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Corporal Punishment

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Corporal Punishment
Whitney Philpot
November 23, 2012
Composition 1 rough draft
Stephens-Cools

Controversy behind Child Spanking
For many years, spanking has been a controversial issue. On one side of the debate are people who believe spanking is a necessary component of parenting in this day in age. On the contrary side is people who think spanking your child is destructive. However, in the middle are people who believe spanking is legitimate only when used correctly. Part of the reason for these debates is that some parents and experts define spanking differently. To them, spanking means slapping a child on the behind, while others believe it is a form of corporal punishment that does not cause injury. Why do individuals feel it’s such a bad case of action? When in turn it’s just a sense of discipline to punish the children not abuse them?
Information geared to the statement of not spanking states that spanking in turn leads to antisocial behavioral outcomes in children. These individuals think children who are spanked seem to have this behavior especially if they had been spanked frequently and severely. Some studies suggest that physical punishment gives children pain and with that it may lead the child to believe that it’s ok to treat others that way and to cause harm to others (Larzelere, Cox, Smith, 2010). These children then learn it from their parents causing the children to be more violent. Some research has shown that parent’s use of spanking actually works against what they are trying to accomplish. “In turn the child doesn’t learn anything from being spanked; the only thing that spanking does stated by Robert E. Larzelere, Ronald B. Cox Jr, and Gail L. Smith is stop the behavior at that time” (Larzelere, Cox, Smith, 2010). Parents will spank the child to make them behave but they really should put forth the effort to teach them why what they did was wrong instead of spanking.
Those individuals who are against spanking argue that it may lead to abuse as well.



Cited: “Abuse Child." The Columbia Encyclopedia. Columbia: The Columbia University Press, 2000. . Gale group. Web. 25 Nov. 2012. <http://find.galegroup.com>. Corina Benjet, Alan E Kazdin, Spanking children: the controversies, findings, and new directions, Clinical Psychology Review, Volume 23, Issue 2, March 2003, Pages 197-224, ISSN 0272-7358, 10.1016/S0272-7358(02)00206-4. Cox, Ronald B., Jr, Robert E. Larzelere, and Gail L. Smith. "Do nonphysical punishments reduce antisocial behavior more than spanking? a comparison using the strongest previous causal evidence against spanking. i" BMC Pediatrics 10 (2010): 10. Academic OneFile. Web. 25 Nov. 2012. Dominique A. Simons, Sandy K. Wurtele, Relationships between parents’ use of corporal punishment and their children 's endorsement of spanking and hitting other children, Child Abuse & Neglect, Volume 34, Issue 9, September 2010, Pages 639-646, ISSN 0145-2134, 10.1016/j.chiabu.2010.01.012. Graziano, Anthony M. "Rethinking spanking." Brown University Child & Adolescent Behavior Letter Oct. 1994: 8. Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition. Web. 25 Nov. 2012.

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