As a psychologist who specialized in working with emotionally disturbed children and as a person who has a special fondness for children, I am extremely troubled that punishment, both physical and otherwise, is an intrinsic part of child rearing in the United States. None of my three children, now adults, were ever punished. Just as people who state, “I was spanked and punished and I turned out OK,” my children are able to say, “I was never spanked or punished and I turned out OK.” And based on the kind of people they are as adults, I would agree that, not only did they turn out OK, but they are much more caring of others, including their children, than most of their contemporaries. They do not, of course, punish their children.
@@However, I do not wish to prove through my children or my grandchildren that punishment is totally unnecessary in order to grow up to be a socially appropriate and caring person. We already know this from studies of cultures where children are never punished. I hope to show, instead, that punishing children is a malevolent act that is harmful to children and, ultimately, to the community and society in which it takes place. The punishment of one human being by another is behavior in which the punisher has, or believes he has, the right to hurt and violate a person he perceives as his social inferior. Punishing another individual of one’s species is a human cultural invention. It is not found in all cultures nor in the animal world. Its utilization as a child-rearing method seems to go hand in hand with the development of civilization.
@@A person hurting another as a result of a temporary loss of emotional control is not punishment. Such behavior is a different form of violence. Punishment is a deliberate, controlled act with a conscious purpose. It is, of course, a terrible, troublesome, and dangerous fact that, in our society, parental loss of control, accompanied by physical and verbal abuse of children, is tolerated. However, such behavior is not the subject of this paper. Our society, although it may not do much to prevent it, does not openly condone child abuse. But it does openly condone and sanction punishing children, physically and otherwise. What bothers me so much about punishing children is that it is a conscious effort to hurt them physically and/or emotionally. I find it hard to understand, even when it is explained as a way of teaching them proper behavior, why someone would intentionally choose to hurt the life they contributed to creating (or chose to care for through adoption.) I also find it incredible that parents, and many authorities in the areas of mental and physical health, child development, and human morality, cannot see that by hurting children, we are teaching them that it is moral and right to hurt other human beings.

The Origins Of Punishment
It is likely that punishment initially developed in our species as a method to control and direct the behavior of animals by hurting them. It later was applied by humans to other humans to control individual behavior and thinking. The fact that punishment can modify behavior is well-founded. Research studies on rats, as well as other animals, have clearly indicated that by inflicting pain on them, we can control to a great extent what they do or don’t do (Bermant), a fact known by farmers and animal trainers for thousands of years. Human thinking can also be altered by punishment and has been utilized throughout civilization by monarchs, dictators, slave owners, authoritarian states, and religious institutions to control deviant and non-conforming individuals.
@@We do not know when punishment first became a method used to direct children’s development. I have never read about a hunter-gatherer society that punishes their children as part of child care. In ancient civilizations, and throughout the history of civilization, punishing children was a common practice (deMause), and the practice continues today in much of the civilized world. Punishment is and has been a commonly accepted part of American child-rearing (deMause, Beekman). It is perceived as a legitimate and appropriate form of discipline. Its legitimacy in human relationships has few parallels in American life, especially since the abolition of slavery. Other than children, only convicted criminals are legally allowed to be punished. But children do not even have the rights of criminals, as they are allowed to be punished without a trial. The closest parallel to punishing children would be the punitive ways in which we domesticate and train young animals so that they will serve, submit to, and entertain us. When we punish our children, we serve to perpetuate the Western civilization belief that children are, like animals, inferior beings who need to be tamed, trained, and controlled.

Punishment and Distrust
Obviously, the decision, felt necessity, or compulsion to punish another person reflects a lack of trust in that person, whether it be in the relationship of governments to citizens, tyrants to subjects, slave owners to slaves, wardens to prisoners, teachers to students, or parents to children. The advocates of punishing children (which include some past and present “experts” on child development) have a condescending and ugly view of children which is embedded in an even uglier view of the human species. Humans are not, in their eyes, a naturally caring and social species, but a species in which the individual is born anti-social and governed solely by self concern and self-interest. They further believe that children resist socialization, so it must be imposed on them by adults.
@@There is no recognition, in this perception of the human individual as selfish, alienated, and basically separate from all others, to the fact that sociability, socialization, and the ability to trust develop naturally through appropriate nurturing in childhood. The quality of basic trust, as originally formulated by the psychologist Eric Erikson, is the foundation for a healthy personality (Evans). Its meaning to Erikson and his followers was that during the first year of life, a baby learns that those who care for him can be trusted to satisfy his basic needs. From this secure base the infant learns to trust himself and the world. I prefer to describe basic trust as the experience of a baby or young child that there is a person there for him, who affirms his life and well-being by providing the nurturing relationship that he genetically and biologically evolved to have after birth. Without such an experience during the first stage of life, an infant does not develop the full trust in others that is essential for healthy human emotional and social development.
@@The need for an infant to develop basic trust in those who care for him has become widely accepted by virtually all health-care specialists. It is not always expressed in such terms, nor is it always achieved, but we all seem to know that babies and children need “love”. Much less emphasis has been given to the need for parents to develop basic trust in their children. They may love them, but do they trust them? In fact, many American authorities on infant and child care have sent the message that children, including infants, cannot be trusted; Babies and young children are frequently portrayed as being manipulative and wanting to make their parents’ life miserable, as if their need and desire to be with their parents, and to be nurtured by them, is not genuine (Spock, Turtle).
@@I do not believe that genuine trust can develop in a relationship unless both parties have trust in each other. In the parent-child relationship, the child learns to trust his parents when his need for nurturing is regularly met. But this development of trust can only occur if the parent’s response to the child is based on the belief that the child’s expression of his need for nurturing is genuine, that the child is not just trying to “get his own way”; and is not out to make the parent’s life difficult. Misery, unhappiness, and a struggle for power often do become a part of the parent-child interaction, especially in a society such as our own which does not trust and does not validate the nurturing requirements of children. If the relationship of parent and child does become a continual struggle, it is not because the child’s motivation is to punish the parent, but because his need for nurturing is not being met. It is also true that a child, as he matures, may begin to behave in ways to punish his parents, but this can only occur if his parents have regularly punished him.
@@The use of punishment by parents is a clear indication that there has been an insufficient development of trust between parent and child in the early formative years of the child’s development. Most American parents punish their children. Most also begin punishing them, and using the threat of punishment, at a very early age (usually in infancy). Children grow up believing that the punishment they received was deserved, and that they were harmful, bad, and not trustworthy. Many, as adults, who lack a foundation of parental trust, do not trust, or even like, themselves. They perceive their needs, especially their need for nurturing, caring, kindness, love, and intimacy, as “bad”, selfish, indulgent, harmful, and a burden put on others. Some spend their entire lifetime feeling guilty towards their parents. Often, they begin in adolescence to self-destruct, punishing themselves for burdening their parents, for having been born, for being alive.

The Most Common Methods Of Punishing Children
Corporal punishment in the form of spanking (even in infancy) is the most common way children are punished in America. Slapping, hitting and beating with the hand or straps and other instruments closely follow. NBC News has reported that about 90 percent of U.S. parents spank their children. In addition, a 1992 survey reported that 59 percent of pediatricians support the practice (“When Spankings Are Abuse”). It is important to recognize that in our society most parents and many of our infant and child care authorities, do not classify spanking as hitting or physical punishment. By a magnificent denial of reality, it is often described as a “love tap” or “pat’ or “harmless swat” or “loving reminder”. Since spanking has traditionally been administered in the United States to almost all children for generations, it is considered a natural part of growing up, the same as feeding.
@@Other more bizarre methods of corporal punishment, such as burning children with fire and other forms of heat, having them kneel on hard objects, or forcing them to stand for many hours, are less common than they once were, but they are still practiced today. We do not know the current extent of their use, nor do we know the current extent of other kinds of physical torture. Throughout civilization, until fairly recently, there have been various kinds of commercial items produced to punish children; including whips, the notorious cat of nine tails, cages, and various shackling devices (Beekman). Since these products are no longer openly advertised and sold, one would expect, or at least hope, that they are not used any more to punish children.
@@While many countries now outlaw the physical punishment of children, only Austria and the Scandinavian countries completely ban hitting them. However, in the United States, corporal punishment of children by parents is legal and widely practiced. It is also legal in the educational system, despite the fact that it is prohibited in the schools of almost all other industrialized nations. The US, Canada and one state in Australia still continue the practice. Thirty-one of the states in the U.S. have banned corporal punishment in their schools. The twenty three others continue to allow teachers to hit and paddle their students when they deem it necessary (Corporal Punishment Fact Sheet). As a nation, we have been slow to understand the harmful effects that hitting has on our children, and we continue to defend our right to continue to hit them. We do not seem to be concerned that spanking and physically punishing our children creates a new generation who will in turn, continue to physically hurt their children. Based on our belief in the value of corporal punishment we are, in fact, likely to encourage our children to use it on our grandchildren.
@@It is frightening that many parents, educators, and others who are involved in child care today act out on children the cruel physical imposition that was inflicted on them by their parents and other care-givers while they were growing up. But even more frightening to me than the passage of physical cruelty to children through generations, is the passage of the belief that punishing children is a necessary part of raising them. Even parents and child-care experts who do not believe in corporal punishment advocate other kinds of punishment such as “time-out” and “logical consequences”. (Salk, “When Spankings Are Abuse”). Although many of these methods, which are designed to get children to behave, are viewed as appropriate ways to discipline children, they are, in reality, punishments, the purpose of which is to get children to obey their parents’ rules and regulations by imposing on them parental power and authority. The following are some of the ways, other than physical punishment, that are frequently used by parents to punish their children. These were not originally or specifically created as tools to help parents to get their children to behave properly. In general, these methods have been borrowed from the traditional methods used to punish adults who had committed crimes or violated laws, rules, customs, or conventional ways of behaving.

Isolation and Confinement
Isolation and confinement usually go together. A child is sent to his room, or made to stand or sit in a corner and usually not permitted to be with, or relate to others. The currently popular “time-out” is, of course, confinement, and also isolation, if the child must be alone during the “time-out” period. Less openly discussed forms of this type of punishment are the practices of tying up or chaining children, locking them in rooms, closets, cars, sheds or other areas of confinement. In general, isolation and confinement are for a brief time. However, it is not uncommon for the time period to extend into hours, and although much less common, can extend sometimes to days, weeks, and even months. Basically, isolation and confinement give children the message that they are inferior and unfit to be with other humans. Many children, if they are frequently punished in this manner will come to believe that they are different, “crazy” and unfit when compared to other children who do not seem to require or receive this type of banishment from society. Often, as they mature, these children act in accordance with what they have been made to believe about themselves.

Deprivation
Another method by which we attempt to teach children to behave is to deprive them of things. Most children are no longer sent to bed without supper. They are, however, denied privileges. Frequent items that are denied include dessert, sweets, toys, allowance or spending money, TV, music, movies, the car, the telephone, friends, or whatever the child likes and is important to him. The length of time of the specific deprivation varies greatly, depending upon, among other things, the particular family, the nature of the misbehavior, and the age of the child. But all forms of deprivation – regardless of their length – teach children that their parents have the power to make their lives miserable by taking away what has meaning to them. Who would trust, or even like, someone with such power?

Grounding
Grounding is similar to and overlaps the punishments of deprivation and confinement, but it is much worse. Here the focus is more on prohibiting activity away from the home, rather than on denying that which is external and material. It is being confined to the house rather than confined to a room in the house. The child is not allowed to go and to do. He is “grounded”, like a plane or “docked,” like a ship, made to be immobile, temporarily “out of commission”. He has lost, for a time, his freedom to move about, his freedom to be fully alive and to grow. The punishment of grounding is, ironically, a major way to teach children to be defiant and disobedient towards their parents, because it usually attacks life and growth in relation to one’s peers. One can tolerate, for a time, starvation and imprisonment. It is more difficult to lose one’s freedom to act and to be, especially for children.

Withdrawal of Affection
Highly recommended, as a means to control children’s behavior, even by supposed liberal and progressive child care experts (Spock, Salk), is the punishment known as withdrawal of affection. Why it is necessary for a parent to consciously do this, is puzzling to me because withdrawal of affection seems to occur automatically (at least temporarily), to most people when someone (including one’s child) does something we strongly dislike or which hurts us. Momentary loss of affectionate or tender feelings toward another is a natural part of human relationships and serves to communicate to a significant other what we, as an individual, personally like or dislike. Humans are able to enhance this automatic non-verbal communication with language. However, even without language, the message gets across. Babies communicate their likes and dislikes quite effectively, without a fully-developed language, all the time – that is, if they have someone who is attentively listening and watching.
@@The communication of both positive and negative feelings is an important way that our species learns to live with, accommodate to, and collaborate with one another. It is an essential part of the human nurturing process. Mother and child are continually accommodating to each other: finding mutually comfortable nursing and carrying positions, dealing with biting of the breast as the child grows teeth, accommodation to the child’s increasing development and changing capabilities, the birth of a sibling, and, from the moment of birth, the parents’ cultural values and priorities.
@@Affectionate feelings, and the absence of such feelings, are spontaneous reactions in human relationships. When affection is consciously withdrawn as a means to control another, we are dealing with a different kind of human interaction than the integrative one described in the previous paragraph. Exploiting another person’s emotional vulnerability is not an integrative act but rather an act which ultimately alienates the other person. It is a dishonest use of love. It is fake love. The conscious withdrawal of affection by a parent in order to get the child to behave in the manner the parent desires is simply a way of exploiting the child’s need for affection from the parent. It is treating caring and love as commodities which can be given or taken away whenever the parent wishes. Affection becomes a power tool, a bribe, rather than an emotion. When withdrawal of affection and love is consciously and regularly used as a way to punish children, their human capacity to love, cherish, and trust another person, becomes tarnished. The child’s critical need for parental love, security, and protection has been abused.

Some Other Ways Frequently Used To Punish Children
There are, of course, other ways that children have been, and continue to be, punished than the ones I have already detailed. We no longer punish adults by public whipping or by exposing them to public scorn by placing them in a pillory or stock or ducking stool. But children are still punished, if not by such extreme measures, then by intentionally embarrassing and humiliating them. It is considered proper in rearing children to make them feel ashamed about their behavior, and to humiliate and disgrace them in front of others. Dunce caps, as well as wearing and carrying signs about one’s bad behavior, are still used by parents, teachers and school officials, although not as much as they were in the early part of this century. Ridicule and verbal abuse, both in the home and in public, are common methods used by parents and other authoritarians to make children feel badly about themselves and their behavior.
@@Another common way of punishing children is to frighten them. They are told about, and threatened with, images of bogeymen, monsters, God, the devil, animals, hell, or whatever humans can invent, to terrorize children in order to get them to behave. This form of mental torture is preferred by many parents because it allows the parent to let someone else do the “dirty work”. It is not the parent who will harm the child but somebody, or something, else. This form of punishment makes children a little “crazy”, and when used extensively, very “crazy”.
@@One other commonly used punishment, which on the surface appears to be benign, is the assignment of chores or additional chores as punishment for “bad” behavior. Of course, this kind of punishment is not so benign if the chores are extremely strenuous or so prolonged that they can be physically harmful to the child. In addition, if the chores hinder the child greatly from other more desirable activities, the child is then receiving “double” punishment, which is not only unfair, but doubly painful. The assignment of chores as punishment can lead children to resent and hate the chores that need to be accepted as a natural part of learning, working, and caring for oneself and others. Chore-punishment may not hurt a child as much as other punishments, but, as do all punishments, it teaches children that it is all right to impose your will on another if you believe your cause is just.

Punishment And Parent-Child Alienation
It is strange to me that parents who punish their child do not seem to recognize that, not only are they harming the child, but they are also harming their relationship with the child. But perhaps they do recognize this fact, and that is why the statement by parents, “This hurts me more than it does you,” has long been a part of the child punishment ritual. Intentionally hurting another person leads the injured person to be afraid of, and distrustful of, the person who has hurt them, especially if the hurting person indicates that they have the right to hurt the victim, and that they will continue to hurt the victim, whenever they deem it necessary.
@@Punishment of children alienates them from their parents and increases children’s distrust of those who, biologically, are supposed to provide them with the security of feeling and knowing that they are not separate in the world. Children, because they are dependent on their parents for so many essential things, usually have little choice but to accept the reality that punishment and hurt are part of their relationship with their parents. However, as they get older, children of punitive parents are more likely, as compared with children who are not punished, to lie to, to not confide in, and to conceal their behaviors from their parents. This is not part of the normal growth pattern of becoming a person who is less dependent on their parents, but rather a reflection of the fact that these children do not trust their parents to be understanding, empathic, or to treat them kindly. The punishment these children received when they were younger has taught them that when they are involved in problematic behavior, their personal integrity and rights as a person will be ignored, violated and not respected by their parents. They have received the true message of punishment, which is to banish behavior which appears to be negative, rather than to try to understand it.

Does Punishing Children Work?
Does punishing children work? It definitely helps parents to believe that they are in control of their child. They are able to relax for a while until the next misdeed. Does punishment change children’s behavior? Yes, but only for a brief time. Usually children will continue to do the same things they were punished for, if they think they can get away with it.
@@One of the troubles with punishment as a way to teach children proper social behavior, aside from the infliction of pain, is that it makes children feel weak, impotent and incapable. Punishment teaches children to look to external authority to decide for them how they should behave, rather than looking to themselves. They do not learn how, in collaboration with others, to make choices; they do not learn how to decide what is good for them and for those who are important to them. What they learn instead is to submit to authority and power, to obey. By being punished and treated as inferior beings, they become inferior beings – they do not develop the power of the human individual to love and trust. Children who are regularly punished learn to fear their parents. They learn the behaviors that their parents like and don’t like and also, how to hide these behaviors from their parents. They develop “proper” behavior out of fear, not choice.
@@Some children openly defy their punitive parents. These children usually end up getting into worse trouble with their parents, and with other authorities as they mature. Most children, however, go underground. In order to protect themselves from parental power they develop a “good”, submissive-to-authority, social pose to hide their secret misbehaviors and improper thoughts and feelings. Their social behavior is not genuine because it has little to do with who they really are. Once out of the realm of authoritarian control, they adopt new ways and new codes consistent with the values and priorities of their peers. They go in any direction the wind blows to avoid disapproval and to gain approval. The lack of respect their parents had for them has prevented them from developing respect for themselves.

Why We Hurt Our Children
The question that must be asked is why we are, and have been, so willing to hurt our children in order to get them to behave – to treat them as criminals, slaves and animals. Of course, we are, in part, following the traditional ways of treating children for centuries of civilization. But there is more to it than just tradition. We have in the past century learned a great deal more than we knew before about children’s emotional and social development and their mental health. This information is not kept secret from the public. Most of us even seem to recognize and accept that what happens to children in their early years has a great deal to do with the kind of persons they become. Yet, we continue to punish them. Do we not see the harm we do? Why do we not stop consciously hurting our children?
@@For some parents, whose own punishment as children was accompanied by rage, hatred, and sadism, punishing their own children is an opportunity for them to legally inflict pain on another human being – a chance to get back at someone for the pain that they suffered. But for most parents, it is a matter of controlling behavior which they were made to control in their own childhood. It is a matter of ignorance, of passing on malevolent and inappropriate behavior toward children which they learned to accept as appropriate in their own childhoods. They are acting from an attitude that says it is just and right to hurt children in order to achieve certain ends. They will defend their belief that their own parents were right to punish them, that they are right to punish their children, and that their children will be right to punish their children. “After all,” so many parents say, “how else can you get them to behave?” And many, even when they are told “how”, still punish their children. On a deeper psychological and social level, parental punishers of their children do so because their children make them anxious by confronting them with behaviors and feelings which the parents themselves have learned to hide, suppress, repress, and disown. They must condition their children as they were conditioned.
@@Children threaten our identity, security, and reality. We harm them in order to stop our perceived threat that their behavior will harm us. It is a myth that we punish children for their own good. We punish children so that we will be secure. Our children have the power to elicit our tender and loving feelings. They also have the power to frighten, anger, and embarrass us. From being punished, children learn to distrust and fear their parents. Other than that, children and parents learn nothing. By condoning punishment as a disciplinary tool, we perpetuate the acceptability of the use of force and power to control others. At the same time we perpetuate our ignorance and our fear. We use punishment in order to stop behavior rather than having the courage to confront and understand it. By openly dealing with the underlying causes of the child’s behavior, both parent and child have the opportunity to get a better and more realistic view of the child’s actions, and any potential danger to the child and/or to the parent. We evolved to protect children from harm, not to harm them.
@@The belief in our society that punishing children will make them into social beings reveals our alienation from the socialization process that is normal and natural to our species. We become genuine social beings from developing in relation to tender, nurturing, and non-harmful others. Alienated from our own need for tenderness, and hardened since birth by life in a non-nurturing society, we teach our children that punishing them is proper parenting that will help them to grow right and to be good. We do not seem to understand that punishment does not make children social, it merely teaches them to fit into a society which separates us from each other – a society which is not based on the human capacity for tenderness or on concern for another, but on the absence of these. Punishing our children sabotages the nurturing and protective feelings that we evolved to have towards them. It destroys the unity of parent and child. It teaches us to violate the rights of others. As a socially condoned practice in child rearing, it damages and insults the human species.

¹ Leach, Penelope. Children First. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994, p. 125.

References
Beekman, Daniel. The Mechanical Baby. Westport, CT: Laurence Hill, 1977.
Bermant, Gordon, ed. Perspectives on Animal Behavior. Glenview, Il: Scott Foresman, 1973.
Center for Effective Discipline. “Corporal Punishment Fact Sheet”. Columbus, Ohio: 1998.
deMause, Lloyd. The History of Childhood. New York: The Psychohistory Press, 1974.
Evans, R. I. Dialogue With Eric Erickson. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1969.
Leach, Penelope. Children First. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994.
Neill, A. S. “Freedom Works.” Children’s Rights. Ed. Paul Adams. New York: Praeger, 1971.
Salk, Lee. How to Raise a Human Being. New York: Random House, 1969.
Schwartz, Theodore. Socialization as Cultural Transmission. As quoted and referenced in Nanda, Serena. Cultural Anthropology. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing, 1987. 131.
Spock, Benjamin. Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care New York: Simon & Schuster, 1957.
Turtle, W. J. Dr. Turtle’s Babies. New York: W. B. Saunders, 1973.
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This essay was authored by James Kimmel, Ph.D
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Biography of James Kimmel (1928 – 2001)

James Kimmel was born and grew up in New York City. He received his Ph.D. in Psychology from New York University and worked for twenty years as a clinical psychologist and a psychotherapist. His significant teachers, supervisors, mentors and personal analyst were primarily associated with The William Alanson White Psychoanalytic Institute² and followers of the interpersonal theories of Harry Stack Sullivan³.
@@As a psychologist, Dr. Kimmel worked in various settings including the pediatrics ward of a chronic disease hospital, a mental hospital, out-patient therapy centers, a residential center for children and his own private practice. In addition, he supervised the work of child psychotherapists and teachers of emotionally disturbed children. He was the clinical director of a school for autistic and psychotic children and a co-founder and director of For Children – A Child Therapy Center.
@@Dr. Kimmel had three children; he learned a great deal from his children: about himself, child development and what it means to be human before parents and culture impose their ideas. According to Dr. Kimmel, none of his children were ever spanked, punished or even disciplined. They were all breast-fed.
@@According to Dr. Kimmel, his involvement with all three of his children and his participation in their development and growth to adulthood was easily the most profound experience of his life.
@@In 1971, Dr. Kimmel and his wife moved to a small town in the mountains of New York and in 1978 to Nevada. Following these moves, he began to write and develop his skills in his long time interest in sculpture; he became a sculptor, a toy-maker, a poet, an author, and a student of anthropology, animal behavior and the history of parenting.
@@In later years, Dr. Kimmel and his wife lived in Tucson, Arizona. He grew to believe that our conventional ways of caring for infants and children promote emotional disturbance, anti-social behavior and general misery in our population. His efforts in the mental health field became devoted to the prevention of emotional disturbance in our society rather than to the amelioration of an individual’s problems in living.
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²For more information about The William Alanson White Psychoanalytic Institute, visit www.wawhite.org

³For more information about Harry Stack Sullivan visit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Stack_Sullivan

Dr. Stacey Patton is a friend and fellow Board Member of
Parents and Teachers Against Violence in Education.

Dr. Patton’s memoir is That Mean Old Yesterday.
She can be reached at info.meanoldyesterday@yahoo.com
Visit www.staceypatton.com and http://sparethekids.com

“Becoming a biological parent, parentage, is a matter of a few minutes; becoming a responsible parent, parenthood, is something else again, a matter of adequate preparation … Every birth should be regarded as a contribution to society as well as to the family and to the child that has been born. A gift to be treated with gratitude and reverence, so that every child may be from birth assured of the optimum conditions for development and fulfillment. Anything short of this is to disinherit the newborn of his birthright and to deprive his society of a cooperating and contributing member.”²
Ashley Montagu

One of the worst diseases that ever ravaged humanity was smallpox. There was a time when about one in five who became infected died and almost everyone became infected. Survivors were left scarred and sometimes blind. In those days, no one could have foreseen that a simple procedure, vaccination, would eventually provide protection to everyone and cause the eradication of smallpox from the earth.
@@The smallpox virus and criminal behavior have several features in common. Both affect only the human species. Both are spread infectiously from one person to the next. Both are preventable by making the potential host immune. Once eliminated, neither spontaneously regenerates.
@@Today it is equally possible to immunize a child against criminality as it is against smallpox.

How can it be done?
We can answer this question by examining our prison population and determining who’s not present. We must ask, is there a common ingredient in the lives of those who don’t become criminals and is also consistently absent from the lives of those who do become criminals?
@@The answer is yes, there is. This key ingredient, this precious stuff that seems to be associated exclusively with people who never become candidates for the penitentiary has been identified, and there is no reason that it cannot be introduced universally. When that is done, crime and violence will go the way of smallpox.

Who’s not in prison?
The person whose closest caretakers used methods of infant care and child rearing that were gentle, patient and loving is not in prison. The person who sensed from earliest infancy that adults are the source of safety, security and comfort is not in prison. The person who always felt wanted is not in prison. The person who was respected, encouraged to explore and inquire is not in prison. The person who grew up seeing family members and others treat each other with respect and honor each others’ privacy and dignity is not in prison. The person who had ample exposure in childhood to people who used reasoning, not violence, to solve problems is not in prison. The person whose physical and emotional needs during infancy and childhood were met is not in prison. To summarize: The child who is reared in an attentive, supportive, nonviolent family will never spend time behind bars.
@@To the skeptical reader, I offer the following challenge. Visit any prison and try to identify just one incarcerated felon who was brought up in a household where harmonious interaction was the norm. You will not succeed!

Who is in prison?
You will find people who were born into households where every other adult family member, including older siblings, had the right to inflict whippings at whim and often did. You will find people who in childhood were never cuddled, hugged, played with, protected, guided, comforted, soothed, read to, listened to or tucked in but mainly growled at, barked at, insulted, smacked and ignored. You will find people who never had a single possession that was not subject to being wrenched away by somebody stronger. You will find people who grew up in families where the late night sound of someone whipping a colicky infant with a wire coat hanger was nothing out of the ordinary. You will find people who in childhood, even in infancy, were targets for adults’ sexual appetites. You will find people who throughout their developmental years were rarely or never touched by any hand except in ways that frighten, hurt and leave bruises.
@@Dr. Morris Wessel puts it this way: “Beaten and battered children are more likely to become adults who have inadequate control of their aggressive feelings, who therefore strike out mercilessly against children, spouses, friends and at times even other members of society. The violence inflicted on children by their closest relatives and caretakers has a long-lasting and horrifying effect. These children grow up with the idea that, when another person’s behavior is displeasing to them, violent acts against that person are appropriate ways to deal with feelings of displeasure. In short, members of each adult generation tend to reproduce in their interpersonal relationships the violence which they experienced in their childhood.”³
@@In the same vein, Dr. Philip Greven writes: “The most visible public outcome of early violence and coercion in the name of discipline is the active aggression that begins to shape the character and behavior in childhood and continues, in far too many instances, throughout the lives of those who suffered most in their earliest years. Aggressive children often become aggressive adults who often produce more aggressive children, in a cycle that endures generation after generation. Corporal punishments always figure prominently in the roots of adolescent and adult aggressiveness, especially in those manifestations that take antisocial form, such as delinquency and criminality.”⁴

Blaming poverty
Many experts blame violence and criminality on poverty. This is the standard view among advocates for the disadvantaged, but the theory falls apart the moment we attempt to apply it to violence and criminality among the affluent. Consider the Mafia. The source of their bad behavior has nothing to do with the state of their finances but everything to do with how they were treated as children.

@@ “… And later, when I got to meet their kids, I was amazed at how much trouble the kids gave them. The kids were always in trouble. They were always in fights. They wouldn’t go to school. They’d disappear from home. The women would beat their kids blue with broom handles and leather belts, but the kids wouldn’t pay any attention …” Nicholas Pileggi, Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family, p. 73.

The real culprit
Mistreatment of children beginning at infancy, perpetrated by parents and other primary caretakers, is what infects children with the virus of violence. In much the same way that it interferes with the bonding process between child and parent, it stunts the child’s ability to become socially integrated with the larger law-abiding community. It handicaps the child with a lifetime supply of anger. It makes every future irritation seem a mortal attack; every delay of gratification, a personal insult. It models for the child no essential problem-solving skills, but instead: selfishness, aggression, rage and tyranny. It makes escape by means of drugs and alcohol appealing options, irresistible to many. The worse and the earlier the mistreatment, the more severe the outcome.
@@Researchers Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck have found that the first indicators of delinquency are usually recognizable in children between the ages of 3 and 6, and almost always before 11.⁵ Yet programs and services that purport to address the delinquency problem almost invariably are aimed at adolescents and young adults. Obviously such programs are of no value to the babies still at home, being abused and neglected, for whom intervention now would make all the difference later. As for parents whose children have been removed by the courts for their safety and who are required to take parenting classes as a condition for being reunited with their children, such intervention comes only after the damage has been done. In many cases, that is too late to significantly benefit either child or parent.
@@Precisely because their most urgent needs are not met, abused infants grow into adults who remain fixated on their own feelings of frustration. Such people have difficulty recognizing anyone’s needs other than their own. When they become parents, they are unable to cope with the demands placed on them by an infant. They remain at a stage of arrested development, all the while searching for relief from the chronic anger that derives from events impossible for them to remember — anger that smolders beneath the surface and erupts all too easily when a defenseless target comes within arm’s reach.
@@Being deprived babies themselves and feeling rudely displaced by their own offspring, they are spontaneously hostile to them. They spank as naturally as they were spanked. They bully their growing children as they were bullied. They produce damaged children who in turn become inept parents who produce more damaged children.
@@When such a pattern is the norm in society, the courts stay busy and the prisons stay filled.

Condoning violence against children
Our laws and cultural values are unambiguous concerning adults who physically attack or threaten other adults. Such behavior is recognized as criminal and we hold the perpetrators accountable. Why then, when so much is at stake for society, do we accept the excuses of child batterers? Why do we become interested in the needs of children only after they have been terribly victimized, or have become delinquents victimizing others?
@@The answer is not complicated. Until we can honestly acknowledge the mistreatment we’ve experienced in our own childhood and examine the shortcomings of our own parents, we will be incapable of feeling sympathy for any child abused as we were. To the extent we feel compelled to defend our parents and guard their secrets, we will do the same for others. We will look the other way. By insisting that we “turned out OK” we are really trying to reassure ourselves and to divert our own attention from deeply unpleasant memories.
@@That’s why when someone says, “spanking is abuse,” many of us react as though a door that has been locked since infancy is about to be flung open, a door that has prevented us from committing the most dangerous, most unpardonable act of disloyalty imaginable: disloyalty to the parent. We fear that by unlocking that door we might fall through into an abyss, abandoned and cut off from any possibility of reconciliation with the parents we love.
@@That fear is irrational. Dishonesty about what was done to our generation and what we are doing and allowing to be done to the next generation is the real danger and the real sin.
@@Reconciliation and healing can only begin with an acknowledgment of the truth, for it is futile to hope that lies, evasions and excuses can somehow erase the memory and the pain of past injuries.

Three Steps Toward a Solution

Repeal bad laws
We should rescind legislation regarding children’s status that is based on the mythical distinction between spanking and battery. Every state in the U.S. has such laws.
@@There can be no rational excuse for giving children less protection against battery than adults have. Because of such exclusions and the anti-child prejudices they reinforce, children in the United States today receive no better legal protection against cruel treatment than did slaves prior to emancipation. Now is the time to repeal the Jim Crow laws against children and extend to them the same constitutional guarantees that are taken for granted by every other class of citizen.

Educate for parenthood
The person who was raised by incompetents never witnessed competent parenting and has been taught nothing about the needs and nurturing of infants is seriously, educationally deprived. Such a person poses a far greater potential problem for society than the person who has not learned to read or calculate. Enlightened educators must finally assume the responsibility for preparing young people for their most important role in life: parenthood.

Counsel new parents
All new parents should receive sound advice about nurturing, nonviolent parenting. Programs for counseling, monitoring and early intervention with high-risk parents, similar to the one now in place in Hawaii, should be implemented everywhere. Families deemed high-risk should be enrolled in programs of ongoing counseling and home monitoring. Where needed, skilled counselors should help convince mothers and fathers, grandparents and other caretakers that the traditional examples they have been shown and the advice they have been given about “disciplining” children are bad examples and bad advice.
@@In cases where babies need to be rescued, it should be done with a minimum of delay. Experience has taught us that when we fail to protect them early, we pay a hundredfold later.

Conclusion
I am confident that our society will find the moral courage to end its denial of this simple and terrible truth: Violent criminals are made. We ourselves create them at home.
@@Clearly, the solution does not lie in more prisons and swifter, harsher punishments nor in heroic efforts to rehabilitate profoundly damaged, dangerous adults. By now we should have had enough of these high-cost, low-yield, after-the-fact remedies. Honest answers lie in true understanding of the disease at its source, active prevention and compassionate early intervention.

1. Alfred Adler, Social Interest: A Challenge to Mankind (1939) quoted in Ashley Montagu, Man Observed, New York: Tower Publications 1971, p. 65.
2. Ibid., p. 45.
3. Communication to the author from Dr. Morris Wessel, Professor of Pediatric Medicine, Yale University School of Medicine.
4. Philip Greven, Spare the Child: The Religious Roots of Punishment and the Psychological Impact of Physical Abuse, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991), pp. 193-194.
5. Sheldon Glueck,”Ten Years of Unraveling Juvenile Delinquency: An Examination of Criticisms,” in Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck, Ventures in Criminology: Collected Recent Papers (London:Travistock Publications, 1964), p. 285.

Bibliography
Crosby, Gary, Going My Own Way. New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1983. Especially see Chapter Two, “Getting it.”
Gibson, Ian, The English Vice. London: Duckworth, 1978.
Gilmore, Mikal, Shot in the Heart. New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc. 1994.
Greven, Philip, Spare the Child: The Religious Roots of Punishment and the Psychological Impact of Physical Abuse. New York: Random House, 1991.
Hyman, I. A., Reading, Writing and the Hickory Stick: The Appalling Story of Physical and Psychological Violence in American Schools. Boston: Lexington Books, 1990.
Johnson, Tom, The Sexual Dangers of Spanking Children
Miller, Alice, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child Rearing and the Roots of Violence. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux,1983.
. . ., Thou Shalt Not Be Aware: Society’s Betrayal of the Child. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1984.
. . ., Banished Knowledge. New York: Doubleday, 1990.
. . ., Breaking Down the Wall of Silence. New York: Dutton,1991.
. . ., The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self. Basic Books, 1981
Montagu, Ashley, Man Observed. New York: Tower Publications,1971. Especially see Chapter 3, “Crime and Society.”
Riak, Jordan, Plain Talk about Spanking. PTAVE, 1982
. . ., Hablando francamente sobre el pegarles a los niños.
Straus, Murray A., Beating the Devil out of Them: Corporal Punishment in American Families. New York: Free Press, 1994.
De Zulueta, Felicity, From Pain to Violence: The Traumatic Roots of Destructiveness. Northvale, New Jersey: Jason Aronson, Inc., 1994
_________________________________________________________________
This essay was authored by Jordan Riak in 1995.

Readers are invited to listen to this article narrated by Stefan Molyneux (host of www.freedomainradio.com) at www.youtube.com/watch?v=–I0X3-tOwE

Jordan Riak is the Founder and Executive Director of
Parents and Teachers Against Violence in Education, Inc. (founded in 1978)

Mr. Riak can be reached at riak@nospank.net

PTAVE
P.O. Box 1033
Alamo, CA 94507-7033
(925) 831-1661
www.nospank.net

That’s in stark contrast to the rest of the world, which has increasingly prohibited the physical punishment of children. Americans like to see themselves as being at the forefront of historical change, leading humanity to ever more freedom and progress. But when it comes to corporal punishment of children, we’re well behind the curve.

Exhibit A is William Adams, a county judge in Texas who was captured on video beating his then-16-year-old daughter with a belt while cursing and shouting for some seven minutes. The 2004 video recently went viral after Adams’ daughter posted it online. The judge was suspended from the bench with pay pending an investigation, but he is unlikely to face criminal charges.

In many other countries, however, any physical punishment of a child is by definition criminal. Starting with Sweden in 1979, 31 nations have passed laws barring parents from striking their children. Another 70 have banned corporal punishment in schools.

Puritan influence
So why not America? It begins with our Puritan foreparents, whose true motives are often blurred in the turkey-fed haze of Thanksgiving. Rather than seeking religious freedom for everyone, as many Americans still believe, the Puritans wanted everyone to follow the dictates of their religion. So they set up rules and institutions reflecting biblical teachings, including that of Proverbs 13:24: “He that spareth the rod hateth his son, but he that loveth him chasteneth him.”

And chasteneth they did — with rods and more. “Surely there is in all children a stubbornness, and stoutness of mind arising from natural pride, which must in the first place be broken and beaten down,” one Puritan minister wrote. “For the beating, and keeping down of this stubbornness, parents must provide carefully.”

If they didn’t, schools stepped into the breach. Established to teach children how to read the Bible, Puritan schools also disciplined them according to it. “Because the Rodd of Correction is an ordinance of God … the schoolmaster for the tyme beeing shall have full power to minister correction to all or any of his schollers,” the town leaders of Dorchester, Mass., resolved in 1645, “and no parent or other of the Inhabitants shall hinder or goe about to hinder the master therein.”

As the last clause suggests, some people were already resisting the Puritans’ harsh regime then. And when the Founding Fathers established a new national government a century later, they took pains to separate it from religious authority.

Court-sanctioned
They also limited its powers, leaving Americans free to pursue their happiness as they saw fit. Likewise, the new state governments gave citizens extraordinary leeway in conducting their lives. That meant most forms of corporal punishment continued, in homes and in schools. Campaigns against the practice tended to focus on its most extreme cases, which became known as “abuse.”

It wasn’t until the 1960s that most states passed laws requiring the reporting of child abuse to authorities. And the federal government didn’t address the issue until 1974, when it authorized funds to help states prevent acts resulting in “death, serious physical or emotional harm, sexual abuse, or exploitation” of children.

Yet the very effort to define child abuse actually reinforced corporal punishment by legitimizing acts that did not meet the definition. In 1977, the Supreme Court declared that corporal corrections in schools do not violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Any “severe” or “excessive” punishments were already barred under existing “civil and criminal sanctions for abuse,” the court noted.

That’s the standard governing parents, too: Hitting is OK, but abuse isn’t. When does one shade into the other? We leave that determination to adults like William Adams, who has presided over many child-abuse cases as a judge.

Where his own behavior is concerned, though, Adams can’t seem to tell the difference. “In my mind, I haven’t done anything wrong other than discipline my child,” he told an interviewer after his daughter posted the video.

In the video, Adams shouts as he strikes his daughter repeatedly with a belt: “Bend over the fucking bed! Lay down or I’ll spank your fucking face!” His daughter, by the way, has ataxic cerebral palsy, a neurological disorder affecting physical coordination.

The infraction that earned her this punishment? Illegally downloading games from the Internet.

Do we want William Adams — or anybody else — deciding when corporal punishment descends into abuse? To really stop child abuse, we need to stop adults from hitting children — period. The rest of the world is already figuring that out. Let’s hope America catches up soon.
___________________________________________________________

by Jonathan Zimmerman
as published in the Philadelphia Inquirer November 29, 2011
www.philly.com © 2011

Jonathan Zimmerman, Ph.D. is Professor of Education and History and Director of the History of Education Program, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. He also holds an appointment in the Department of History of NYU’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

A former Peace Corps volunteer and high school teacher, Zimmerman is the author of Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory (Yale University Press, 2009). His academic articles have appeared in the Journal of American History, the Teachers College Record, and History of Education Quarterly. Zimmerman is also a frequent op-ed contributor to the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Republic and other popular newspapers and magazines.

Prof. Zimmerman can be reached at jlzimm@aol.com

An often-heard rationalization used to justify striking children is associated with `love’. We commonly hear spankers insist that they only spank their children `because they love them’. Many even claim that they spank in love. The danger in associating loving behavior with physical punishment lies in the risk of children developing confusion between love, pain, and violence. In a worst-case scenario, the child comes to form a direct association between love, pain, and violence.

I think it’s pertinent to add here that physical punishments are also a part of this learned behavior that tends to pass from one generation down to the next. When verbalized, these family values might sound something like, “Parents hit children, that is the way things are … it’s what I know … it’s all I know … it’s a normal part of my reality … and I learned to believe deeply that parents hit children in certain circumstances.” Formative years learning can become a deeply ingrained belief involving firm convictions that often remain throughout life.

Under closer examination, it might be discovered that these types of values have been formed on no other basis than blind acceptance. These kinds of passed-down values and beliefs can be identified when they are held in the absence of a justifying rationale for the behavior in question. An example of this blind learning might sound something like the following:

“I learned and adopted the following values and rules from my mother, but I am unable to offer a rationale basis for their existence. Nevertheless, my parenting consists of the following:

• A child should be hit for potty mouth.
• I only yell for accidental spills.
• A child should be hit for openly expressing anger.
• I also learned from mother that babies should be given a sharp smack on the hand for touching No, No’s.

The thinking process associated with these behaviors might sound something like, “Now, this is exactly what I have a strong tendency to do in these particular circumstances, so I’ll just make those things a part of my rules, and do what feels right in terms of how I treat my kids. After all, it’s how my mother raised me, and I turned-out okay.”

But I digress. Over the years, I’ve seen and heard enough testimony and accounts to believe that spanked children are at some degree of risk for developing a spanking fetish. I’ll go so far as to take this possibility one step further by saying that if you show me someone who qualifies as a spanking fetishist, I’ll show you someone who was spanked as a child (whether or not they remember being spanked).

The science of Physiology has identified the buttocks as an erogenous zone, and there are indications that some children come to associate spankings with sexual stimulation. It seems highly implausible to me that some children could be born with a penchant for being painfully struck on the buttocks as a means of sexual stimulation. Unfortunately, there is little likelihood of a grown child admitting to their parents (or to the general public, for that matter) that they have developed a spanking fetish. But, the existence of this sexual fetish can be evidenced by anyone who would care to enlist the aid of any search engine for the word `spank’. What will be found is a surprising number of sites dedicated to those kids who became adults with a desire for either being a spanker or being spanked in association with sexual behavior (including fantasized ideation). Unfortunately, a number of these particular individuals don’t feel good about themselves with regard to having developed a sexual fetish as a part of who they are. And again, there can be little doubt as to the degree of power and long term impact early learning carries with it as a permanent, life-long influence on who we become.

It’s worth noting that it’s too often the case that people with various fetishes and atypical sexual proclivities tend to suffer a degree of damage to their self-esteem. This diminished level of self esteem can be attributed, at least in some part, to the atypical sexual behavior in question being viewed by society as perverse, perverted, sick, and/or sexually deviant. No one benefits from social rejection; that’s for certain. Worse yet, there is also a real risk of the atypical individual coming to suffer damage to their self-concept through having adopted the view that they are indeed, flawed, abnormal, sick, and wholly unappealing as individuals. Needless to say, these are not the kinds of views toward oneself that could be considered as being conducive to the continued maintenance of a healthy psychological sense of well-being.

It is my opinion that the great majority of BDSM (Bondage Dominance Submission Masochism) behavior is determined by circumstantial learning experiences being internalized by children during their formative years. Unfortunately, we are hampered in attempts to increase our knowledge regarding these maladaptive behaviors because of the existence of social taboos that tend to stifle, if not completely thwart, public discussions in open forums. The fact that this type of behavior is largely secretive, and closeted, also helps to explain why we see a relative unavailability of freely shared information for scientific field research. Our knowledge is largely limited to the experiences and opinions of mental health care professionals. While this situation might be understandable, it never- theless serves to deprive us of a learning resource that could come by way of the small percentage of socially conscious BDSM individuals who would be willing to share their experiences in public arenas.

With reference to spanking in love, it should be reiterated that spanking parents do a great disservice to their children by telling them things like, “I strike you and cause you pain only because I love you.” Truth is, children would be much better served to instead be told that the blows, and the pain they cause, are acts of disdain, which in fact they are in the eyes of humanity. Children are left as the only segment of the human race where it is still acceptable to allow a degree of violence and demeaning disrespect to remain within the definition of love. In truth, this definition should be reserved as a category of substandard love termed, Child Love which allows for hateful treatment within the definition of a loving relationship.

Punitive violence, pain, dominance, and hateful regard in the name of parental love can, and do, plant the seeds of perversity. In addition, sexual stimulation associated with spankings (whether or not intended) carries the risk of producing a spanking fetish as a learned behavior.
________________________________________________________

© 2009 James Talbot
Author of The Road To Positive Discipline: A Parent’s Guide.
See www.positivedisciplining.com/author.htm

The large majority of teachers are competent and caring professionals who do not mistreat children physically or emotionally, and most school administrators set high standards for teacher behavior within their schools. Sadly, however, in some schools there are teachers who are unsuited to their profession and habitually hurt children, and there are school administrators who lack the will or ability to maintain high professional standards. Some administrators are themselves abusive toward children and are, therefore, incapable of setting an appropriate standard for teachers.

Parents and Teachers Against Violence in Education (PTAVE) continually receives complaints about abuse to schoolchildren. The list that follows has been compiled from those complaints.

Variety of Mistreatment of Schoolchildren
• Paddling
• Spanking
• Slapping
• Cuffing
• Grabbing
• Shaking
• Dragging
• Shoving
• Pinching
• Pulling a child’s hair or ear
• Finger jabbing a child’s face or ribs
• Squeezing a child’s cheeks
• Lifting a child up by the clothing or by the neck
• Banging a child against the wall
• Hurling objects at a child
• Striking a desk top with a book or ruler in order to startle a child
• Shutting a child in a box or closet
• Forcing noxious substances into a child’s mouth
• Forcing a child to remain motionless or maintain a stress position for an extended period of time
• Denying the child the use of the lavatory
• Allowing or encouraging bullies to torment a child
• Turning a blind eye to hazing
• Delegating the right to a student, sometimes called a “prefect” or “captain,” to physically punish other students
• Provoking, taunting or challenging a child to violence
• Taping a child’s mouth shut
• Tying a child to the desk
• Forcing a child to do push-ups or run laps
• Denying adequate free time for recess or lunch
• Threatening, cursing or screaming at a child or at a group of children
• Using fear of punishment to motivate a child to complete tasks
• Insulting a child about poor performance, appearance, choice of friends, etc.
• Confiscating or damaging a child’s personal property
• Labeling or spreading malicious gossip about a child or a child’s family
• Proclaiming to the whole class that a particular child is headed for no good — that he or she will become a delinquent or a failure
• Setting unrealistic standards of performance in order to guarantee a child’s failure
• Deliberately ignoring a child who needs help
• Refusing to acknowledge or reward a child’s improvement
• Using sarcasm and put-downs when addressing a child
• Badgering or taunting a child to the point of an outburst and then punishing the child for loss of control
• Punishing a group of children for the misbehavior of an individual
• Punishing an individual as an example to the group
• Causing a child to be humiliated in front of peers
• Calling into question a boy’s masculinity because of late development, lack of interest or ability in sports, reluctance to fight with other boys
• Calling into question a girl’s morals because of early development
• Impugning a girl’s femininity because she excels at traditionally male activities
• Leading a child into inappropriately intimate or sexually suggestive conversation or acts
• Setting up a child to be scapegoated
• Making a child the butt of the teacher’s humor
• Pitting child against child, group against group
• Having children spy on each other
• Isolating a child from the group for a protracted period
• Undermining a child’s social status and encouraging the group to ostracize the child
• Undermining trust and communication between child and parent(s)
• Misrepresenting a child’s learning disability as a “discipline problem”
• Blaming a child’s family situation for school-caused emotional problems
• Persuading a family to administer personality-altering drugs to the child so as to make the child more placid and tractable while at school
• Retaliating against a child because of a dispute with the parent(s)
• Creating a dossier or “criminal record” of a child in order to undermine the child’s credibility or to hold over the child’s head as a threat or bargaining chip
• Coercing a child to make false statements about others or remain silent about witnessed events
• Coercing a child to make a written confession
• Preventing a child who is in a state of distress from telephoning home

The preceding is by no means a complete list.

It is important for all parents to know that they have a fundamental right — a moral duty — to protect their children from mistreatment by anybody. Let your child’s teachers and your school principal know that no one has your permission, nor the moral right, to hit, threaten, humiliate, degrade or otherwise abuse your child. Instruct your child never to submit to any act of aggression by any adult. Your failure to ensure a safe, nurturing, joyful environment for your schoolchild, particularly in the earliest years, may have painful and costly consequences later.

If your child is physically abused by any adult, including a school principal, teacher, coach, bus driver or anybody, immediately remove the child from the abusive environment, assure the child of your full support and seek medical treatment for any bruise or injury even if it appears minor. Obtain a copy of the examining physician’s report. You have a right to it. Report the incident to the appropriate public health authority and to the police. Injuries that are visible should be professionally photographed without delay and prints kept for possible future legal action.

If the abuse is non-physical, have the child assessed by a psychologist who is qualified in matters of child abuse, but not one who is associated with the school district or one who has been recommended by the school.

When you discuss these matters with your child, listen closely and patiently to what the child says. Your trust will inspire openness and frankness. Do not be surprised if the school’s account of events differs from your child’s. Do not be surprised if the school seems more intent on shielding an abusive, incompetent teacher than in protecting a child who is under the control of that teacher. Do not allow yourself to be worn down by bureaucratic stalling or derailed by diversionary tactics. If you are told that you are the only parent who ever complained about that teacher, or that your child is “making it up,” don’t accept it. Keep focused on these three points: 1) your child was mistreated, 2) your child should not have been mistreated and 3) you will absolutely not permit your child to be mistreated again, ever!

One day, all schools in the United States will be places in which children thrive and develop in safety, and all teachers will adhere to high standards of professional conduct. No pupil will ever be mistreated. You can help make that day come sooner.

This article was originally published by Parents and Teachers Against Violence in Education (PTAVE) on www.nospank.net in 1998.

Given these changes reflecting a greater collective humanity, I fully expect to see an expansion of the parameters currently used to describe acts that are consistent with sociopathy and sadism. This will occur when we finally bring children into the fold of humanity by putting behind us our prejudicial and discriminatory attitudes toward our young.

— James C. Talbot (April 24, 2010)

Author of The Road To Positive Discipline: A Parent’s Guide.
See www.positivedisciplining.com/author.htm

For example, those who developed through their formative years having adopted as a part of their belief system that adults hit children as an acceptable practice will take on this treatment of children as a belief not dissimilar to the religious beliefs they’ve adopted during this same stage of development. And, these are beliefs that tend to become deeply ingrained.

Those who happen to overcome and evolve beyond such irrational belief systems seem to be the exception to the rule. Sadly, it would seem that few children are able to avoid early childhood brainwashing to a particular religion or orientation. Typically, our little ones will buy into what we feed them lock, stock and barrel.

Herein lies the problem of change in the face of overwhelming evidence. Let’s liken this change to telling a grown man that his name is actually Archibald instead of Joe. Lot’s of luck. It’s going to take awhile, no doubt, and repeated efforts are in order.

So, once again, let’s try driving home the facts that carry with them the hope of breaking through just a few more of those bigoted obstacles still standing in the way of social progress.

To begin with, I feel it’s most important to make it very clearly known to any and all concerned that the debate on spanking within the scientific and academic communities is dead and has been for a number of years. The most substantial indicator of this development is evidenced by the fact that virtually every professional organization in the U.S. and Canada concerned with the care and treatment of children has taken a public stance against the practice of spanking.

Based on the overwhelming accumulation of research conducted over the past 50 plus years linking spanking to a number of risk factors, the professional consensus against this practice has grown to world-wide proportions … even to the extent that Sweden, Finland, Austria, Norway, Croatia, Denmark, Hungary, Israel, Cyprus, Netherlands, Bulgaria, Germany, Latvia, Iceland, Romania, Greece, New Zealand, Venezuela, Spain, Portugal, Chile, Uruguay, and Ukraine have all legislated total bans on spanking … with Italy, South Africa, Scotland, Canada, and Ireland apparently in the process of following suit. It should also be noted that every industrialized country in the world has banned spanking in schools. The evidence is in, and the evidence has found against the practice of spanking in a compellingly conclusive manner.

Just as one might find supportive views toward spanking being promoted (typically) on web sites sponsored by fundamentalist Christian sects, so can one find supportive views promoting Homophobia, Racism, Misogyny, and other “hate group” propaganda. Because the actual agendas of these sites are often deceptively disguised by organizational titles such as “Family Council”, “People’s Choice”, “Rights and Freedoms”, etc., people are forced to exercise a highly judicious discernment of the information being made available on the Internet. Some web surfers have had to learn the hard way that the Internet abounds with persuasive presentations of “facts and figures” that can prove to represent nothing more than religious, political, or philosophical attempts to spread self-serving misinformation.

Having spent over 30 years examining and evaluating the research on spanking children, I am able to state with a high degree of confidence that there has never been a peer-reviewed study that has been able to establish the efficacy of spanking as a means of long-term behavior modification; as an effective teaching modality; as an effective punishment or as a means of instilling self-discipline. Nor has there been published research findings in peer-reviewed professional journals that served to refute previous research. This previous research found spanking to be associated with a risk for undesirable emotional consequences; a risk for physical injury; a risk of counter-productive behavioral outcomes; a risk for the onset of dependence on external controls and a proclivity toward authority-directed behavior. Moreover, there has never been research data finding that spanking carries no risk to the quality of the parent-child relationship (and I should add that conservative editorial reviews of previous research findings do not constitute actual research, as is sometimes claimed to be the case).

Nevertheless, there are some spankers who will find reasons to dismiss, ignore, or discount the research findings of field conducted experimental studies related to the Social Sciences. It is especially these folks that I’d like to address concerning alarming new research findings which represent the most severe consequences of physical punishment yet discovered … while doing so in the form of documented scientific proof.*

These revelations have come through studies in brain research having provided Cat Scan images showing an abnormal lack of brain development (within the portion of the brain responsible for emotional functioning) in children who had been subject to spankings as a punitive measure. For the sake of sample homogeneity, the researchers chose subjects for their study that had been categorized as “abused” children. Common sense tells us that this does not eliminate the possibility of a lesser degree of brain damage occurring to spanked children who are subjected to a lesser degree of non-injurious violence. In other words, it would be ludicrous to assume that a child must first suffer bruises, cuts, or welts (or other injuries), before brain damage can take place as a result of the physical punishments. Rather, it is much more logical to deduce that acts of physical aggression toward young children can disrupt or prevent the optimal conditions necessary to facilitate a normal process of healthy brain development.

As far as I’m concerned, this new area of research (apparently not yet freely available on the Internet) represents the most compelling, undeniable reason that has yet been discovered to persuade parents to stop (or never start) striking their children as a punitive measure. And I hope any pro-spankers reading this feel the same way. It’s difficult to imagine any parent who would be willing to treat their child in a way that might carry even a remote risk of causing a measure of brain damage to their child.

In spite of having said all of that, we should not need research to end the practice of striking children any more than we needed research to end the practice of striking wives. As a society, there was no need for research findings to convince us of the harmful effects associated with the practice of wives being physically punished.

Instead, when society reached the point of being no longer willing to grant social tolerance to the tradition of husbands physically disciplining their wives, our decision to do so was based on our having progressed socially into the higher morality of a greater humanity. Perhaps, the next step in forward progress should come by way of reaching a decision to begin recognizing children as also being deserving of those same protections against being struck.

No longer do we see any adult members of our society remaining outside the jurisdiction of the protective laws once enjoyed by only the more privileged and “deserving” (namely white males who made the laws), regardless of race, gender, religion, ethnic group or sexual orientation. None of our adult citizens remain legally unprotected from being violated through harassment, threats, defamation, discrimination or being victimized by violence to any degree or form. So, given our heritage of bestowing a greater humanity upon those of a lower social status by welcoming them as our equals in the eyes of the law (in terms of violent treatment), would it be so out of character for us to also shelter the younger, weaker members of our society by allowing them to join those of us already sharing in the security and comfort of safety that is provided under the umbrella of legal protections from violence?

Bringing our little ones into the fold really doesn’t seem all that magnanimous if we keep in mind that we’ve already been willing to share the shelter of our umbrella of assault laws with even the most vicious of hardened adult criminals. After all, children are the very last segment of our shared human collective who still remain as fair game for being subjected to acts of physical aggression. We display a strange sense of priorities when we don’t allow the prison guard to break-out a paddle and start whacking away on the disobedient buttocks of a sociopathic death-row inmate who kills for the rush it gives him, yet we find helpless, defenseless young children deserving of such treatment.

We characterize corporal punishments of prison inmates as Cruel and Unusual Punishment, Guard Brutality and Aggravated Assault. And, should the physical punishments be repeated as a routine punitive measure, such treatment of prisoners would fall under the definition of torture.

Why would a murderous inmate be less subject to physical discipline than a helpless 3-year-old child?

Logically, morally, humanely and scientifically, the debate on spanking is dead … save for those who would object to further social progress.

As we evolve as a society, we have to keep in mind that historically there was a time when it was acceptable to legally own other people; a time when the mentally ill were generally considered to be possessed by evil spirits; a time when men legally shot each other in officiated duels; a time when public hangings were attended as a family outing complete with picnic basket; a time when public floggings were considered acceptable punishment; a time when it was a gentleman’s agreement that husbands should not beat their wives with a switch that was ‘bigger-round than your thumb’ (which later became known as ‘the rule of thumb’); and there was a time when there were no laws against parents severely beating their children (killing children was unacceptable, of course, but an occasional accidental maiming as a result of disciplinary measures was tolerated).

Obviously, we no longer permit these punishments. The time has come for us to further our level of social sophistication by coming to a general agreement that any degree of physical punishment used against children is as socially unacceptable and repugnant as those past violent behaviors we have chosen to put behind us.

© 2001  James C. Talbot

Author of The Road To Positive Discipline: A Parent’s Guide
Visit www.positivedisciplining.com

A conflicted message children are given here, when they are also taught that parents can violate their modesty and bodily integrity and human dignity at will. With that violation comes emotional trauma and fear, even terror, over pain that an adult is inflicting while the child remains defenseless against the aggressive “pedagogical” or punitive assault.

Is it any wonder that when treated this way by their “nearest and dearest,” that children, wholly dependent on parents not only for love but also survival, develop ambivalent and dysfunctional attitudes towards intimacy and close bonds, both desiring and fearing them? Is it any wonder that they may adopt a spate of maladaptive behaviors, from aggressiveness to timidity and withdrawal, from fear of and misdirected rebellion against “authority” to inordinate approval seeking and desire to please? And is any lesson learned about the behavior that precipitated a spanking?

Or has the child simply learned to avoid getting caught? It seems to me that penalties for wrongdoing are inherent in the misdeed and are thus unavoidable, and one learns through such experience. Piling punishment on top of penalty is a different matter. If it must exist as a means of teaching people to distinguish between good and evil, then can we not, as a society, insist that it be humane? The very combination of words sounds oxymoronic.

The British seem to have had a special cultural flair for caning, flogging and such. A glance at the work of Algernon Swinburne and Ian Gibson’s book The English Vice gives a clue concerning the grotesque distortions, the “kinky,” sado-masochistic or dysfunctional patterns of human sexuality that can result from such childhood abuse. This is an extreme and, one hopes, exceptional, but if spanking is normative, then dysfunction can also become the norm.

How many people cringe, as if to fend off a physical blow, when other people’s voices are raised in anger? How many women and children are cowed, walking on egg shells at home, because a male “head of household” threatens violence while shaking a fist and demanding silence, even though that man never actually delivers a blow?

I seriously doubt that a more humane and educated world will be realized if, as a society, we perpetuate customary cruelty such as inflicting physical pain on children as part of our impoverished didactic repertoire, and as long as physical force remains the final arbiter of all human disputes.

“Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”, said Lord Acton. Who has more power to abuse other humans than large parents, upon whom small children are dependent?

Like the big taboos of sex and death, this subject can be shame inducing. It may cause cracks in the fragile self-esteem of spankers and spankees alike. Fortunately, Project No Spank is bringing truth to light on this topic, the effects of which are deeply ingrained in attitudes and ways of being and relating to one another. So often people’s need to think well of themselves, to salvage fragile “self-esteem”—based on false competitive win-lose, power-over mindsets to start with—aligning ourselves, our minds, and our actions more closely with it. When adults inflict pain on children as a means of punishment, coercion and behavior control, clearly, they are not approximating the embodiment of truth and love revealed to humanity through the wisest traditions in philosophy and the world’s great spiritual disciplines.

The use of physical pain to control children is not only unloving, but also unreasonable. Children should be reasoned with through language and intellect, not coerced through physical pain and humiliation. Children who are unable to comprehend reasoning, two-year-olds, for example, need to be kept out of harm’s way by adults, not punished with spankings if they make a mistake that could cause injury to themselves or others, a mistake that adults call “misbehavior.”

The whipping post and slavery were abolished in the United States. It is time to recognize spanking as the cruel retrogressive habit that it is, left over from the era when Americans owned other humans and were free to treat them with less care than inanimate objects.

Whether as part of toxic parenting or poisonous pedagogy, human beings no longer can afford to indulge in inflicting pain as an “efficient” means of modifying behavior. As Alice Miller says, “every smack is a humiliation.” Some smacks prove fatal, while all are injurious to human dignity and diminish the human community in which we all must live. If children are human, they have rights that no adult should be able to violate with impunity.

Louise Gordon

© 2004 by Louise Gordon

One of the primary roles of government is protection of the rights of citizens, and the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution promises equal protection under the law. But, if you are familiar with history, you are aware that true equal protection has evolved gradually. Looking back, we can remember times when certain citizens did not qualify as equal.

For example, wives used to be legally assaulted and battered by their husbands. It was referred to as a family squabble not domestic violence. These assaults were considered a private matter, trivial and a subject for comedy. The law did not presume to invade the sanctuary of the home and tell married folks how to manage their disagreements.

At an earlier time, apprentices could be physically punished by their employers, sailors could be flogged, prison inmates could be whipped by guards and military recruits could be beaten by their trainers. And at an even earlier time, it was standard procedure for field bosses to whip slaves working in the cotton fields.

All that has changed. Well, almost all. In the United States, at this time, there remains only one “whippable” class of citizen: children!

Hopefully, before long, the U.S. will join the rest of the civilized world in closing the legal loophole that allows assault and battery of the young. Thirty-one countries have already done so, and others are soon to join.

In 1989, the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child was established to promote the legal rights of citizens under the age of 18. The only member nations not to have signed are the United States and Somalia.

What’s our problem?
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For more on the issue of children and their rights, please visit
Parents and Teachers Against Violence in Education at www.nospank.net
and
The Center for Effective Discipline at www.stophitting.com