Discussion

1) Do you think it the right of the state to ban corporal punishment? Why?

2) Give as many arguments as possible why some people think corporal punishment should be banned?

3) What are the arguments of those people who support this method of upbringing?

4) Do you personally find corporal punishment acceptable?

Text 6. Spare your child the rod

Smacking isn’t for the child’s benefit, but to make parents feel better, says Rebecca Abrams.

The first time you smack your child it’s as if you are losing your parental virginity. You know that nothing will ever be the same again. Chasms of hitherto unknown emotions open before you. Fury, desperation, shame and, of course, guilt.

Considering how few of us get through parenting without smacking our children, it’s ironic that so many of us start with every intention of not doing so. My friend Ruth got through the first five years without slapping, but finally gave way after her oldest daughter refused to get dressed for school for an entire week. I succumbed when my naked two-year-old planted her plump little bottom in a plate of scrambled egg I was eating. There were a few seconds of mutual shock before she started to cry.

Pro-smackers argue that children crave parental approval and that a well-judged “tap” teaches them they’ve lost it. The child realises that the behaviour preceding the “tap” met with disapproval and never does it again. The two most obvious flaws with this theory are that, first, most children don’t deduce backwards very well until about the age of 26. This is why the average 15-year-old still cannot understand that leaving empty coffee mugs and smelly trainers lying around the house drives parents crazy. Second, most children don’t give two hoots about adult approval. Love and affection, sure. Attention, definitely. But approval? Come off it.

No one with an ounce of sense (and half an ounce of honesty) believes that smacking children teaches them anything other than that adults are strong and nasty. So why do we carry on doing it - especially given that children who are punished physically tend to misbehave all the more, and sometimes in school? To make ourselves feel better, of course. Smacking isn’t for the child’s benefit, it’s for the adult’s.

There’s no question that, in some cases, smacking children leads to beating them up. For that reason alone, hypocritical as it may seem, I believe that a policy of ardent anti-smacking is by far the best one for parents to adopt.

Parents lash out when they’re at the end of their tether. According to a recent report by the National Family and Parenting Institute, 75 per cent of parents smack their children, but only 20 per cent believe it’s effective, which strongly suggests that what is needed is a public education campaign to teach parents alternative methods of discipline. I’m not so sure. Behavioral techniques may help, but the real reason why so many of us smack our children, despite not wanting to and not thinking it does any good, goes far deeper.

The fact is, we are a generation of parents profoundly, perhaps uniquely, ill at ease with discipline per se. In even the most conservative households, a powerful ethic of equality influences the way men and women relate to one another, and increasingly this pervades our dealings with our children, too.

We want to be friends with our children as well as parents to them. In fact, we want the former rather more than the latter.

Unfortunately, the role of disciplinarian is an integral part of parenting, but totally at odds with the kind of parents we want to be.

A huge burden of self-consciousness that was quite unknown in the 1950s and 1960s rests on the shoulders of parents. We are acutely aware of our actual and potential failings as parents, and highly conscious of the shortcomings of our own parents. We are the “blame-the-parent” generation, our resentments shaped and polished in two lines of iconic poetry by Philip Larkin. We place an inordinately high value on closeness and intimacy with our children. We reason with them, discuss with them, plead with them. We distract them with humour, bribe them with star charts; anything rather than just lay down the law and risk being unpopular with them.

This approach doesn’t hold much water in theory and, in practice, it leaks like a sieve. With no one prepared to be the domestic bad guy, discipline quickly becomes problematic. When our children don’t behave like mini-adults, when they fail to respond to our repeated requests that they stop decapitating the flowers, mutilating the cat or staying out all night, we find ourselves performing an awkward switchback from best mate to boss. The intense disappointment of not being able to get the effect we want by being reasonable often produces a far greater rage than the child’s actions warrant.

My father was prone to smacking and it gained him no respect from his children. My stepfather, on the other hand, never raised a hand to a child, but he had a rock-solid authority that meant he had only to adopt a certain tone of voice and, even as teenagers, we would pay attention. My experience of growing up with these two very different men taught me that real authority (and the effective discipline that stems from it) has nothing in common with physical discipline. The latter is only a showy, ineffectual proxy for the former.

The challenge is for us to accept that we cannot but fail our children in some respect. By avoiding being parents to them, we are failing them in the most grievous way. Accepting that we have to be figures of authority would avoid those heat-of-the-moment smacks. Letting our children hate us from time to time is not nice, but necessary; not for us, but for them.

Do you smack your child?

According to a survey by the Department of Health, 75 per cent of parents smack their children and 88 per cent of them think it is sometimes necessary. Only one in five think it does any good, however, and the National Family Parenting Institute’s report concludes that smacking is, in fact, next to useless. “Physical punishment does not work,” the report states unambiguously. “A child may be more likely to comply with the parents’ demands immediately, but he will not have changed his behaviour.”

Text 7

1. This is an article in which various parents talk about punishment for teenagers. New research says that parents nowadays favour sanctions - such as grounding (making the children stay at home) to discipline teenagers. Do they work? Read the article and answer the questions that follow.

Madeline Portwood Educational psychologist and mother

The first thing a parent has to decide is what’s going to be meaningful to a teenager. If you ground them but they can stay in and play computer games, it won’t necessarily be that meaningful to them. Parents make endless threats, but they must carry them out and they must be realistic. It’s also important for teenagers to see sanctions as just. If the teacher behaves the same way to all pupils they accept it. If there is more than one child in the family, parents have to apply sanctions equally. As children get older, sanctions often become meaningless to them.

David SpellmanFather and psychologist working with disturbed teenagers

I think you can turn sanctions round and offer rewards instead, which can motivate teenagers. Parents should reward the behavior they want to see. There does seem to be a great preoccupation with punishment. It’s quite clear to me that parents’ relationships with teenagers are much better if they focus on the positive and acknowledge and appreciate their children. It is quite easy to get into a negative, punitive position as a parent, which is often self-defeating. Every teenager is different and they can’t just be lumped together into one group and all treated the same.

Theresa GillMother and nursery nurse

My oldest son is just thirteen and he has not reallystepped out of line so far, but if he did get to that lazy and argumentative stage I would withdraw luxuries such as his mobile phone, computer and football training. While he lives in my house he has to obey the rules. Once he’s 18 and out of the house, he can do as he pleases. My siblings and I were given quite a lot of freedom by our parents and their reasoning was that if we were going to do something anyway, they would rather we did it at home - and we’ve all turned out to be quite well-balanced.

Grant McNallySocial worker and father

I operate a contract system with my two boys: one is eleven and the other two years older. We have all signed it and breaches of behaviour result in loss of privileges such as stopping of pocket money or grounding. Some flexibility is important, but if the contractis altered too much the boundaries start collapsing. My older son works well with it. But my younger son has behavioral problems and that makes things harder to manage. It is difficult when you try to be a non-authoritarian and inclusive parent and recognize children’s rights. But parents have rights too - like the right to a stress-free life.

John PeelFather and radio presenter

I don’t think we really employed sanctions with our children because I just don’t think they work. They are sullen, unhelpful and resentful if you do that. I think that. Actually, their reluctance to help out with things caused us more anxiety than things they did that we wish they hadn’t. It was more about motivating them into some sort of action. One of the things I always tried to avoid was drawing a line in the sand. If a child has any sort of character, he or she will want to step over it. They are all nice people and we like being with them - you can’t ask for more than that.

Tim BurkeSpokesman for the National Youth Agency

Applying sanctions to a young person can be a bit like prison: it may work for some people on some occasions, but for many others it is counter-productive, especially when used inappropriately. Some degree of conflict between parents and teenagers is inevitable: young people need to push the boundaries - it’s part of growing up and finding out who they are. The limits they have arrived at through their own experience and reflection are more effective. Our organization supports youth workers who help young people learn about themselves and about how to be members of their communities.

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