being subjected to male dominance is met with outrage. Which is not to say that things now deemed taboo are no longer practiced; they still do take place, but the increasing vigilance of advocacy groups not only shed light on what are now deemed ugly and unjust human practices but also impress upon people exactly why these practices are ugly or unjust.
The corporal punishment of kids as an adjunct to discipline, as far as most cultures are concerned, is not a taboo. But child abuse is. The distinction between spanking and abuse may seem pretty clear, except that a number of people believe that spanking is abuse in itself. But there are also those who believe that a nonspanked child may also be considered an abused child. And so most people can only agree on certain extremes-say if the child were getting wounds and bruises, or got hospitalized, or died, that would definitely be abuse. But which authority do parents submit to once the gray areas are upon them?
Last year the appropriateness of spanking kids sparked some degree of interest in the United States when Elizabeth Thompson Gershoff, a psychologist from Columbia University, conducted a metaanalysis of 88 individual studies involving 36,309 children done over a period 62 years. Gershoff defined corporal punishment as the use of "physical force that causes a child pain, but not injury, to correct or control behavior." Publishing the results of her study in the American Psychological Association's Psychological Bulletin, she looked for positive and negative associations between corporal punishment and 11 different behaviors and experiences in both childhood and adulthood. What she examined were immediate compliance, moral internalization, quality of relationship with parent, and physical abuse from the parent as childhood end points, and mental health, aggression, and criminal or antisocial behavior as adulthood end points.
Gershoff found that of the 11 associations, 10 were negative (such as increased child aggression), and only one positive, which was increased immediate compliance. But the two issues that had the strongest associations were those considered as the central issues in the spanking debate-immediate compliance and the possibility of abuse. She wrote: "There is general consensus that corporal punishment is effective in getting children to comply immediately while at the same time there is caution from child abuse researchers that corporal punishment…can escalate into physical maltreatment."
But she also said that while spanking might result in immediate compliance, the problem of whether the child fully grasps the "moral message" of spanking emerges. She explained: "By itself it doesn't teach why children shouldn't engage in the misbehavior or what they should do instead. Instead, it teaches that you don't want to misbehave when the parent is around."
Gershoff did admit that there was nothing in the findings that should prompt people to establish a direct causal relationship between spanking and the negative effects, but she concludes: "Until researchers, clinicians, and parents can definitely demonstrate the presence of positive effects of corporal punishment, including effectiveness in halting future misbehavior, not just the absence of negative effects, we as psychologists can not responsibly recommend its use."
There were a number of people who raised an objection to the results of Gershoff's study. Also in Psychological Bulletin, three other researchers pointed out that the individual studies on which Gershoff based her metaanalysis had included instances of extreme and excessive physical punishment and thus could not adequately represent normative corporal punishment. Drs. Diana Baumrind and Philip Cowan of the University of California-Berkeley and Robert Larzerele of the Nebraska Medical Center said that "a high association between corporal punishment and physical abuse is not an evidence that mild or moderate corporal punishment increases the risk of abuse."
And so we are back to where we started: How exactly do we know when corporal punishment is mild or moderate?
Moderately Complex
"You have to affirm and differentiate
between what the child did versus the child [itself]. You didn't like what the
child did but you still love the person, despite the mistakes, katigasan ng
ulo."
-Dr. Vasquez-Genuino |
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Saying, "It depends" may seem more vague and coy than illuminating, but there is no way a "one size fits all" prescription can be made on the issue of raising one's children. Child and adolescent psychiatrist Anna Vasquez-Genuino points out a basic fact: "Each child is different. Some kids you never even have to spank them-isang tingin lang susunod na.
May ibang bata naman kahit ilang warnings mo na wala pa ring nangyayari, kaya at some point
napapalo mo na."
Vasquez-Genuino adds: "[Parents] have to study what are the normal behavioral patterns of children at a particular age. At some ages [some behavioral patterns] are normal, at some ages [they're] not anymore." For example, a three-year-old tells something wrong-not necessarily a lie, but perhaps something that's not completely accurate. "You don't have to react
na 'Salbahe itong anak ko na ito, singungaling ito,' " and then hit the child. At that age, she explains, the kid cannot fully grasp what lying means; therefore, pointing out the inaccuracy and the necessity of saying the truth may be enough. At a later age, the stakes are different.
"Kahit 'yung likot ng bata, it's actually just exploration," she adds. "You should really allow them.
Kasi kung lagi mong inii-stifle 'yan, hindi nila made-develop
'yung skill nila to explore the world."
That is just one of the factors to be considered. The form the punishment takes, the frequency of its administration, whether the severity of the punishment corresponds with the perceived severity of the offense, the emotions manifest by the parent while spanking the kid, and whether the infliction of however mild physical pain on the kid were the only form discipline takes-all these must be made clear.
And it's not like spanking is the only way to get kids to learn what's right from wrong, or that spanking in itself clears up the child's understanding of right and wrong. It isn't even the most important component of child rearing. "You have to affirm and differentiate between what the child did versus the child [itself]," Vasquez-Genuino clarifies. "You didn't like what the child did but you still love the person, despite the mistakes,
katigasan ng ulo."
And more importantly: "You also have to show some affection.
Kasi kung puro palo lang, puro galit lang, wala rin. Hindi nila napi-feel na love
mo sila. Feel lang niya na galit ka lagi sa kanya, lagi siyang mali."
In addition, a certain level of consistency is necessary in laying down, as well as observing, house rules. In the traditional Pinoy family setup, the mothers often come across as doting and overprotective, while the fathers are strict and punitive. Or perhaps the parents are strict, while the grandparents are
kunsintidor. "Dapat everybody at home should be consistent in what's right, what's wrong, what's allowed, what's not allowed, and then the corresponding punishment," Vasquez-Genuino clarifies. "Parang nakasulat dapat 'yan na, 'Kapag ito ang ginawa mo ito ang mangyayari.'
Para clear din sa bata. Hindi 'yung sometimes [the children] get punished, sometimes they don't, or
depende kung sino ang nandiyan."
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