Spanking: a grand old American tradition?

America is a violent country, founded in an atmosphere of revolution. Slavery thrived until a little more than a century ago, and many Americans still insist on owning handguns.

The spanking of children also appears to be alive and well today--one of those behaviors so rooted in tradition, and so ubiquitous in nature, that few experts have questioned its potential harm. Even fewer have bothered to evaluate its effects.

My own research over the last 10 years has convinced me that the spanking of children is a very serious matter, one that has been all but ignored by those individuals working in the field of child abuse who seem to consistently view spankings and beatings as two separate entities. The idea that spanking is a necessary part of childrearing should never be axiomatic. If science could prove that spanking was necessary to raise an emotionally healthy child, then by all means we should spank children. However, no one has proven its utility, or even tried to do so. When spanking does work, it is not unlike whacking your watch with your hand to make it tick. This crude procedure may work for a while, but the long-term consequences of hitting one's watch is likely to be detrimental to the delicate mechanism. Our research suggests that the watch analogy also holds for the whacking of children.

If everyone agreed that a spanking was the equivalent of a rap on the rear with the open hand, few professionals would disagree regarding the minimal danger associated with its use. Fortunately, the pain inflicted on the spanker's flat hand tends to automatically mitigate the severity of punishment administered. Unfortunately, few people agree on the definition of "spanking," when a spanking should be most appropriately administered or what devices should be used. Most authors who are also devotees of spanking as an behavioral modification tool are usually from the middle-class and incorrectly assume that spanking is used rarely, and only as a last resort. F. I. Nye dispels that notion by flatly stating that spanking is frequently the first method of discipline selected by a parent. My research bears out his work. I fear that those authors who sanction the use of spanking unknowingly encourage highly aggressive parents--especially those who were themselves overpunished as children--to use spanking as their first-choice disciplinary measure.

For parents, one of the worst examples is being set by educators who still believe that spanking is a productive method of altering behavior. During a debate on the two U.S. Supreme Court decisions supporting spanking in the schools, Lansing Reinholz, the superintendent of a large urgban school system and a supporter of corporal punishment, emotionally remarked: "The necessity for the use of corporal punishment . . . in schools arises from two particular sources: First, that education is compulsory. Children between the ages of six and sixteen . . . must attend public schools . . . Secondly, there are often no positive role institutions to which a child can turn to when he is suspended from school . . . there is no place for him except the street . . . If we haven't used the alternative of corporal punishment prior to suspending the student and sending him down the road not to return to the public institutions, I think we're being derelict in our responsibilities as . . . teachers and public school administrators.

Have the anti-corporal punishment people missed something? Could the pro-spankers possibly have discovered that an attitude of growing permissiveness in America is the cause of most crime? Could it possibly be that children who defy authorities are the result of indulgent, uncaring parents who allow their children to get away with murder? My research over more than 10 years into the effects of spanking suggests that the answer to all of these questions is "no!"

The Belt Theory

The belt theory of delinquency developed from a chance happening. Quite early in my clinical career, I was asked by the juvenile court to assist in psychologically evaluating a number of their clients. Ulltimately, I conducted several thousand evaluations over a 10-year period, and I continue to see juveniles involved in court proceedings on a regular basis.

After numerous evaluations, I realized that nearly all of these patients had been struck with a belt or its equivalent in their formative years. I suspect my concern would have been less, had it not been for the fact that being hit with a belt was totally alien to my own childhood. Moreover, it is now apparent that the recidivist male delinquent who was never struck with a belt, board, extension cord, fist, or an equivalent is virtually nonexistent. Even after 10 years, the full impact of this discovery is still difficult to comprehend.

Although this pattern of childrearing closely resembles what many identify as child abuse, few courts, in most instances, would so label it. Perhaps it is best viewed as parental "overpunishment," or what my colleagues and I have labeled severe parental punishment, or SPP. It is now apparent that SPP is probably the most significant precursor to delinquency that we have been able to discover. We have no doubt that parents of delinquents are strong supporters of "spanking" and that delinquent children appear to be the victims of this largely unquestioned practice. When professionals sanction the use of spanking, parents of delinquents listen; when the public decries the permissiveness of society, the parents of my delinquents applaud; and when the general public insists that we need to bring the rod back into the classroom, the parents of the average delinquent could not agree more.

Even more surprising was our discovery that delinquents are in total agreement with their parents' vigorous disciplinary practices. Virtually all of the delinquent children we interviewed agree that they needed the beatings they received, and that while they hated their parents at the time, they were sure their parents knew what they were doing. In fact, they are so convinced their beatings were necessary that they belive the world would be in terrible shape, with everyone killing and stealing, if parents were no longer allowed to hit their children. Ironically, the more aggressive the boy, the more he seemed to defend his parents' right to give him a "healthy" beating.

We also found that as the use of corporal punishment increased in intensity, the more violent was the aggressive act for which the boy was referred to the court. This was also found to be true of girls, although less pronounced. It is apparent to us that SPP is a necessary, if not sufficient, precursor to delinquency, and I have many case histories of non-delinquent youngsters raised in extremely tough neighborhoods who were not beaten. Although they hung around with highly aggressive children, the ones who weren't beaten seem to sense how to stay out of trouble. Kids who get into trouble appear to be stimulus seekers in search of a situation that allws them to express their pent-up aggression. Our current study of fantasy aggression suggests that both fear and anger occur when a child is spanked, but rarely is the anger acted out toward the parent. In most instances, it gest displaced toward society.

Are Parents Child Abusers?

Having repeatedly testified in court on child abuse matters, it would be safe to say that most parents of delinquents, although fairly punitive in their disciplinary practices, would generally not be classified as physical abusers by the judicial system. Since most delinquents are first seen after the age of 12 and, as our research indicates, physical punishment tends to end when children reach 12-1/2, corporal punishment has ceased by the time they enter the judicial system. Nevertheless, parents of delinquents seem to know just how far they can go with their spankings without getting into trouble with the law. In studying wife abuse, Richard Gelles has concluded that people will hit those they "can" hit. This seems to be true of parental overpunishment, too. Parents of delinquents do not see themselves, by and large, as abusive parents. Since most of them were victims of overpunishment themselves, they do not view their "discipline" as excessive. Of course, some delinquent children are abused, but the vast majority of parents of delinquents have never been charged with child abuse, and most of their overpunished children have no idea that the belt is not universally used.

The problem seems to be one of definition and perception. If one interviews an urban black child, all spankings are labeled beatings; to an urban, upper-class white child, even the beatings are called spankings, although they may qualify them as "hard spankings." If the experts have difficulty diffrentiating between a beating and a spanking (some courtroom judges find the use of a belt fully acceptable--others do not), we certainly can't expect a child to discriminate between them. I should point out that in a 1974 study we conducted involving 58 delinquent boys and 19 delinquent girls, their parents reported that they had used the follwing implements on them; fists, extension cords, belt buckles, heavy sticks, heavy hairbrushes, shoes, wooden spoons, broom handles, large spatulas, wooden paddles, ropes, bull whips, cat-o'-nine-tails, 2-by-4s, coat hangers, floor boards, batons, dishes and soda bottles. Forty-two percent of the fathers had used a strap or a belt on their girls and 62 percent had used the strap on their boys. Among mothers, 37 percent had used a strap on their girls and 50 percent had used a strap on their boys. In general fathers appear to be more punitive with their boys and mothers more punitive with their girls.

Perhaps the most disturbing finding from our studies of delinquents is the common family history of broken homes, alcoholism and family violence. It is also becoming increasingly apparent that the child who is most likely to be physically mistreated is the child least likely to learn from punishment--the hyperactive child, the organically damaged child, the angry and stoic child and the child with the most severe learning disability in the family (nearly all have serious school problems). Other researchers have found that the child most likely to run away from home is the child who received a disproportionate amount of the punishment meted out by the parents; the siblings who did not run away reported very little exposure to physical punishment themselves.

I propose that physical abuse be defined as the utilization of any implement on a child capable of inflicting physical damage or serious harm. This would allow parents to spank their children on the rear with the open hand if they so wished, but it would still fall far short of Swedish legislation that since 1979 has banned corporal punishment in both the home and school. Using this definition, I am sad to report that 42 percent of the parents I interviewed at a New England PTA meeting would be labeled physical abusers, since they had indicated a willingness to hit their child with a strap or belt. Not surprisingly, the group of parents who were most willing to use a strap on their child reported far more aggressive children than the parents who did not. This has been consistently the case in every study I have conducted so far, and the effects of the strap may go well beyond delinquent aggression.

Preliminary findings from our current study suggest that lifelong bad tempers, bad marriages and, as others have noted, even the type of personality that contributes to heart disease and high blood pressure are possibly related to residual anger left over from severe parenting. Perhaps what we need is a penalty, somewhat like a traffic tickets, for hitting a child with a belt or the equivalent. At the very least, people should be warned. I have repeatedly suggested, and not completely in jest, that the surgeon General force every belt manufacturer to stamp this warning on the back of the product: Danger! The Surgeon General Has Determined that the Use of This Implement on Your Child is Dangerous to His Mental Health, and May Contribute to Delinquency, Wife Abuse, and Heart Disease--and Regret You Ever Had Childrent in the First Place.

The General Tenets of the Belt Theory

As a result of my investigation into the effects of severe parental punishment on children, it seems relatively safe to make the following statements:

* As the use of SPP increases, so does the probability that the child will engage in increasingly aggressive activities. The most violent people in our society experienced the most violent childhoods, including such individuals as James Earl Ray, Sirhan Sirhan, Gary Gilmore, Adolph Hitler, Arthur Bremmer and Jim Jones. In our sample of 77 delinquent males and females, the relationship between violent childrearing patterns and the aggressive level of the delinquent act was striking.

* Although more delinquents come from poor than affluent homes, very few poor or middle-class children become delinquent in a nonpunitive environment, peer pressure notwithstanding.

* The more violent the childrearing practices in a culture, the greater the probability that the culture will be crime-ridden. We found that black males are more aggressive than white males, certainly not because of any innate factor but simply because the black culture sanctions corporal punishment more than the white culture does. Several national surveys reveal that blacks are paddled far more often than whites in public-schools where corporal punishment is allowed, and my data suggest that the beating at school is usually followed by a beating at home for the same indiscretion.

* Since severe parenting is highly related to the development of aggressive behavior, children known to be abused undoubtedly have the highest probability of becoming delinquent of all our societal subgroups.

* Delinquent children learn poorly under punishment conditions. We suspect that severe parental punishment produces an habituation to fear, reducing the delinquent's ability to rely on anticipatory fear responses and making it difficult for him to avoid situations that might provoke delinquent behavior. This has helped us to understand why delinquents insist they do not know why they engage in a delinquent act, or why they were unable to anticipate its consequences.

* Although a child's exposure to family violence amy contribute to increasing his level of aggression, it is the child's inability to avoid pain that seems to be more crucial in producing an individual who is unable to cope with his own aggressive impulses. Nevertheless, it must be emphasized that a parent's own disciplinary history has a marked impact on whether or not the child will eventually use severe punishment on his own children. Obviously, the best (but hardly practical) way of eventually producing nonpunitive parents is to insure that children be raised by nonpunitive parents.

What Can Be Done?

Clearly, the link between violence and physical overpunishment of children must be firmly established before we can make significant gains in reversing the strongly held attitudes of pro-spankers. Prevention is certainly the best solution to any problem, and juvenile delinquency is no exception. But there are some steps we can take to help the child who, although he or she is no longer being physically punished, is hostile, defiant, academically unproductive and habitually in trouble with the authorities.

As a beginning, we must develop more caring and less punitive, confrontational-type procedures to deal with delinquent youths. Such pop-psychology, "quick-fix" programs as Scared Straight and Tough Love only tend to emphasize the use of fear and threat, although their popularity can be understood in light of the naive but commonly held belief among most Americans that the typical delinquent is an indulged, irresponsible youth in need of firm discipline.

I have found family therapy to be extremely useful, placing the primary emphasis on the elimination of family scapegoating and focusing on the child's good qualities rather than his or her bad traits. I have also found it essential to teach parents how to express their hurt rather than their anger when their child displeases them, since both feelings are present as this time. As more positive attitudes are fostered between parent and child, it becomes increasingly difficult ofr the child to hurt the parent without feeling guilty. However, the parents' own anger must also be dealt with--and it is often more difficult to teach a parent to stop screaming and hitting than it is to encourage a child to change his or her behavior. Frequently, placement must be made when the family structure begins to crack.

One program that has been proposed as a model is Achievement Place in Lawrence, Kansas, a community-based, family style, group treatment home. Another positive, non-punitive approach is the day treatment program for delinquent youths operated by the Francis L. O'Brien Center for Youth Development in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Since delinquents are already overpunished, it makes little sense to heap on additional punishments and rigid restrictions, which are usually justified as "limit setting procedures." In no instance should any child care facility be allowed to use corporal punishment.

We must stop waffling on the issue of spanking. I often make an analogy between spanking children and smoking cigarettes. People who smoke claim that it makes them feel better and helps them to rexax; parents who spanke their children also feel better by getting out their anger and believing that they have taught their child a lesson. However, there is absolutely no evidence that either smoking or spanking has helped anyone, and there is liberal evidence that both are fraught with potential harm. Of course, most people who smoke never get cancer, and most children who are excessively spanked do not become delinquent. Yet for those who are affected, it is a serious matter indeed.

COPYRIGHT 1985 U.S. Government Printing Office
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