New Adventures in Bad Parenting: The United States

Have you ever seen a parent with their child in public and thought to yourself, “you know, there really ought to be some sort of qualification for becoming a parent.” It’s the fleeting thought that pops into all of our heads when we see the mother handing her toddler a giant bag of candy, or the dad who’s walking with his son in a harness on a tether, or the couple on the airplane who’s baby won’t stop crying and they keep asking it to shut up. Let’s be honest, raising a child is one of the most important responsibilities a person can have, and yet the prerequisite for having a child (working genitals and sex without protection) are engaged in by everyone, and often disproportionately by people who are irresponsible or, well, dimwitted. All you have to do is look around at the state of our society and watch a little reality television and you’ll see that there are literally billions of people out there who’s parents could have done a better job of raising them.

Obviously, though, every child is different and no parent is perfect, so people can be forgiven for missteps here and there. What can’t be forgiven, though, is physical abuse. “Of course,” you say, but I don’t just mean the parents who drunkenly slap their kid around for 20 minutes because they accidentally spilled their juice box. I mean spanking, hitting, shaking, slapping, even done rarely. Don’t misunderstand me; I completely understand the impulse and can even understand the rationalization. Children can be frustrating and can even be jerks, just like adults, but what is it that every parents tells their child when the child hits someone? “It’s not okay to hit people.” Yet, parents do it all the time.

Even with the recent trends towards time-outs and other more comprehensive strategies, 63 percent of parents still admit to occasionally using corporal punishment against their 1-2 year old children, and even more parents (80 percent) admit to having used corporal punishment on older children. Joe Biden’s father once said, “It takes a small man to hit a small child,” and clearly his avoidance of hitting his children didn’t lead to delinquency and criminal futures. He is not alone.

It’s been proven in numerous studies that children who are disciplined without corporal punishment not only can behave, but often behave better than children who are spanked or hit when they do something wrong. The reason? Well, let me ask you this, rhetorically: how would you respond if your boss slapped you across the face when you screwed up? You’d be shocked, you’d be embarassed, and perhaps those would be enough to make you more cautious in the future. After a short while, though, maybe a few hours or days, you would be furious. You’d be angry, resentful, and would lose respect for your boss. That’s precisely what happens with children and corporal punishment. The immediate fear and pain of being hit corrects their behavior in the short-term, but over time they grow more aggresive and rebellious in response to this treatment, and in the longterm they grow more resentful and distant with their parents which means that they are also less likely to take their parents’ advice and guidance.

Here in the United States, though, it’s become yet another troubling behavior we consider “private,” and as long as the children aren’t showing up to school with bruises or acting unusually aggressive, we don’t do much to stop it. This behavior that’s considered acceptable when done by parents, though, is considered unacceptable when performed by anyone else. Twenty-eight states have banned corporal punishment in schools, and many other local municipalities have done the same nationwide. Of course, in my opinion, it should be a no-brainer that this should be banned in all 50 states, but at the very least it seems clear that most parents would not tolerate anyone hitting their child, unless it is them.

We are behind much of the western world on this issue. Ninety-one countries have banned corporal punishment in all schools, and twenty-three countries have gone so far as to ban corporal punishment everywhere, including in the home. The United States did help to author the United Nation’s ‘Convention on the Right’s of Children’ wihch would, among other things, mandate that government do all they can to protect children from physical and mental violence. In the United Nations, 192 nations have ratified this treaty and only 2 haven’t. Those two? The United States and Somalia. Somalia. Take a second to really let that sink in.

The United States has proven again and again to be opposed to any effort by the UN which would seem to take sovereignty away from the United States, even thought we have could certainly ratify any treaty and then ignore it whenever it encroaches on anything we want to do (hey, we’ve done it before). When it comes to things like the Kyoto accords or the World Court, these arguments can be understood even when they are irresponsible, but how could anyone possibly argue against ratifying a document that would seek to prevent abuse and neglect of children. Most of our laws already adhere to that, and there would be little public resistance to a few more. Two of the arguments made by critics in the United States is that this could infringe upon the ability of the United States to a.) recruit 17-year-olds into the Armed Forces, and b.) prevent the States from using capital punishment on criminals who commit capital crimes while under the age of 18. If that’s the best excuse we have, then the solution is simple. The Army can wait the extra year to get those recruits, which is probably the wise decision since 17-year-olds can be prone to rash or poor decision-making and that our Armed Forces would be benefitted by having recruits who had all completely finished high school and taken the time to consider higher education. As for capital punishment, it too encourages violence in our society and has been ineffective as a deterent to crime, so a ban to prevent capital punishment of people under 18 (which account for only a rare few of those put to death each year). If you need further encouragement, every other country on the planet has banned the death penalty from being used on underage perpetrators except for the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia… and The United States. That’s a terrible list to be on, and we should get off of it.

If an adult hits another adult, even something small like a slap, they canbe arrested and charged with a crime. If an adult spanks someone as a punishment, they could be sued. If an adult hits one of their pets, there are often severe legal punishments. All the while, children, least able to defend themselves and least likely (aside from your pets) to report abuse, are left largely on their own. Severe abuse can lead to children being removed and parents being arrested, but more minor transgressions that could find you in a courtroom when performed against an unconsenting adult or animal are ignored or forgiven when performed against a child by his or her own parents.

There needs to be a comprehensive effort to educate the populace, and new parents especially, on ways to discipline children without resorting to violence, even slight physical punishment. They need to be taught that while hitting may seem to correct the problem that it is ineffective over the longterm and will only lead to an escalation of trouble behavior, which will then encourage greater acts of violence against the children. We complain about violence in media, violence in our schools, violence in our culture and yet we still turn a blind eye to the subtle but influential violence in our homes. If education starts at home, we need to start teaching the corporal punishment against anyone, and especially children, is not acceptable.