Dear all,
Thanks to Marcus Stahlhofer for highlighting the child rights aspect of this issue, as well as the evidence base. I think it is sometimes forgotten, or perhaps not well understood, that international human rights law has already articulated that children are entitled to protection from violence, including corporal punishment.
However, I'd like to kindly bring to the fore the science on this matter. Gershoff and Grogan-Kaylor conducted an important meta-analysis of 75 studies in 2016 in order to determine if there was any difference between the effects of child physical punishment and child physical abuse on children. This was important as very few people would advocate for the physical abuse of children, but the issue becomes more 'grey' for many when it comes to the use of physical punishment for the purpose of correcting or controlling difficult child behaviours. They found that the findings across studies were highly consistent, with 99% of effect sizes indicating an association between spanking and adverse child outcomes. Child physical punishment was associated with more child aggression, more antisocial behaviour, more externalizing problems, more internalizing problems, more mental health problems, more negative relationships with parents,lower moral internalization, lower cognitive ability, and lower self-esteem. They also found that the more children were physically punished, the greater the risk that they will be physically abused by their parents. In essence, they found that physical punishment is associated with adverse effects on children in many similar ways to child physical abuse.
In relation to the important topic raised by Prof. Hajime Takeuchi about penalties for those parents who engage in corporal punishment, now that it is comprehensively banned in Japan, I would argue that a carrot rather than stick approach may be more effective in changing parenting behaviours. Many parents use corporal punishment because it actually does work very well in obtaining immediate child compliance - however, at great cost unknown to many parents, as highlighted by the many adverse effects above. A 2014 UNICEF report (Hidden in Plain Sight) stated that, based on national households surveys from 59 low and middle income countries, a minority of adults reported that they believed physical punishment was a necessary form of discipline, but a great many more reported using it with children aged 2-14 years. This shows a discrepancy between attitude and practice - and an opening to equip parents and caregivers with other skills in positive parenting and positive discipline so that they can pursue the correction of difficult child behaviours without resorting to violence. There is a growing body of evidence (including here in Thailand) that shows that social learning theory based parenting programmes can effectively reduce corporal punishment and also improve child behaviours - by giving parents these exact skills. We should be advocating for such programmes to be more widely available to parents and other caregivers, rather than seeking to penalize them for using the only methods they are familiar with, and indeed were also raised by.
With best wishes,
Amalee
Amalee McCoy
Research Manager & Co-Investigator, Parenting for Lifelong Health for Young Children - Thailand (PLH-Thailand)
DPhil Candidate
Mahidol-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit (MORU)
Department of Social Policy & Intervention
University of Oxford
Website: http://www.spi.ox.ac.uk<https://owa.nexus.ox.ac.uk/owa/redir.aspx?C=n-_d...
CHIFA profile: Amalee McCoy is a Student at the University of Oxford in the UK. amalee.mccoy AT gtc.ox.ac.uk
