Corporal Punishment Analysis

812 Words4 Pages

An article mentioned that “Ms. Li, a mother of two who came to Hong Kong from the mainland in 2012, used to spank her child at least once a month. She said she often got irritated by her eldest daughter who did not listen to her and did her homework slowly.”(Cheung, 2015). In fact, this is not a single case, and corporal punishment is very common in Hong Kong. A survey conducted by Against Child Abuse (2015) showed that more than half of the children have experienced corporal punishment. In fact, parents’ teaching approach, whether physical punishment should be adopted, has been an ongoing controversies topic in Hong Kong.

Pepa, Bárbara, Pablo and Rufino stated that corporal punishment is to use physical force causing pain, but not wounds, …show more content…

Parents are influential and playing a vital role to their children, especially during the stage when children are developing its cognitive thinking ability.
As Immature children tend to follow parents’ behavior, when parents always exercise corporal punishment on their child when their child did something wrong, this will make their children believe that a wrongful act could be corrected by exercising corporal punishment. As a result, they may correct others’ wrongdoing by using physical forces and become more violent. A study shows that 30% of people who experienced corporal punishment will also abuse their offspring. (Child Welfare Information Gateway, 2013) This indicated that exercising physical punishment on children will cause a vicious …show more content…

Then, as the family relationship is likely to deteriorate and fall into a vicious cycle, exercising corporal punishment also affect parents. According to Gershoff (2002), children, who were spanked by parents, tend to be angry, more stressful and more fearful when they face their parents. It seems that children will listen to their parents due to the fear of physical punishment, but it will cause distrust between parents and children. An article also mentioned that,"I always scolded her and beat her with hangers... she never held my hands when going out. It was always either she or I at the back"(Cheung, 2015). Mrs. Li’s children tend to have less communication with her due to corporal punishment, and the relationship gets worse. Apparently, no one would like to talk to the one who always spanked you. Therefore, it is likely that corporal punishment is bad for the family relationship.

Some people may argue that physical punishment may create a deterrent effect and thus educate children effectively. However, there is no convincing argument that proofs exercising corporal punishment are the best way to educate children, while it is proven that non-violent disciplinary techniques can effectively educate a child proper behavior. For instance, children who are not behaving well cannot play video games or parents could punish an emotional child by leaving

Open Document