Corporal Punishment Of Children Research Articles

Normative Minor Childhood Stress and Risk of Later Adult Psychopathology in Saudi Arabia

Chronic minor childhood stress in the form of corporal punishment predicts adult psychopathology in the United States but has not been demonstrated in a country where corporal punishment is normative. We teste d whether adult psychopathology was predicted by recalled frequency of childhood corporal punishment and recalled controllability of punishment in Saudi Arabia. Two hundred and fifty nine Saudi men with substance addictions (who for cultural reasons were a t risk for depression) completed a survey measuring: demographic variables, frequency of beating and controllability of punishment as a child, depression and borderline personality disorder symptoms (BPD). Beating frequency and punishment control were unco rrelated and unrelated to patients �

The Ban on Corporal Punishment of Children

This article analyses and discusses the Swedish more than 30 years old ban on corporal punishment and its effects. By describing the Swedish experiences – both positive outcomes and challenges that ...

Analysis on International Human Rights Law and Korean Law of Corporal Punishment of Children in Families and Schools

Analysis on International Human Rights Law and Korean Law of Corporal Punishment of Children in Families and Schools

Reynsla fullorðinna Íslendinga af líkamlegum refsingum og ofbeldi í æsku

Corporal punishment and abuse of children can have a negative impact on their health and well-being. The aim is to examine on Icelandic adults, experience of corporal punishment as children, its prevalence, justification as victims, and its impact on the assessment of their upbringing. From the national population register, out of 1500 randomly selected adults 18 years and older, 977 (65%) participated. In a telephone interview, they appraised their upbringing, followed by questions regarding 5 specific forms of corporal punishment in addition to an open-ended question about other forms experienced. Out of 968 respondents, 810 (84%) regarded their upbringing as good. In total, 465 (48%) reported at least one form of corporal punishment in childhood, with spanking being the most prevalent one (29%). Respondents 30 years and older were 1.9 times more likely to have experienced corporal punishment compared to those who were younger (95% CI 1.4-2.6) and males were 1.6 times more likely to report it compared to females (95% CI 1.2-2.0). Those who had frequently been punished were significantly more likely to hold of the opinion that it had never been justified (OR=6.5; 95% CI 1.8-22.9) and were more likely to judge their upbringing to have been reasonable or bad (OR=10.2; 95% CI 4.7-21.9) compared to those who had no such experience. The practice of corporal punishment of Icelandic children was significantly less prevalent among respondents born about 1980 and later compared to those born earlier. Increased public debate and awareness of children's rights and changed ideas about their upbringing has facilitated such development.

Corporal Punishment: Examining Attitudes Toward the Law and Factors Influencing Attitude Change

There remains considerable societal support for child corporal punishment, despite much research about its ineffectiveness and potential harm to children. We examined attitudes toward Section 43 of the Canadian Criminal Code which gives parents the right to use reasonable physical force for discipline purposes. We also examined attitude change and predictors of this change. Participants (N = 212) completed an on-line study, which found that 39.2 % disagreed with ending Section 43. Upon presentation of corporal punishment-related information, the majority (63.8–70.5 %) now indicated being in favor of ending Section 43. Attitude change was highest for information on the potential for child abuse. Socio-demographics (ethnicity, religion), childhood disciplinary experiences (non-punitive discipline), and discipline perceptions (parental warmth/involvement) predicted attitude change. Results indicate that providing information about corporal punishment is key to changing attitudes toward parents’ legal right to its use. Also, parental background and childhood discipline characteristics may differentially influence the amount of attitude change.

Opinions About Child Corporal Punishment and Influencing Factors

The use of corporal punishment has been linked to negative developmental outcomes for children. Despite this finding, Section 43 of the Canadian Criminal Code permits the use of corporal punishment by parents for children 2 to 12 years of age. Therefore, this study's first objective is to investigate opinions toward Section 43 and spanking more generally. The second objective is to investigate predictors of opinions toward Section 43 and spanking more generally. The sample consists of 818 nonparents (70.7% female, 29.0% male) who completed an online study. Results indicate that 38.6% were favorable toward upholding Section 43. However, this decreases to 25.8% when a condition is included, stating that parents would not be prosecuted for mild slaps or spankings. For attitudes toward spanking more generally, results reveal that 16.7% of the participants held favorable attitudes. Hierarchical regression analyses reveal that planning to use corporal punishment upon becoming a parent predicted having a more favorable attitude toward Section 43 as well as toward spanking more generally (after controlling for sociodemographics). In contrast, having experienced violence during one's childhood predicts having less favorable attitudes toward Section 43 and spanking more generally. Significant interactions are found between childhood experiences of corporal punishment and perceptions of parental warmth/support and impulsiveness during discipline in predicting attitudes toward spanking. Those who report experiencing more corporal punishment during childhood but also more parental warmth/support hold more favorable attitudes toward spanking and those who report experiencing more corporal punishment during childhood and also more parental impulsiveness hold less favorable attitudes toward spanking. Findings indicate that examining opinions toward Section 43 and spanking separately is important because these concepts are not synonymous. In addition, both more immediate factors and those related to one's developmental history play a role in predicting opinions toward Section 43 and spanking more generally.

Corporal Punishment of Children

Corporal Punishment of Children

Religious Tradition and the Corporal Punishment of Children: A Comparison of the American and Israeli Legal Systems

An examination of social, cultural, and legal factors affecting the legal arrangements relating to parental authority to mete out corporal punishment can provide insights into elements influencing child law in general. A juxtaposition of the Israeli and American legal systems points to a highly interesting finding. In the 1940s, the legal situation in Israel and the USA regarding parental authority to mete out corporal punishment was almost identical. By the end of the 20th century, however, the legal situation in the USA had remained almost unchanged, whereas in Israel, it had reversed itself almost entirely. My comparative analysis will attempt to trace the potential effect of one element in both systems: religious traditions. The main argument in this article is that ever since the beginning of the American polity, Protestant approaches to child education have significantly influenced the determination of the broad licence granted in American law to the use of corporal punishment. Moreover, these approaches continue to play a crucial role in the preservation of defences for corporal punishment in American law until the present. By contrast, specific hermeneutical trends in Jewish religion and the lack of full separation between religion and state in Israeli law have been among the factors that facilitated the move toward the full prohibition of corporal punishment in Israel. Language: en

Love's whipping boy: violence and sentimentality in the American imagination

Working to reconcile the Christian dictum to love one's neighbor as oneself with evidence of U.S. sociopolitical aggression, including slavery, corporal punishment of children, and Indian removal, Elizabeth Barnes focuses her attention on aggressors--rather than the weak or abused--to suggest ways of understanding paradoxical relationships between empathy, violence, and religion that took hold so strongly in nineteenth-century American culture.Looking at works by Herman Melville, Frederick Douglass, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Louisa May Alcott, among others, Barnes shows how violence and sensibility work together to produce a more sensitive citizenry. Aggression becomes a site of redemptive possibility because salvation is gained when the powerful protagonist identifies with the person he harms. Barnes argues that this identification and emotional transformation come at a high price, however, as the reparative ends are bought with another's blood. Critics of nineteenth-century literature have tended to think about sentimentality and violence as opposing strategies in the work of nation-building and in the formation of U.S. national identity. Yet to understand how violence gets folded into sentimentality's egalitarian goals is to recognize, importantly, the deep entrenchment of aggression in the empathetic structures of liberal, Christian culture in the United States.

Punishing Childhoods: Contradictions in Children's Rights and Global Governance

The article considers childhood corporal punishment as an aspect of the global governance of childhood and raises problems relevant to global governance more broadly. The article analyses contradictions in children's rights advocacy between its universal human rights norms and implicit relativist development model. Children's rights research is influenced by social constructivist theories, which highlight the history of childhood and childhood norms. Earlier social constructivist studies identified the concept of childhood underpinning the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) as a Western construction based on Western historical experiences, which excluded the experiences of childhood in developing countries. More recent social constructivist approaches emphasise how childhood norms are constructed and therefore can be reconstructed. The article outlines problems with attempts to globalise childhood norms without globalising material development, and discusses the softening of discipline norms in Western societies historically. It indicates problems with children's rights advocacy seeking to eradicate the corporal punishment of children globally without globalising the material conditions, which underpin the post-industrial ideal of childhood embodied in the CRC.

Corporal punishment of children: Changing the culture

Corporal punishment of children: Changing the culture

Children and Conflict: Exploring Children's Agency at UK Mosque Schools

AbstractDuring the last two decades, children's right to physical and emotional well-being has become an important item on the childhood agenda, supported by many national and international laws. It is believed that despite the total ban on corporal punishment of children, in schools in the UK, the current legal standards for safeguarding children do not correspond with the realities of children lives. This is particularly the case when the maltreatment of children is perpetrated by parents or by institutions that are rarely exposed to the government's scrutiny. In an attempt to explore children's agency at UK mosque schools, this article, particularly looked at children's experiences of maltreatment in a religious setting. It concludes that while the religious character of mosque schools provides these schools with some level of insulation from allegations of the maltreatment of children, the children themselves responded by resorting to different sources of authority and developing different strategies to resist adults' control and to challenge adult-centred environments.

Corporal Punishment Study: A Case in Malaysia

The study investigates the occurrence of childhood corporal punishment at home on a sample of participants who resided in the northeast of Malaysia, Kelantan. The Discipline Questionnaire (DQ) - a 32-item self-report instrument was completed by 196 medical students studying in fourth and fifth year at School of Medical Sciences Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM). The participants were asked about the type, frequency, and severity of parental corporal punishment they remembered to receive at home during childhood, in addition to their attitudes toward corporal punishment on children. Sixty three percent of participants remembered being corporally punished at home, as children. Only 3% of them reported that the punishment reaches an abusive level – which was defined as physical punishment that results in welts, bruises, bone fractures or breaks, or large/deep cuts. Pinching was the most commonly reported types of punishment used at home (35%), followed by slapping on the hand, arm or leg (31%), whipping using flexible material such as leather or rope (23%), and spanking/slapping on the buttocks with open hand (20%). The study indicates that on average the participants had a fairly favorable attitude towards corporal punishment. The findings suggest that majority of parents in Malaysia have been using corporal punishment on their children – primarily of mild types. Generally, the participants have had a fairly favorable attitude towards corporal punishment. Corporal punishment in this context is not perceived as an action of abusing a child, but rather one of many ways to teach the child a lesson in life.

The Shaping of New Testament Narrative and Salvation Teachings by Painful Childhood Experience

This article considers the influence of childhood corporal punishment, abandonment, and neglect on the development and reception of seminal New Testament teachings. Two related but distinct propositions are argued. First, that widespread patterns of painful childhood experience provided a thematic template that deeply shaped the New Testament during its formative period. Second, that this thematic shaping has contributed, on an individual level, to subjective experiences of faith and, on a cultural level, to the initial spread and subsequent persistence of Christianity. The approach is interdisciplinary, drawing on religious texts, historical evidence about the treatment of children, and several areas of psychology. The article ends with an exploratory excursus intended to stimulate thought about possible childhood influences in non-Christian religions and myths; the traditions considered are Judaism and Islam, the religious-philosophic system of karmic reincarnation that is foundational to Hinduism and Buddhism, and a Greek mythic text associated with the historically important Eleusinian mystery religion.

The Global Movement to End Corporal Punishment of Children

The Global Movement to End Corporal Punishment of Children

Child abuse in 28 developing and transitional countries--results from the Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys

Child abuse is a recognized public health and social problem worldwide. Using data from the Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS) we aimed to (i) compare different forms of child abuse across countries and regions, and (ii) examine factors associated with different forms of child abuse. Information on child abuse was available in 28 developing and transitional countries from the third round of the MICS conducted in 2005 and 2006 (n = 124 916 children aged between 2 and 14 years). We determined the prevalence of psychological, and moderate and severe physical abuse for the preceding month and examined correlates of different forms of child abuse with multilevel logistic regression analysis. A median of 83, 64 and 43% of children in the African region experienced psychological, and moderate and severe physical abuse, respectively. A considerably lower percentage of children in transitional countries experienced these forms of abuse (56, 46 and 9%, respectively). Parental attitudes towards corporal punishment were the strongest variable associated with all forms of child abuse. The risk of all forms of child abuse was also higher for male children, those living with many household members and in poorer families. Child abuse is a very common phenomenon in many of the countries examined. We found substantial variations in prevalence across countries and regions, with the highest prevalence in African countries. Population-based interventions (e.g. educational programmes) should be undertaken to increase public awareness of this problem. Actions on changing parental attitudes towards corporal punishment of children may help to prevent child abuse. The specific local situation in each country should be considered when selecting intervention strategies.

A Preliminary Investigation of the Prevalence of Corporal Punishment of Children and Selected Co-occurring Behaviours in Households on New Providence, The Bahamas

The purpose of this study was to examine the link between violence in homes, focusing on corporal punishment of children as a means of discipline, and other behaviours (including sexual abuse, illegal drug use, domestic violence, hitting of pets) which may be a cause for concern. This paper reports the results of a survey of 933 people and 12 case studies. Violence, physical or domestic, occurred in 62% of survey participants’ homes. The survey indicated that in respondents’ homes many children were physically hurt as a means of discipline. Children were spanked in 77% of homes with children, pets were hit in 25% of homes with pets, and domestic violence was found in 23% of homes. These findings suggest that those who use violence in their homes may not understand the wider and longer-term consequences of their actions for both victims and society. Case study participants seemed to view only severe physical violence as abuse. They also appeared reluctant to report abuse to the authorities which can hamper the efforts to curb violence in homes

Corporal Punishment of Children: A Human Rights Violation

Corporal Punishment of Children: A Human Rights Violation

Corporal punishment of children in nine countries as a function of child gender and parent gender.

Background. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a global perspective on corporal punishment by examining differences between mothers' and fathers' use of corporal punishment with daughters and sons in nine countries. Methods. Interviews were conducted with 1398 mothers, 1146 fathers, and 1417 children (age range = 7 to 10 years) in China, Colombia, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, the Philippines, Sweden, Thailand, and the United States. Results. Across the entire sample, 54% of girls and 58% of boys had experienced mild corporal punishment, and 13% of girls and 14% of boys had experienced severe corporal punishment by their parents or someone in their household in the last month. Seventeen percent of parents believed that the use of corporal punishment was necessary to rear the target child. Overall, boys were more frequently punished corporally than were girls, and mothers used corporal punishment more frequently than did fathers. There were significant differences across countries, with reports of corporal punishment use lowest in Sweden and highest in Kenya. Conclusion. This work establishes that the use of corporal punishment is widespread, and efforts to prevent corporal punishment from escalating into physical abuse should be commensurately widespread.

Corporal Punishment of Children in Israel: A New Trend in Secular and Religious Law

The new trend of Justice Beinish, in Plonit v. The State of Israel, regarding the legal relationship between parents and children, is analyzed.This article argues that the position of Justice Beinish is justified in light of results of research that prove that corporal punishment of children causes emotional damage. In addition, it is an outcome of three legal doctrines pertaining to children in Israel: the best interest of the child, the principles of the convention on the rights of the child, and those of Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty.This article also argues that, contrary to the common view, the policy of Justice Beinish in the above matter is not distant from the viewpoint of many contemporary scholars of Jewish Law who have addressed the same matter. Some prominent Jewish scholars assert that certain circumstances do justify implementation of corporal punishment. However, the major trend in Jewish Law has been that the permission to apply this punishment in special and irregular circumstances is an exception. The major trend of Jewish Law can be characterized as a gradual yet constant attempt to impart more significance to the policy of guiding parents and educators to prefer pleasant and non-violent means of education. In recent generations this trend has become more evident. Lately, more Jewish Law scholars have stressed the dangers of corporal punishment. In addition, positive consequences could emerge in this sphere as a result of a new trend in Jewish Rabbinical courts in Israel, which grant validity to the interpretation of social workers and psychologists of the concept of the best interest of the child. These professionals act in light of recent results of scientific research on the negative effect of any type of corporal punishment; furthermore, especially in recent generations, the best interest of the child is an important consideration, and sometimes a paramount or sole consideration in Jewish law when policy on children is formulated. Therefore, this article argues that Jewish Law could shift still closer to the position of abolishing all forms of corporal punishment since they can cause physical and emotional damage to children.