Corporal Punishment

Corporal punishment is a form of punishment or discipline that uses physical force with the intention of causing a child to experience pain, but not injury, for the purpose of correcting or controlling the child's behavior (Straus 1971). Corporal punishment has been a very controversial issue concerning discipline toward children. There are many questions that may come to mind concerning the uses of corporal punishment. Like should parents discipline their children by using corporal punishment techniques, such as spanking? Or is a nonphysical approach more helpful to raising mentally and emotionally healthy children? Also, should corporal punishment be permitted in public schools? Distinguishing the difference between corporal punishment and child abuse present even more concern. Like does spanking become abuse when it leaves bruises or red marks on a child's buttocks? Or what if the marks appear on the child's arms or face? Also, is using a stick, belt or cane to spank a child more abusive than spanking with an open palm? Although this paper is about the use of corporal punishment, most of what I want to point out is the effects of punishment or discipline including, of course, physical punishment in the home and school.

First, punishments give pain and therefore teach children that, at least under some conditions; it is all right to give pain to others. Skinner (1971) said, "Punishment is designed to remove awkward, dangerous, or otherwise unwanted behavior from a repertoire on the assumption that a person who has been punished is less likely to behave in the same way again. Unfortunately, the matter is not that simple. Reward and punishment do not differ merely in the direction of the changes they induce. A child who has been severely punished for sex play is not necessarily less inclined to continue. Punished behavior is likely to reappear after the punitive contingencies withdrawn." (pp. 61-62)

According to Straus, "The most frequent forms of corporal punishment are spanking, slapping, grabbing, or shoving a child ''roughly'' (with more force than is needed to move the child). But should hitting a child with an object such as a hairbrush, belt, or paddle be included? Traditional cultural norms permit that. On the other hand, hitting with an object poses a significant risk of causing an injury which may require medical treatment and from that point of view might be considered physical abuse rather than corporal punishment". Parents can of course be charged with physical abuse if the hitting exceeds the frequency and severity of violence allowed by cultural norms for disciplining children. But in fact, parents are rarely held accountable by the courts for ''excessive'' corporal punishment. The reason is that child protective services rarely have the resources to attend to such cases, and moreover the norms are not clear (1971). Parents who use corporal punishment believe that they have every right to discipline their children that way, in as much as it is perhaps the best way to teach children the difference between right and wrong and that pain is probably the most effective form of discipline. Many parents also believe that young children best learn from their mistakes if some degree of physical discomfort comes to be associated with them. Most parents believe physical abuse is not inflicted by an aggressive parent whose behaviors are not contingent on the child's behaviors; however, most physically abusive events begin as corporal punishment intended to discipline a child but that escalate to the point of injury.

The process of teaching children how to behave has often been called discipline (Christophersen 1992; McCormick 1992). Christophersen (1992: 397- 98), in advising pediatricians, notes that parents may have a variety of reasons for using discipline, including to terminate undesirable behavior, to teach the child a lesson, to teach desirable behavior, and to help children internalize society's values. Based upon our understanding of learning principles, the purpose of punishment, as a component of the discipline process, can only be to decrease undesirable behavior. Punishment does not serve the purpose of teaching desirable behavior. If a child does not learn desirable behavior, decreasing undesirable behavior will be unlikely. Therefore, behavioral clinicians first focus on how to teach children desirable behavior, then focus on decreasing undesirable behavior (Forehand and McMahon 1981). Notably, for discipline to be effective, parents must focus on both increasing desirable behaviors and decreasing undesirable behaviors, and they must view discipline as a teaching process that evolves over the long term. Because punishment (functionally defined) is a necessary component of effective discipline, behavioral clinicians emphasize the importance of the effectiveness of discipline responses. Effective punishment is characterized by being used contingently for targeted misbehaviors and by parental persistence in the discipline episode rather than giving in, to avoid negatively reinforcing aversive child tactics. Patterson and other behavioral parent trainers have made the effective use of ''time-out'' an essential component of parent training (Patterson 1982: 111). Further, behavioral parent-training programs emphasize maximizing the effectiveness of mild punishment, such as timeout, in contrast to more severe punishers, such as corporal punishment. Mild punishers are preferred over severe punishers for humane reasons and to minimize the effect of habituation (that is, the tendency for a frequently repeated punisher to decrease in effectiveness with repetition). Hitting children can negatively affect their emotional and psychological development. There are no good reasons for a parent to spank his or her child, since almost any other disciplinary method is more effective and carries far less risk of negatively affecting the child psychologically.

Bandura (1965), while recognizing that learning occurs through direct experience, emphasizes that learning can take place by observing the example of others. Based on the principle of modeling and imitation, a child who observes a person (model) perform an act is more likely to behave in a similar manner (imitation). Repeated trials may be unnecessary; the child can learn the behavior merely through observation. If a child watches a dummy being kicked and is placed in the room with the dummy, it is more likely that the child will kick the dummy than if she or he had not seen it kicked, even if the child is not rewarded for kicking it and has not seen the model rewarded; however, reinforcement of the model or the child, while it created no new learning, did increase the frequency of the child's performing the act. The child needs to be attentive to what the model does,