Desirability and effectiveness of corporal punishment in enforcing discipline

Corporal punishment is application of physical pain to children as a way of enforcing discipline through discouraging undesirable behavior. This kind of punishment includes beatings, burnings, pking, slapping and scalding. Due to its severity in punishment, use of corporal punishment to discipline children is controversial. In schools, teachers go for corporal punishment. They believe that “spare the rod spoil the child” Discipline on the other hand involves strategies to reduce undesirable behaviors’ among children.

Straus and Stewart (1999) found out that 94% of American parents pk their children between the ages 3 and 4 years and up to 5 years. The US Department of Health and Human Services (2001) showed that 13 in every 1000 children were abused. According to her, pking may lead to abuse. Research carried out found out that: corporal punishment leads to immediate compliance, increased aggression. Studies showed that using corporal punishment to reduce aggression increased the risk of aggressive behaviors’ by 50%.

Corporal punishment may also result to antisocial behavior. This affected boys mostly and children of ages ranging between10and12. Increased corporal punishment led to increased risk of criminal behavior in adulthood. Corporal punishment results to decreased mental health. This affects children between ages 5 and 8 who are more prone to severe corporal punishment. Physical punishment has negative effects which may affect child wellbeing or his/her health thus they are unacceptable and therefore should not be used.

Despite this, pking which is a form of corporal punishment has been used by most American families (about 90%). Corporal punishment may also result to adult abusive behaviors. Most results showed that pking increased undesirable behaviors and decreased desirable ones. As severity of corporal punishment raises so are the negative results. Many children who are pked within normal limits do not grow up with negative results . However, a number are physically disciplined beyond normal limits thereby are at increased risk of possessing negative outcomes