Today's New York Times had an interesting story and follow-up discussion about corporal punishment. According to conventional wisdom, African American parents are more likely to use spanking as a means of discipline than European American parents. I was aware, when my own children acted up, that slapping them in public might have gotten some people to condemn me, perhaps even to the police, but I was also aware that other parents would judge me unfavorably and think, "Those people just don't know how to discipline their children" if I didn't slap. Since so many other words have been spent, I won't summarize, but readers can to go to this link and decide for themselves where they come down on the issue.
Of course how one disciplines one's children has to do with more than race alone. The greatest predictor is probably what one's own parents modeled. Nevertheless, I understand the point. In generations past, spanking was a way black parents impressed upon their children the necessity of instant obedience to those in power, which could have had life or death consequences in the Jim Crow South, or before. If it fostered fear, sullenness, resentment, humiliation, or aggression, at least that was better than the alternative, a horrible and premature demise at the end of a rope.
Some people argue that corporal punishment is an unforgivable form of abuse. Others insist that they were spanked as children and it did them no harm. Still others say we all do it, but few will admit to it. One common refrain is "never punish in anger." I always found the idea of a parent losing his temper (as almost every human occasionally does) and striking out less troubling than a spanking delivered in cold blood. What does a parent tell a child when he decides that at his calmest, clearest, and most rational, he has no better recourse than to strike out physically? Whenever I have entertained any urge of striking my children, I have always seen it as a failure to deal with a problem in a rational adult manner.
I was particularly impressed by a few of the comments readers made, especially one schoolteacher who wrote that children who have been spanked are less likely to listen to adults who don't spank them. Instead of learning to respect teachers in their own right, they learn to respect the power to inflict pain or humiliation on others, and they develop an attitude of "You Can't Make Me!" That is, indeed, a response I have seen in the classroom.
I do believe that children need discipline. Without it, they would grow into obnoxious, selfish brats. But parents need to consider what ultimate goals they're trying to accomplish in disciplining their children, and what they want to instill. Is it obedience? Obedience is important if one intends to spend one's entire life as a child or a serf or slave, or cannon fodder, as many people did in centuries past. Tragically, some children whose parents value obedience above all do spend their entire lives as children, all ten or four years of their lives, or both two. Yet most children now live to face a long tenure as adults, and in the long run, they will need to develop competence and confidence more than obedience.
I would rather see parents teach their children to act out of respect and consideration for others. Instead of saying "You must obey me, because if you don't, I'll whack you from here to Timbuktu," I think parents should say "You must respect me, because as a human being, I deserve the respect of every other human being, and as your mother (or father) I deserve your respect and consideration even more than anyone else does."
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