Corporal Punishment and Child Rearing

Corporal Punishment and Child Rearing in History

In a January 8, 2011, edition of World Street Journal, Amy Chua, professor at Yale Law School, ignited a firestorm with her article "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior," where she argued that the Chinese model of rigorous parenting is a highly effective way of rearing responsible and successful children (Chua, 2011). Chua explained in details how she once forced her eight-year-old child to perform a difficult musical play by depriving the child of food, drinks, toys, and even sleep. Chua concluded that her harsh upbringing of her children paid off as they became successful at school and learnt to respect their mother. Chua's article generated a barrage of criticisms in the Journal's commentary section and later throughout the web, many commentators, psychologists, sociologists, and ordinary mothers -- and fathers -- joining the debate. While for many contemporary Westerners, Chua's argument represented a cruel, illiberal, and even despotic form of child rearing, what Chua did was to reignite a debate which has been intensely discussed in the West for the last several centuries.

In their book Visions of Childhood: Influential Models from Locke to Spock, John Cleverley and D.C. Phillips point out that the mode of scientific inquiry in social sciences does not differ much from that in natural sciences. Deriving from the theories of Thomas Kuhn who argued that a scientific inquiry operates within a paradigm, or a set of paradigms, and that the paradigm defines the limits of inquiry from which researchers can rarely escape, Cleverley and Phillips argue that child rearing in the United States is a theory-laden practice. In other words, both scholars and ordinary parents believe in certain assumptions without realizing that, if critically examined, these assumptions may turn out to be wrong or even contradictory. It is no surprise then that Amy Chua's arguments were rejected outright by so many commentators who thought that her suggestions were "non-Western," whereas the practice of corporal punishment has been defended vigorously until recently.

The question of corporal punishment in child rearing has been discussed since the beginning of the modern era. In the seventeenth century, John Locke argued that nurture had a greater influence on child's behavior than nature. "I think I may say that of all the men we meet with, nine parts of ten are what they are, good or evil, useful or not, by their education," he said (Cleverley and Phillips, 1986, p. 17). Locke's approach is called an "environmentalist" approach, while those who argue that children's behavior is largely defined by hereditary traits are called "hereditarians." The debate over corporal punishment took place mostly within the environmentalist model, for environmentalists tried to find the best way of educating children.

The puritan evangelical tradition since the early seventeenth century has suggested that corporal punishment should be used in a proper manner by parents since, according to this tradition, children are born with the original sin. Absent scripture-based discipline in child rearing, children are likely to become sinful and aggressive. The early proponents of this view were Susanna Wesley and her son John who founded the Methodist movement. Both Susanna and John supported the judicious application of corporal punishment (Cleverley and Phillips, 1986, p. 29). Other puritan ministers such as Cotton Mather took a milder approach and argued that corporation punishment should be used as a last resort -- though should not be excluded altogether -- but the idea of employing corporal punishment in child rearing was so popular in the nineteenth century that Dr. Thomas Arnold of Rugby argued that "freedom and independence were dangerous to boys in that they led inevitably to the bad conduct and depravity that was natural to such a group" (Cleverley and Phillips, 1986, p. 31).

While harsh measures advocated by Susanna Wesley are no longer popular, milder versions of corporal punishment as a disciplinary measure are still practiced and defended, especially by protestant religious groups. Among the most vocal supporters of using corporal punishment has been conservative Christian psychologist James Dobson. According to Dobson (2010), a "judicious, controlled spanking, when motivated by love and applied properly, is in keeping with the principles of Scripture." Dobson, however, warns against improper use of spanking, arguing that children should never be spanked out of anger. A child who is less than fifteen months or over twelve should never be spanked either. Admitting that "child abuse is a natural tragedy," Dobson concludes that "a short lesson over a bent knee -- applied with care, wisdom, and a sensible explanation -- will benefit your child. After all, it is scriptural" (p. 133; italics original).

On the opposite side of the puritan model, challenging the notion of the original sin, is the view popularized by the eighteen-century Swiss philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau argued that children are born naturally good and they become evil only through other men's meddling. Rather than restraining children, Rousseau said, children should be allowed to follow their natural impulses under a system of "well-regulated liberty" (Cleverley and Phillips, 1986, p. 35). Rousseau's ideas were bitterly attacked by the advocates of the rival model at the time, but in the early twentieth century the notion of children's original goodness began to enter educational systems in Great Britain and the United States. A.S. Neill, the headmaster of Summerhill School, for instance, emphatically stated that "when we look at an infant, we know there is no wickedness in him -- no more than there is wickedness in a cabbage" (Cleverley & Phillips, 1986, p. 38). By the end of the second half of the twentieth century, Rousseauean model has become a dominant one in Western Europe and North America, and in many of these countries corporal punishment has been criminalized (Hyman, 1997; Durrant and Smith, 2011; Straus, 1994).

Adopted in a categorical sense, both the use of corporal punishment and the outright rejection of it may be problematic. There is abundance of research showing that corporal punishment may lead to aggressive behavior among children. Even such a practice as spanking on buttocks, accepted by so many parents, may instill a notion in a child that physical aggression is an acceptable way of solving problems. Spanking can also become addictive as it offers a temporary relief for an angry parent, and the frequent use of spanking a child may turn the parent-child relationship into one centered on power issues, which may eventually lead to aggression against parents by the child when he or she grows up (Pearson, 2006, p. 65).

However, there is also plethora of evidence showing that sometimes uncontrolled behavior by children may place them in harm's way and the only way of protecting them is the use of mild physical force for the sole purpose of restraining. It is also true that in societies where corporal punishment such as spanking is considered an acceptable way of disciplining a child, practiced by loving parents for the sole purpose of disciplining may be beneficial rather than harmful (Pearson, 2006, p. 64). It was because of this reason Dr. Kenneth Dodge, researching a correlation between spanking and aggressive behavior, found that among whites more spanking led to greater aggressive behavior, while among African-Americans "the spanked black kid was all around less likely to be in trouble" (Bronson & Merryman, 2009, p. 186).

The reason for this difference was that among the Caucasian families Dr. Kenneth studied spanking was a taboo and the use of it by parents triggered a sense of anger among children, whereas among the African-American families he studied spanking was considered an acceptable form of child disciplining and thus did not trigger a sense of anger among black kids. As Bronson and Merryman (2009) explain, this is not necessarily a white and black issue since a University of Texas study of Conservative Protestants who spanked their children in accordance with the instructions of James Dobson's Focus on the Family "found no negative effects from this corporal punishment -- precisely because it was conveyed as normal" (p. 187). The most important thing for parents is to weigh pros and cons of each model, critically examining assumptions behind each of them, and try to think of the specific case involving their children and make appropriate decisions. In this manner, each parent can foster the best form of positive development for his/her child.