Editor Letter

Why Physical Punishment is not for Me

 

I like to train for marathons, albeit slowly, because solitary training runs give me time to clear my head and commune a bit with nature.

While running over the top of Dongpingshan last month, I came across two people yelling and chasing each other. 

 

At first I thought it was a couple of teens having fun. But as I came nearer, I realized that the cries were of terror. Concerned, I followed the pair around a bend until I caught up with them.

I came across a father methodically wrapping his belt around his fist while his young teenaged son cowered in front of him.

I recognized that process: the father was about to hit his son, hard. This was not the onset of a symbolic pat on the bum, this was the prelude to genuine violence.

I yelled out to them, telling the father that there was no way I was going to allow him to hit his son in public. The father backed down but continued to berate his child.

He told his son that he never listens and said that none of his friends wanted him on their trip to Sanya because they don’t want to be with him.

 

The father then told the son he was lucky I “saved” him and they slowly walked back to their car, tears streaming down the teen’s face.

When I looked at the child, I saw genuine panic and I was crushed to know that there was nothing I could do for him in the future and that this was unlikely either the first or last time his father would attack him.

This wildly unexpected moment crystallized for me my thoughts on corporal punishment in the nuclear family.

It’s possible that the fear of physical pain might cause a child to refrain from a certain activity for a period. But over time it also leads to further misbehavior as children act out in retaliation for being hurt.

This leads to what psychologists call a “vicious circle of cascading conflict” -- misbehavior leads to more physical punishment, which in turn leads to more misbehavior.

At its core, physical punishment teaches more than the stated lesson of the person hitting a child. The child learns to fear the parent.

That pain and revulsion becomes seared into a child’s consciousness far more effectively than the specific behavioral lesson the parent had hoped to instill.

As the child matures, the fear remains but respect fades and disappears. When the child becomes an adult, she or he is left with, at best, a deeply conflicted relationship with the parent who engaged in corporal punishment.

 

What’s more, children who were hit are more likely to hit their own children, creating a cycle of violence passed down to the next generation.

In both the medium and long term, there’s neither a utilitarian nor a moral defense of corporal punishment.

While it’s beyond my purview to impose my view on others, I know with absolute certainty that I will never use or allow anyone in my family to use physical punishment.