More Mulling on Physical Punishment

Boy, I never thought I’d be arguing against people who argue against physical punishment for children. However, I think and have always thought that blanket prohibitions or admonitions either require some evidence or, as an alternative, need to be stated on moral grounds. If anyone wants to say they simply think it’s wrong to use physical punishment, I can’t argue with their belief. But when a belief is disguised as a statement of evidence-- I can’t go along with that without a response.

There are three issues about physical punishment that I want to noodle about for a bit. One is the fact that if punishment is to be used, mild physical punishment has certain advantages. Another is an alternative way of thinking about the idea that parents who spank are acting as inappropriate role models and teach their children to use violence. The last involves the belief that it’s all right for parents to use physical punishment, but not for schools or day care centers to do so.

1. When I refer to mild physical punishment, I’m referring to one or two smacks with an open hand on the clothed buttocks or backs of the legs of a preschool child. If punishment is needed to bring about behavior change favorable to the health and safety of all concerned, mild physical punishment has some real advantages. It’s well established that punishment works when it is given concurrently with an unwanted behavior; it actually works best when it occurs just as the child prepares for the behavior; the longer after the behavior the punishment comes, the less effective it is. Punishment is quite ineffective when it’s delayed “until Daddy gets home”, or when it involves deprivation of some future treat like dessert tonight or a birthday party on Saturday. Mild physical punishment can be performed more or less on the instant. Note, though, that if it isn’t done right away, you might as well not do it at all, as it will not later be connected with the unwanted behavior, but instead will be associated with whatever has gone on just before. (Any thoughts about our correctional system, by the way?)


2. Now, this role model thing: everybody and their brother states with certainty that a parent who uses physical punishment is acting as a role model to encourage violent behavior. But is that actually true? Not everything parents do serves as a role model for their child’s general behavior. For example, single mothers regularly teach their toddler and preschool sons to pee standing up, even though the little boys, in their frequent invasions of the bathroom, always see Mom sitting down on the toilet. Mothers can wear high heels; little children don’t except for playing “dress-up”. Fathers and mothers too are heard to say selected words which children aren’t supposed to say.

In addition, much of our instruction and modeling of behavior for children is a matter of teaching time, manner, and place. We don’t, in fact, usually teach children that violence is never acceptable. We accept and even approve of it in sports, in defense of a person under attack, in self-defense, and so on. A football player who is highly aggressive on the field is admired, but if he beats up his girlfriend later there will be some people (not enough, though) who will disapprove deeply. Children are socialized by their experiences with their parents into an understanding of the times, manners, and places in which violent behavior is permitted (or even required). Learning that it is acceptable for an adult to spank a child for repeated dangerous behavior does not involve the same time, manner, or place rules as learning that it is acceptable to mug old ladies or participate in gang warfare. To think so is to over-generalize--- what Jerome Kagan has called the “seductive idea” of abstractionism.

3. Our society’s great confusion about physical punishment is exemplified in the idea that parents may spank or smack, but day care centers and preschools may not. (I omit discussion of physical punishment in elementary and high schools, which when permitted has often gone far beyond the “mild” level, and which should not be necessary at those ages for children who are less impulsive and better self-regulated than younger children.)

We seem to have two conflicting ideas about spanking. One is that it’s a bad thing to do, and that’s why teachers aren’t allowed to do it. The other is that parents have a right to do things to their children as they choose, and if they don’t spank their children the children will run wild (and be annoying to the rest of us, I suppose is the real concern). Logically, of course, if it’s a bad thing, nobody should be doing it, although we can probably stop teachers a lot more easily than we can parents; if it’s an acceptable thing for parents, why shouldn’t teachers do it too?

I think it’s possible that this conflict is based on the assumption that because parents love their children and know them well, they will not let physical punishment get out of hand, and they will comfort a child who is upset--- but that teachers do not love the child and are likely to turn the Kiddie Academy into Dotheboys Hall if given any opportunity. In reality, the opposite might well be true, as teachers are less likely to experience the fatigue and frustration of daily and nightly child care, or conflict with a co-parent who focuses on relationship problems in connection with childrearing.


A [temporary] final thought on these matters: as for myself, as long as parents are hot-saucing children, keeping them in cages, limiting their food, making them sleep outdoor without blankets in winter, or whipping them with plumbing supply line, I am not going to worry too much about a limited and possibly appropriate use of mild physical punishment. My energies are going to be directed toward stopping treatment that is, frankly, torture. Admirers of Alice Miller’s position can either join me or continue to enjoy their ideological purity. I hope it will be the former, because there is a lot of thinking and a lot of work to be done.