Blogpost 2: Dangers of Spanking

Spanking is probably the most used punishment for children around the world. Some parents still question the idea of whether it will have a positive or negative outcome to their children, but still, they tend to do it anyway. A lot of debate has been made whether spanking a child is the proper way to punish them or to lecture them but they do not see what spanking implies to children which later, will surprise a lot of parents. Let's try to put ourselves into their state, when we get spanked we express multiple feelings simultaneously, for instance, at first we often feel hurt, hurt from getting spanked. Then followed by fear, fear of getting spanked again. Then soon follows the thought of hate, hate of getting spanked by our parents. Now these feelings are very common to exist in a child because no one  wants to get spanked by their parents. The only problem is that, how will the child respond to your message? 


 “A child doesn’t get spanked and then run out and rob a store,” said  Elizabeth Gershoff, PhD, a leading researcher on physical punishment at the University of Texas at Austin.. “There are indirect changes in how the child thinks about things and feels about things.” 
Researchers states that when a child gets spanked, there are various effects that parents wont be able to see until such time when their child is unable to connect with them. Such effects includes changes in behaviour. When a child gets spanked they feel anger and when that anger keeps on growing and growing, the tendency of the child being rebellious is at risk. Other effects include traumatic memories, wherein the child might have anxiety attacks and/or emotional discomfort at certain things which later will become a problem in their intellectual state of judgement. These problems will not only change your children, but also your personality towards your children. 

“The studies do not discriminate well between non-abusive and overly severe types of corporal punishment,” as Robert Larzelere, PhD, an Oklahoma State University professor who studies parental discipline. “You get worse outcomes from corporal punishment than from alternative disciplinary techniques only when it is used more severely or as the primary discipline tactic.” 

Research suggest that the more a child is prone to violence, the more negative traits the child would develop. When children gets pushed up to their breaking point, no matter what state your in in their life, they will inflict an aggressive emotion. For example, to parents, when you keep on spanking your child no matter how much they cry, yell, or scream just for you to stop and you still wont, they will soon have an increase of devotion to apply an alternative way of how to make you stop. Which is to fight back, and when a child fights back it means they have a full realization that they can control their parents and they will apply this realization for their own benefits. 

So in my conclusion, spanking doesn't always have to be that brutal, people have to realize the proper way of treating one another because we are different people living in the same world with different capabilities. And not knowing what others have in mind, we might regret what we do to them in the future.