Corporal Punishment
In 1978, Astrid Lindgren, author of Pippi Longstocking, was awarded the German Book Trade Peace Prize for her excellent contributions to children’s literature. In her acceptance speech, she told an interesting story about a child. This brief narrative began when she was about twenty. She had just met a pastor’s wife who told her that when she was young and had her first child, she was completely opposed to spanking children. However, the practice was widely accepted at the time. When her son had turned five, he had misbehaved and the woman decided to give the child its first spanking. She told him to leave the house to search for a switch. The child did not return for quite a while. When he finally returned, he said to his mother, “Mama, I couldn’t find a switch, but here’s a rock that you can throw at me.” (No Spanking Page) The Perception of a spanking visually and tactilely must be confusing and disturbing for children. They can never be sure what meaning their parents are expressing when this violent type of punishment takes place. Parents give children primary exposure to concepts of right and positive. In addition, Parents’ behavior influences children’s perceptions about what love looks and feels like.
Spanking sends children a message that ethical and right equate with physical violence that it is all right to hit people... even those you love. Violence is okay when it is used to control someone else into submission. For example, a child has a temper tantrum in a department store, and his mother takes him home and spanks him forcing him into submission to her ideals of public behavior. Also, this practice can create a paradoxical logic system for a young child who is currently in the process of imperative cognitive and moral development. For children whose parents tell them that hitting is wrong, hitting might also convey the message that it is all right to do something that is wrong. It creates an overall negative impact on this crucial point in the child’s life. (No Spanking Page) Children who are abused by corporal punishment suffer physically and psychologically. Abused children are at high risk of damage to the central nervous system, impaired speech, learning disorders, and emotional disturbances. (Frude) Psychologist H. Stephen Glenn said, "Corporal punishment is the least effective method [of discipline]. Punishment reinforces a failure identity. It reinforces rebellion, resistance, revenge and resentment. And, what people who spank children will learn is that it teaches more about you than it does about them that the whole goal is to crush the child. It's not dignified, and it's not respectful." Spanking can seriously injure muscles, pelvis, coccyx (tail bone), the sciatic nerve, genitals or spine. Even slapping a child’s hands overtime can cause problems with broken bones, joints, blood vessels and ligaments. This can also induce a form of premature osteoarthritis. ( Straus/Herbuck) Children can develop certain psychological problems later in life as a result of spanking. Many of these relate to the fact that the buttocks are an area associated with sexual feelings. The nerves in that area are connected to the body's sexual nerve centers. Slapping or striking them can involuntarily trigger feelings of sexual pleasure, which become merged with the pain. This can cause confusion in the child's mind, which affects his expression of sexuality as an adult. Spanking can lead to masochism, a psychological disorder that causes one to receive sexual gratification from abuse or physical pain. This could also take on the form of sadism, gaining sexual pleasure from inflicti
Some topics in this essay:
Child Abuse,
Straus/Herbuck Children,
Page Perception,
University Hampshire,
Glenn Corporal,
Peace Prize,
Astrid Lindgren,
United Statistics,
African American,
Page Children,
corporal punishment,
child abuse,
child’s life,
intellectual development,
sexual pleasure,
spanking children,
spanking seriously,
child spanking,
university hampshire,
method discipline,
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Approximate Word count = 1623
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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