Child behavior and psychology have always formed an important part of the growth and development of children. Parents must be well aware of the kind of psychology their child is born with and must treat and nourish them accordingly. However, under no circumstances, is spanking beneficial to the child, no matter how aggressive and wild nature they possess- latest study claims.
Old methods of conditioning a child’s behavior involved spanking and hitting by much extent. However, little did the adults of that time realize that this method of teaching a child could give rise to a relatively aggressive generation. It may be partially owing to the fact that they themselves would have been brought up by this method.
Study suggests that spanking children can cause them to develop more aggression and mental disturbances as well. Many of readers may be surprised to learn this fact, but this is what the study has revealed.
The topic became a sensational one when the video of a young boy in Georgia, who was being attempted to be paddled by the school administrators went viral last week. In the video, the child who was merely 5 years old, went screaming and crying as the vice principal and the principal of his school tried to spank him.
This new study which is extracted from the Journal of Family Psychology antagonizes the prevailing misconception that spanking children is for their own good and will help regulate their manners and discipline. Latest research says that this method of regulating a child’s behavior can actually worsen their nature, increase their likelihood of developing mental disturbances and make their behavior more aggressive. Mental disturbances owing to physical punishment may also include some forms of cognitive impairment.
Study authors who belong to the University of Michigan and the University of Texas included about 160,000 children subjects to carry out their research. According to the associate professor of the University of Texas, Elizabeth Geshoff,
“We found that spanking was associated with unintended detrimental outcomes and was not associated with more immediate or long-term compliance, which are parents’ intended outcomes when they discipline their children.”
According to Elizabeth, spanking is referred to as an ‘open-handed strike’ that is performed on a child’s lower extremities. Although the impact is to a somewhat lesser degree, but this action translates to the same degree of negative results as that which are seen in the cases of child abuse. Although the ‘spanking debate’ is much into trend these days, there is still a considerable amount of the population who believes that this action is not harmful at all.
We still have some studies that go unfortunately go in favor of the spanking practice, for instance, “Spanking isn’t child abuse, it’s common sense.” This is a piece that is extracted from an opinion in 2014 which was published on the CNN website. In the article, Ruben Navarette is of the opinion that child abuse is totally wrong, but spanking is not a part of it, or you may say, he is against child abuse but not spanking. He comments that the practice of spanking the child for committing wrong actions shall rather help him in developing the qualities of obedience and respect.
31 states of the country have banned spanking as a punishment to kids, whereas these 19 states have still legally allowed this practice legally: Arizona, Alabama, Arkansas, North Carolina, Colorado, Idaho, Florida, Indiana, Georgia, Kansas, Mississippi, Kentucky, South Carolina, Louisiana, Tennessee, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas and Wyoming. In the year 2011, New Mexico was the last state to ban this gross practice.
According to an analysis that was performed by the Federal Data from the year 2009-2010, 838 children were spanked on an average daily basis, calculated from 180 days of school in a year. This would lead to a total of 150,840 incidences of corporal punishment per annum. These statistics are in accordance with the Children’s Defense Fund that was reported in the year 2014.
As a matter of common sense, hitting a child shall always invoke feelings of disrespect and self-underestimation in a child. If spanking is excessively employed, it may also cause them to rebel against the standard rule and regulation, owing to the fact that they were hit for not following it. If spanking produces aggression, mental disturbances and a sense of being rebellious in your child, mark honestly from a scale of 1-10 how often will you go for this corporal method of punishment? Give a moment of thought to it, for after all, it’s for the sake of your child’s future. Would you prefer spanking over a sound mental status?
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