Recently in assignment #5 Category

                It has long been discussed whether the use of physical violence to punish children leads to a higher level of discipline, or simply reinforces violent behavior in children. One study reported by the American Psychological Association compared the relationship between parents' views towards violence, and children's attitudes towards the appropriateness of violence in social situations. This study found that parents who displayed their disapproval of violence to their children raised offspring that were less prone to violent behavior. In addition, parents who used physical violence as a form of punishment typically raised children who were more likely to fight or bully other children. This concludes that the presence of violent behaviors in parents correlates with aggressiveness in children. However, as stated in the Lilienfeld text, it is not only the parents' behavior that affects that children's, but instead, the way the child acts affects how the parent will respond. This leads me to wonder whether violence in child rearing causes violent behavior in children, or whether it simply implies correlation.

                Even if this study cannot prove causation between the two, there has been research done to show that children of young ages lack the cognitive ability to fully understand their experiences, and are more vulnerable to these violent influences. This information, along with the previous relationship, suggests that violence does not mix well with child rearing. Violent themes and behaviors in the presence of young children is strongly associated with violent behaviors later in life.

                As a child I was never exposed to high levels of violence, but in retrospect I can see the relationship between violence in the households of my friends and their behaviors. From this I will conclude that I will never use violence to help discipline children.

http://www.apa.org/pi/prevent-violence/resources/violent-behavior.aspx

Physical punishment has long been used as a method of keeping misbehaving children in line. Often times a spanking or a pinch on the arm is enough to keep a child from acting out of line. But is this method ethical? And further, is it even effective? Proponents of this form of parenting argue that it holds practical value and that even if it is objectionable, children learn right from wrong quickly. To the contrary however, there are several pragmatic implications that reject this use of physical punishment.

One reason is that children who are the recipients of this form of punishment may in turn act violently towards others. As we learned in chapter six of the Lilienfeld text, children engage in observational learning. In other words, if a child were to witness physical violence (or in this case, experience it) they may become more aggressive towards others. In fact, a study from the University of Connecticut found this to be the case.

                Another reason to withhold the metaphoric (or god forbid, literal) whip is that it has the possibility to create divisions between parent and child. While using corporal punishment isn't mutually exclusive with having a loving parent or guardian, it would seem that violence used towards children has a propensity to create a fearful relationship. According to researcher Elizabeth Gershoff, children who receive physical punishment may respond with emotions of fear or anger that are then associated with their parent. And as we learned in chapter 10, a loving and trusting relationship is important to a parent-child relationship.

                Further, using physical punishment may not even result in corrected behavior. According to B.F. Skinner, continued use of punishment (as with corporal punishment) doesn't teach a child what to do - it only teaches them what not to do (Azrin & Holz, 1966). So while hitting a child may stop them from acting out on one or two occasions, in the long run, physical punishment will do more harm than good.   

In Science Daily, a news website devoted to scientific news, an article has stated that a correlation has been found between parental use of physical discipline declining as their children grow (spanking, hitting, etc).  The article also states when physical discipline persists throughout childhood that children may be more likely to develop behavior problems in their teens and later years.  The research that supports this correlation was compiled at Universities such as Duke, Oklahoma State, Pittsburgh, Auburn, and Indiana. These universities followed hundreds of children ages 5-16 on their study.

While the broad amount of researchers of this claim and its source makes it seem trustworthy, the provided information is vague at best.  The article is actually making two claims, one that physical discipline by parents tends to decrease as children develop, and another that children that are continuously disciplined in this manner throughout their development are more likely to have behavior problems.  Exactly what types of behavioral problems are exhibited is not identified in the article.  Also numbers such as the percentage of parents who used physical discipline and the increase in behavior problems shown by the children who are continuously physically disciplined versus their counterparts are not given.

While this claim may not be extraordinary, the severe lack of evidence given makes the results questionable.  Also the explanation that parents stop physically disciplining their kids as they grow is vague, and does not rule out rival hypothesis such as children may behave better if parents take a semi-violent stand against them when they are younger, exposing confirmation bias.

Personally I believe children should never be physically abused as other methods are more efficient and identify the bad behavior more satisfactorily, but this article does not necessarily take a stand against physical abuse in early childhood. This flaw could possibly make reader infer that physical correction of "naughty" children is okay to a certain point of development.  A preliminary study to this one should be conducted to find if there is any difference in behavioral problems in kids who are disciplined physically or by other means.

This weeks' discussion is about using physical punishment in children. This topic has been discussed for a long time and there are some different groups that agree or disagree about this issue. Personally, I think that use of violence rising in children is not right thing to do. While many people across the world have different thoughts and argument by the specific cultures or traditions, my country, South Korea, is actually one of the nation that uses corporal punishment. However, I don't believe that punishing children physically is the best way to treat children. One of the friends of mine grew up under very strict parents. His parents always gave his physical punishment when he did something wrong. I remember that he told me that his parents punish him so often even with very trivial thing that he have done. So he always had a lot of complain about that. As he is getting older, his parents physical punishment affected his so badly that my friend actually ran away from home and did not even keep in touch with this parents for more than a month. I understand that his parents were thinking that they were doing the right thing to thier child in order to make him as a good person, however, their abuse of physical punishment produced a contrary result. Like this, there are numerous ways to treat children other than physically punished. Actually, the children who grow up in love and care of their parents seem more happy and have great personality than the children who raised up in violent parents. There is a book called, "Do not even hit with a flower." Like the title of the book said, parents supposed to rise children with great love, not the punishment.

     There are many controversies over whether physical punishment is helpful in raising children or not. Some people believe that it is ok to give children a little discipline like spanking to help children getting rid of the bad manners. People who against the physical punishment believe that teaching is correct but parents need to have proper method. I agree with the second idea. There are so many people every day studying in teaching methods, therefore, I think there should be tons of ways to raise children. Why people are just considering using violence?

     When I was in elementary school, there was a boy in our class who had an aggressive father. (That's what we thought, at least.) He physically punished the boy for many small reasons. I can still remember once, the teacher informed the father that his child hadn't turned the homework in. Of course, there were many other kids hadn't either. This father showed up after the school and took this boy to the restroom. Then we heard some punching noise and the boy's begging sound. These noises continued until the teacher walked in. Besides, we could always see the scars and bruises appeared on the boy's body. We asked him what's going on, but he never gave us the answer. This boy was living in the fear of being beaten all the time and this kind of thought distract him from the regular school work or even prevent him from being a normal child. He dared not to ask a question or spoke his opinion out loud because he was afraid of making mistakes even his father was not there. I have never seen this boy after primary school but I am sure even the scars on body were all healed. The scars on heart would be hard to remove。

     Having this part of the memory so clear, I just have several suggestions to the parents. First, never forget what the purpose is. Parents are supposed to conduct the kids in doing the proper things. So do not let the inappropriate ways of teaching distract the purpose. Second, the children likes imitate their parents. When they are hitting the children, in some ways, they are actually teaching the children that it is ok to use violence to solve the problem. The children might be more aggressive when they are going to solve the problems in the future. Third, consider corporal punishment as the last resort to teach the children. Try something else. I believe there will always be a win-win situation of parents and children.

As I was browsing the internet for varying opinions on this issue I found appeal to both sides of the argument. However I have concluded that for myself at least violence in child rearing has no place. To me it boils down to laziness on the parents part. Punishing children to teach them lessons without the use of violence takes ingenuity and creativity. It takes real thought to make in impact on a child in a way that doesn't involve smacking them.

This was the conclusion that I came too but another thing I wanted to address was a website I found that I find truly appalling. This Christian site to me is promoting nothing short of child abuse and I have to wonder how this can be considered legal. How can adults in this day and age still believe that this is ok?

http://www.landoverbaptist.org/news0303/spanking.html

The debate over whether or not to physically punish children is a difficult one for me to decide.  My personal experience with corporal punishment leaves me with mixed feeling on the subject.

My father used obedience practices that would probably provoke great protest in light of the responses to recent videos (Hillary Adams whipping video).  Until I left home I never realized that most parent-child relationships were non-violent?  Most parents don't rehearse answers to the pediatrics' questioning "Do you feel safe at home?"  And, most parents don't reiterate to their children that they're merely property -- owned and alive only because of their parents' generosity. 

I will confess there is a very powerful psychology protecting family constructs of this type.  From very early, my sister and I were taught never to discuss our father's obedience practices -- in fact we were taught to protect him from the scrutiny of others.  Members outside the family were untrustworthy in this respect, unless of course they followed the same dogma.  We were taught to laugh at and pity the concerns of the unsuccessful parents who believed in simple "time-outs", whose ineffective practices lead to unruly children without ambition.  Time and again spectators complimented our excellent behavior and lack of rebellion -- reaffirming the appropriateness of our punishments.

I still would likely be steadfast in my promotion of physical punishment were it not for my complete rejection from its system after the disclosure of my sexuality and subsequent dismissal from my parents house. 

Three years after my forced flight from my parents' nest, I believe I'm probably in an unique situation.  After being consumed in a likely abusive and certainly psychologically-entrapping patriarchal system; after being rejected by this system; and, after re-defining myself with a self-empowered dogma, I can could look on my adolescence rather objectively and sift from the remnants of an omnipotent parenting style the few successful nuggets.

First and foremost, the hard thing about physical punishment is that it works.  Children respond to pain.  Pain hurts, and after repetition a well-directed inflicted pain could be associated with a particular unwanted action.  Highly-controlled, emotionally-independent distribution of corporal punishment would theoretically work similar to Pavlovian conditioning.  The bad behavior (UCS) becomes associated with spanking (CS) and triggers fear (CR).  Upon aging, children would realize their parents' conditioning methodology, be thankful, and then convert to a conscious understanding of their behavior, rather than one motivated by unconscious responses.

Parents are not highly-controlled and emotionally-independent, however.  And, furthermore, the notion that children subject to corporal punishment could suddenly transition their conditioned responses to consciously-controlled decisions is optimistic. 

My father would rage after our disobedience, and punishment would almost always ensue after angry outbursts.  My father's rage became my CS, and the fear that was my CR was over time replaced with hate and contempt.  Corporal punishment, though theoretically effective, is so easily prone to emotional infection, and seems to sever parental ties rather than support them.

As far as preparing children for conscious decision-making, I'd argue corporal punishment, or probably any physical conditioning for that matter, does a poor job.  Perhaps this sort of practice is arguably necessary when a child is incapable of understanding the consequences of their behavior; however, continued practice can only stifle individuality (by way of stifling individual motivation and decision-making) and deprive children of conscious experience. 

I've realized my success (good grades, athletic ability, yadda yadda) as a child was not a sum of my punishment, but the product of my praise (as cliche as it sounds).  My motivation was fueled more by a desire to please my parents than avoid punishment.  For me, the punishment served only as an angering reminder that I was subservient and controlled. 

So, although I am vehemently against violence especially to children, I do acknowledge that well-controlled conditioning by means of physical punishment could serve well young children who are incapable of understanding the consequence of certain actions.  However, physical punishment should be revoked quickly and should not be used in older children capable of grasping consequence.  It's use likely taints parent-child relationships and certainly renders children inexperienced with conscious decision-making. 

Corporal punishment in child raising has been called many things: spanking, discipline, physical punishment.  Research by Murray A. Straus And Carrie L. Yodanis of the University of New Hampshire has shown a correlation between corporal punishment experienced in childhood and instances of physical assaults on spouses. One major factor they found was that some cultural norms support corporal punishment. Some people perceive parents who make it known that they would never spank their children as ineffective and tend to view these parents' children as poorly behaved, even through these children are as well-behaved or better behaved than children whose parents never spank. Studies show that physical abuse is in many cases the escalation of a cycle that began with corporal punishment.  Studies also show that families that say they do use corporal punishment tend to do so quite frequently.  Corporal punishment has also been associated in children with aggression towards other children.  Over time, children who are punished physically for misbehaving tend to apply a similar principle to other children. Some believe this mindset extends into their adulthood, and those individuals are more likely to attempt to solve the situation by physical means when they perceive that their spouse is 'misbehaving'.  These findings are correlational rather than causal, so caution must be exercised in making statements such as, "Corporal punishment in childhood leads to spousal abuse." Nevertheless, the severity of the potential negative outcomes warrants extreme caution when disciplining children, and, in my opinion, not any form of violence should be used.

Source:  Corporal Punishment in Adolescence and Physical Assults on Spouses in Later Life: What Accounts for the Link?

Raising children with the use of violence in the modern day western world is a typical and overlooked issue that according to our textbook's author's research has been proven to positively correlate with a child's future aggressive tendencies. Whether this correlation is a causation relationship or not, it was found in a study by Sarah McElroy in 1981 that in a society with virtually no violence, physical or otherwise, children "grew out" of their unacceptable behaviors at an early age and began to take care of others some thereafter. 

(The people of Mbuti)

The people of the Mbuti tribe start increasing an infant's physical activity with others the third day of life by passing the child around to others in the tribe so they can hold the child to their chest. However, if the infant shows discomfort the mother will take the child back until the child calms down. This allows the children to grow up knowing there are others who care about them and will take care of them if they are upset with their parents or family, which eliminates the opportunity to fight and show aggression because both children and parents are able to walk away.

(Mbuti Mother and Child) 

In addition, when children show aggression that isn't extremely physically harming to their parents they are simply ignored rather than reprimanded. If the child is upsetting another child the children are just separated, and the only time there is any sort of reprimanding is when a child is physically harming another child. A possible effect of this behavior as the child grows up is that the child becomes more nurturing at an early age, which is demonstrated in the study. A large influencing factor is also the adult model the children are to follow, which is non-aggressive. As a result this culture is virtually completely rid of hitting, kicking, killing and verbal "put-downs", as well as an almost non-existent population of psychotic behavior. It is necessary however, to take into account the lack of media influences on this culture. Therefore, it is difficult to say that with the application of these things in the western world a less aggressive culture will emerge. But even with those doubts aside, this research is an important element in the evidence that a complete absence of aggression is the determining factor of a child's perception of right and wrong. 

You can find the entire research article Here.

When I was four years old, my mom and I went to the mall to go see Santa Claus. As I'm sure a lot of you can remember, going to see Santa at the mall to tell him exactly what I wanted for Christmas was one of the most exciting and memorable moments of my childhood. When my Mom and I arrived at "The North Pole", we were surprised to see that Santa was on break. I was devastated. I had been looking forward to seeing Santa all day to tell him I wanted a gameboy and now, for all I knew, I wouldn't be able to get one come Christmas time. So what did I do? I did as every other 4 year old would do...cried my eyes out! I cried and cried and through the biggest temper tantrum in the middle of the mall. My Mom had had enough of it. So what did she do? She sat me down on a bench and spanked me. Guess what happened after that? I stopped crying and behaved myself. End of story.

I remember a couple years ago when some over-reacting parents went on a public campaign to make spanking illegal. According to them, disciplining your child would psychologically disturb/scar them, leaving parents to blame for misbehaving teenagers in the future. I find this claim to be absolutely ridiculous. Parents discipline children and it has always been this way. Whether by means of spanking, lecturing, or any other means, disciplining your misbehaving child is a must when raising children. If you let your children throw huge temper tantrums and walk all over you without letting them know who is the parent and one in charge, they will continue to walk over you, cause more problems, and eventually cease to respect you as a parent and authority figure. Of course, I couldn't agree more with the prosecution of those who literally beat their children using what could basically be considered weapons (belts for example). Disciplining, however, by means of spanking is not something to be condemned or discouraged on a misbehaving child.