Spanking: a grand old American tradition?

Children Today, Jan-Feb, 1985 by Ralph S. Welsh

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.