Child Spanking as a Disciplinary Measure (Essay Sample)

Student’s Name Tutor Course Date Spanking as a Disciplinary Measure used by Parents: Argumentation Essay Introduction Parents use different methods depending on their tradition and the environment surrounding them to shape their children character and behavior (Vittrup and Holden 211). Such methods include physical punishments like slapping and spanking, verbal punishments like ridicule, penalties where parents may withhold allowances for a wrong doing, and withholding of rewards like playing their favorite game before doing something that is required of them. Although all these methods may be effective to some extent, physical punishment have been criticized and abandoned in many countries as studies indicate that it does more harm than good to a child mental and emotional development (Gershoff 1). This paper argues against child spanking and physical punishment as a disciplinary method for children, with reference to studies carried out on child development and wellbeing. Why Child Spanking should be discouraged Spanking is a wide spread practice that is used by parent involving hitting the bottom of a child with an open palm with the aim of stopping them from doing something wrong (Vittrup and Holden 211). On its part, it inflicts pain on the child, making them afraid of misbehaving. However, the method is not effective since the child would not understand why they were being spanked for doing whatever they were doing. As such, they would still do it in the absence of their parents or care givers because then there would be no physical threat for punishment (Gershoff 1). Since discipline is meant to teach children right from wrong and to improve their behavior, spanking may not be an effective method to make children fully understand why they are not allowed to do something and instead, explaining to them in a gentle but firm manner would go a long way. Discouragement of spanking may reduce cases of child abuse (Doucette, Harris and Jaffe 1). When parents spank their children as a disciplinary measure, their intent is to use little force to inflict pain in order to curb future misbehavior. When such a parent is emotional and frustrated, the force used while spanking may be more than necessary and may result to unintended child abuse. As such, banning of spanking and other physical punishment methods would play a big role in significant reduction of child abuse cases. Discouragement of spanking may also help in teaching violent children other available options of solving misunderstandings. Most children result to violent behavior since the environment they are raised in accepts violence as a means to resolve problems. In most cases, parents and teachers use physical punishment to discipline aggressive and violent children. As study indicates, such children become more violent and this may affect their adulthood relationships since they would most likely result to violence as their way to punish those who wrong them (Doucette, Harris and Jaffe 1). Using other available methods and understanding why such children are violent would result to bringing up emotionally stable and responsible adults. Conclusion Different studies indicate that spanking of children is not an effective disciplinary method, and may have negative effects on children emotional development (Vittrup and Holden 211). Additionally, making children understand the need for good behavior by talking to them and understanding them may make them more open and well behaved, as they would have the knowledge they require to make moral and appropriate behavior decisions. Furthermore, spanking and physical punishment methods may resul...