Perspectives On Corporal Punishment
Before becoming a parent, I would occasionally follow the debates about corporal punishment. My wife and I decided that corporal punishment was contrary to our values, and that it appeared to come with significant negative effects, so we would try to avoid it if possible. But that was in theory -- we didn't know what our take would be once we had kids and were in the thick of things.
Four years into it, so far so good. We think our children are turning out well, and we haven't seen the need to punish them physically yet. Along the way, I've had a few realizations that I wanted to share.
Like father, like daughter
One day while watching my kids play, and my daughter starting to misbehave, it struck me as amazingly obvious that if I were to use painful force to control her, then she would do the same to her younger brother if he was acting up. She learns from us, and if we hit, she will hit too. It's that simple. Of course, we can finesse it, and say it's ok for adults to spank but not children ... and if she spanks her brother then we will spank her to make her not spank ... and we would make that work in a sense, but the contradictions we would be embedding are clear.
Breaking the bonds
My kids trust that I will not deliberately hurt them. If I punish them physically, that trust goes away, and never really comes back. This is a little hard to explain, but that trust is too great a gift to throw away to deal with some misdemeanor. More to the point, we feel that trust is a great help in shaping her behavior; giving it up would make discipline harder, not easier.
A matter of energy
At the same time, discipline without corporal punishment requires a great deal of time, energy, and patience, at least in the short term. That's one advantage to corporal punishment. It's fast, and effective in the short term. In our increasingly double-income world, time, energy, and patience are becoming scarcer and scarcer. It might be great that corporal punishment is on the decline, but we should all be aware that taking it away can require more from parents.
Four years into it, so far so good. We think our children are turning out well, and we haven't seen the need to punish them physically yet. Along the way, I've had a few realizations that I wanted to share.
Like father, like daughter
One day while watching my kids play, and my daughter starting to misbehave, it struck me as amazingly obvious that if I were to use painful force to control her, then she would do the same to her younger brother if he was acting up. She learns from us, and if we hit, she will hit too. It's that simple. Of course, we can finesse it, and say it's ok for adults to spank but not children ... and if she spanks her brother then we will spank her to make her not spank ... and we would make that work in a sense, but the contradictions we would be embedding are clear.
Breaking the bonds
My kids trust that I will not deliberately hurt them. If I punish them physically, that trust goes away, and never really comes back. This is a little hard to explain, but that trust is too great a gift to throw away to deal with some misdemeanor. More to the point, we feel that trust is a great help in shaping her behavior; giving it up would make discipline harder, not easier.
A matter of energy
At the same time, discipline without corporal punishment requires a great deal of time, energy, and patience, at least in the short term. That's one advantage to corporal punishment. It's fast, and effective in the short term. In our increasingly double-income world, time, energy, and patience are becoming scarcer and scarcer. It might be great that corporal punishment is on the decline, but we should all be aware that taking it away can require more from parents.
Labels: parenting
posted by Jim at
8:06 AM
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