Should Parents Spank Their Child? Pediatricians Say No
“The way we were treated as small children is the way we treat ourselves the rest of our lives: with cruelty or with tenderness and protection. We often impose our most agonizing suffering upon ourselves and, later, on our children.” ~Alice Miller author The Drama of the Gifted Child
When I was young, I vowed when I grew up that if I had children, I would never hit them. My parents hit me with belts, switches, and various household objects. Deep within me, I knew there was a better way. However, when the time came for me to raise my own children, all I knew was to hit. In fact, the first time I hit my oldest child was when he was crying in his car seat. He was four months old.
I reached back from the driver’s seat and popped his leg. It was a knee-jerk reaction that was followed by his higher pitched wails and a deep sense of shame rising within me.
I pulled the car over, took him out of his carseat, held him tight, and we both cried. What had I done?
I had acted from memory, from experience, not from what I intentionally wanted to do. Even though I tried to change, the culture all around me was telling me what I was doing was necessary.
They were wrong, I thought, but when I didn’t know what else to do, I hit. I didn’t use objects, but I know that hitting my children hurt them deeply.
This week, the American Academy of Pediatrics came out and took a stand against parents using spanking to discipline their children. For years the official statement of the AAP was to steer parents away from spanking, but due to an overwhelming amount of research that concludes the harmfulness of spanking, they are issuing a new official statement in the December issue of Pediatrics.
If you are reading this and are opposed to this new, firmer stance, then you are not alone. Many people firmly believe that spanking is an important discipline technique to prevent children from growing up wild and untamed. In fact, this belief is so prevalent that the United States is one of the few developed countries which has not banned its use.
Many parents will argue that their religious beliefs include physically punishing their children. Others will attest that they were disciplined in the same way, and they turned out fine. There is also a deeply held cultural belief that children who are not disciplined are the ones who cause problems for themselves, their families, and society.
It is important to note, this statement by the AAP is not referring to child abuse. Most people are aware that beating a child is harmful, but the research is clearly in, hitting children in any form is hurtful to their healthy development.
There are three important points to make here, I feel:
1) Believing something is effective does not mean that it is. In fact, the research is clear. Hitting children affects their self-esteem and their ability to interact socially with others. It can lead to aggressive behaviors even while it appears, at the time, to be working.
2) While it is important to avoid jumping to conclusions when it comes to any research, when there are multiple studies, over a period of years, conducted by a variety of institutions which result in the same conclusions, it is time to re-evaluate our beliefs.
3) It is not enough to tell parents that they should stop hitting their children. We need free and easily accessible resources to help parents change the way they discipline. Most, if not all, parents learned how to parent from their own parents. They are just doing what they know.
There are many reasons to stop hitting children, and I will be writing about those in future blog posts. For now, it is time to re-evaluate our beliefs regarding what works when it comes to disciplining children.
The good news is that this is a change that is going to benefit everyone: children, parents, and society.
Photo by Anna Kolosyuk on Unsplash