Ideas: Children & Physical Punishment

Is corporal punishment – beating, slapping, spanking – a good way to make children behave?

Arguments against using corporal (physical) punishment:

Can cause permanent, lifelong damage, such as poor school performance, juvenile delinquency (misbehavior as a teenager), domestic violence, etc.
Can cause physical injury to children, such as broken bones, bruises
Is used more against children who live in poverty, with disabilities, or who are from minorities
Teaches children that force is an acceptable way of making others do something, that it is acceptable to hit someone smaller or weaker when you are angry
Damages the relationship between children and the parents
Shows an emotional lack of control or resources on the part of the parent

It is immediate. The child can see the result of what he did and the relationship between the wrongdoing and the punishment.
Other punishments can be even more psychologically damaging or humiliating
It is effective and easily remembered by the child. It is uncomplicated. Children can understand physical punishment easily.
Children cannot always understand punishment which is removed from the time or the scene of what they did wrong.
Parents love their children. They have no intention of hurting them. They are punishing them for a misdeed, not injuring them physically.
We live a violent world. We cannot pretend that violence does not exist.

What do you want to do now?

Read an essay about children and discipline which gives the opposite view (recommended)
Read another essay about children and discipline

Look at ideas for some other essays: