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Frank Answers About Corporal Punishment

Father’s Day is approaching. In the past fathers administered corporal punishment in the family. That’s being reconsidered, but some Christians think spanking should be used for disciplining children. Girls are not exempted, but physical punishment is more typically applied to boys. I addressed that practice in answering this question.

Question:
Dear Frank, 
I am raising my two boys and we have as a couple discussed the use of corporal punishment. The boys are too young at the moment, but we want to decide before they get to a certain age whether it is right to spank or not. We don’t live in a country where it is illegal to do so. 

I was spanked as a child by my parents not harshly and believe when used in moderation it is a good tool to have especially for boys. My wife disagrees. The bible speaks a lot about this but some of this is out if tune with modern thinking and norms. Your advice which is great on so many subjects would be helpful.
Thanks, Stuart

Dear Stuart,

My mother was quick with her hand when I was a boy. There was no interval between the crime and the punishment. I don’t remember my father ever spanking us, and sometimes he objected to my mother’s quickness to hit us. She once got me in the back of the head as I ducked under the table and he said, “Don’t hit the boy in the head.” Another time she hit her hand on the table leg as I ducked under, and everyone laughed. She finally laughed too. Later in life she regretted that she had been so hard of us. “If I did that today they’d arrest me for child abuse,” she said. But apart from her quick temper, she wasn’t alone in terms of parents inflicting corporal punishment. It was common lore from my friends in our blue collar neighborhood that they could be spanked with father’s belt or mom’s big wooden spoon. The one benefit I could see to my situation is that the punishment was immediate and then done with. I didn’t have to hear, “Wait until your father gets home”…and wait.

I don’t recall hitting or spanking any of my three children. I won’t say “never,” because they pushed my button on a number of occasions.  Certainly, my wife never laid hands on them except in love. I might add that I never received any hugging from my parents. In the stoical 1950s blue collar households I guess that wasn’t done. I learned to hug my kids as they were growing up and I still do so now that they are adults.

Home and school were in sync as far as punishment was concerned back in the 1950s. Corporal punishment was still possible in the schools. For any infractions the principal called the parents, and the kids could be sure that if there was no corporal punishment at school there would be when they got home. Our diminutive Irish music teacher in elementary school used her baton to whack kids who weren’t paying attention or those in the orchestra who kept playing wrong notes. Assistant principals were usually in charge of discipline, but in my school the administration of corporal punishment was left to the girls’ gym teacher. You didn’t want to be sent to see Miss Petersen. The kids who went to the Catholic parochial school told about the sisters who would smack their hands with a ruler for various infractions. Heaven help you if you were sent to the mother superior. But I guess this was nothing in comparison with the punishment at British boarding schools, which has been the subject of novels and movies. Caning on your bare butt could leave serious welts.

Today caning and other forms of corporate punishment in the schools is illegal in the UK. However, the British penchant for caning was carried to countries that once constituted the British Empire and is still practiced in those countries today, including Singapore and Malasia and several countries in Africa. Singapore is also known for its judicial caning on the bare butt of naked victims.

Boy is publicly caned in Singapore at a school assembly. Singapore allows only the caning of boys. Girls receive an alternative punishment, such as detention.

In many Asian countries corporal punishment, including caning, is practiced by parents even if it is not practiced in the schools. Smacking a child’s hand with a ruler or a stick is common for ordinary infractions. Caning is reserved for more serious offences. But sometimes the punishment of a child by parents has seemed excessive and there is conversation about the appropriateness and value of physically abusing children and youth as a form of punishment.

This Thai boy was given corporal punishment by his step-father. It looks like he was caned on his whole backside.

In the US schools corporal punishment is still legal in 19 states, mostly across the South and Southwest, although individual schools or school districts can opt out of using corporal punishment. A disproportionate number of African American children receive corporal punishment in the schools and by their parents in the their homes and even in public places. Reasons for this are complicated, including the facts that corporal punishment by flogging was practiced by masters on slaves, that African-Americans are generally more religious and believe that the Bible teaches parents to discipline their children, and that “whupping” a child is thought to help communicate the idea to children that they have to be respectful to their elders and to observe ways to be safe in their communities.

This photo captured a Black mother in Texas hitting her son with a belt for being disrespectful to his teacher.

It’s not illegal in the UK or US for parents to apply corporal punishment to their children. Court cases have upheld the right of parents to spank their children. In the U.S. the Supreme Court delivered a ruling in 1979 that did not find corporal punishment to constitute “cruel and unusual punishment.” But in my view dads and moms should use their belts to hold up their pants and their wooden spoons for stirring the soup. Corporal punishment is neither as biblical nor as effective as many people think. In fact, the American Psychological association opposes corporal punishment in public and private schools. They cite research that suggests that the practice is harmful to children and is ineffective in reducing undesireable behavior. Critics also note that it isused disproportionatelyt on boys, Black students, and those with disabilities.

I know that passages in the Bible have been used to support corporal punishment and conservative Christians think that spanking is God’s wisdom on how to raise children. As is often the case, however, people read into biblical passages what they assume on the basis of their culture. The famous phrase “spare the rod and spoil the child” was actually coined by a 17th century English poet and satirist names Samuel Butler in his poem Hudibras. He may have been paraphrasing Proverbs 13:24, which reads in the 1611 King James Version, “He that spareth his rod hateth his son; but he who loves him chasteneth him betimes.” The “rod” in question is the shepherd’s crook, which was used to keep the sheep from straying and to show them the right path. Remember Psalm 23? “Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.” Thus, using the rod in this verse has to do with the father providing guidance for his son more than it has to do with punishment.   

Hebrews 12:7-11 is also cited by those Christians who espouse corporal punishment. It speaks of a discipline which seems painful. But I would note that the passage begins with an admonition to “Endure trials for the sake of discipline (paideian).” The trials the author is speaking of are the trials of faith. The experience of suffering sets the Christian alongside Christ, “the pioneer and perfecter of our faith,” and should therefore be welcomed as a chastening or purifying of God’s people. The word “discipline” (paideia) refers to education. From it we get the word “disciple,” one who learns the way.

Discipline has been applied by physical or corporal punishment throughout most of human history. Let’s remember that the larger social context of the caning of school boys was the application of punishment in the military. The cat o’ nine tails was infamous in the British Navy, but it was also used in the Army and to punish prisoners in penal colonies like Australia and in prisons. Judicial flogging as a form of punishment for crimes and bad behavior wasn’t abolished in the United Kingdom until 1948, although it persisted as punishment for infractions in prisons into the 1960s.

Americans are familiar with the use of the lash to keep African American slaves in line, especially to punish runaways and to discourage insurrections. The same discipline of the lash was applied to slaves in the West Indies.

1863 painting of “The Lash” printed on a card. This mass-disseminated card probably served to reinforce Northern moral resolve during the American Civil War.

The lash was also used in judicial punishment in the US for crimes and bad behavior. The last use of public flogging in the US was in Delaware in 1952, when a man was given 20 lashes for wife beating. Delaware was the last state to abolish flogging as a form of civil punishment in 1972.

Public flogging in Delaware in the early 1900s.

In addition to the lash, the paddle became a standard tool of corporal punishment in the US. We associate the paddle with Greek fraternities and sororities in universities in the 19th and 20th centuries. Supposedly it was used in the ancient Greek armies. Holes were drilled through the wood to let air pass through as the paddle was swung because then the whack was harder. Paddling was used to compel pledges to obey the orders of the fraternity brothers or sorority sisters. Pledges earned their paddle once they were initiated into the fraternity or sorority and kept it as a treasure. But their first acquaintance with it came on their buttocks. Paddling has greatly decreased in sororities. But it is still used in many fraternities.

From Augustana College Year Book 1960

Paddles also became the preferred instrument of discipline in American schools in the 20th century, replacing switches (bundles of sticks) used earlier by schoolmasters.

Paddling as punishment in American schools in the 1960s

Children have to be taught. But what are they learning if they are subjected to physical pain for poor judgment or infraction of the rules?  Parents are usually angry when they hit or spank their children. Since children learn more from their parents’ actions than from their words, they learn to strike when they are angry. They learn aggressive behavior. And while the questioner is thinking about whether or not to spank his boys when they get older, girls have also been subject of a hand, paddle, or even a belt applied on their behind from either mother or father.

Even if the parent doesn’t spank immediately but sets up a ritual of spanking like the solemn school canings were, the child learns body shame (especially if their pants are pulled down for the spanking). The bare buttocks were exposed to prevent boys from padding their pants to lesson the pain. But to have their butt exposed and subjected to such treatment, sometimes even in front of other family members (or in school in front of other miscreants who were awaiting their turn with the cane), means that the youth has been totally humiliated.

ready for punishment

The teen age years present special difficulties. Are you going to put your teen age son over your knee or treat his bare butt to a paddling or spanking with a belt? An older child might even shift the focus to the parent’s behavior rather than to what can be learned from his own behavior, in which case the punishment would totally undermine its intended affect.

And let’s not forget that spanking is also a sadomasochistic fetish. Can that aberrant form of sexual pleasure be promoted by parental/school-administered caning, paddling, or hand spanking on the behind? Generally not always, but in some cases, don’t forget that the buttocks is an erogenous zone. In many people it is a primary area of sexual arousal. The 18th century French philosopher and educational theorist, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, claimed in his Confessions that a spanking on his bare buttocks while laying across the lap of his adored nanny was the source of his fettish for being spanked as an adult as his primary experience of sexual pleasure.

Another consideration is that when boys reach puberty, it doesn’t take much for them to get an erection. Spanking the buttocks causes a surge of blood flowing in the pelvic region, which will also engorge the penis. That, combined with the heart pumping faster, will undoubtedly cause an erection and maybe even produce precum. It’s not a sexual response, its a physiological response. But it can cause a young boy double humiliation. How would you deal with this with your young adolescent? Ignore it? Give an on the spot anatomy lesson?

Moreover, spanking or paddling a child can be risky for the child. The child can be struck in a truly harmful way by injuring a body organ, especially if a belt or paddle or hair brush is used. In a small child there are a number of organs near the buttocks and the parent can’t assume that his or her aim is accurate, especially if the child squirms (which he is likely to do as painful punishment is being inflicted). Moreover, Elizabeth Gershoff, PhD, a leading researcher on physical punishment at the University of Texas at Austin says: “Physical punishment doesn’t work to get kids to comply, so parents think they have to keep escalating it. That is why it is so dangerous,” she says.

How can we discipline our children without spanking them?  There are forms of punishment that don’t involve physical pain. If there’s an issue at the dinner table, the child can be sent away from the table or denied desert. If there’s an altercation with siblings, the child (or all of them) can be given “time out” in their special “time out places.” If the fight is over a toy, the toy can be removed. If the child throws a tantrum, the parents should remain calm until the child calms down. If the child hits, he or she can be removed from the room. The object is to remove the child from a social situation when the child displays anti-social behavior. A moral lesson can be taught if the parent is not one who hits. He or she can say to a child who hits a parent, “I don’t hit you. Why are you hitting me? We don’t hit people in this house.”

Time out is in an open space, not sequestered in his bedroom or locked in a closet.

Other options are the time-honored punishments of being grounded and removing internet or driving privileges, depending on the infraction and the age of the child. The lesson here is that with maturity comes responsibility and privileges are taken away until they can be handled responsibly. I saw one cartoon in which the son asks his father, “Can I go out with my friends tonight?” The father says to his son, “you’re grounded, remember?” The son responds, “Couldn’t I get the belt instead?” In any event, this is already leading to a conversation if the parent wants to make use of it.

Obviously, the other side of discipline is positive reinforcement and effusive praise to reward children for good behavior. And if something is really wrong in the child’s mind, take the time to sit down and discuss it with the child. Finding creative ways to discipline a child and have the child learn something positive at the same time is hard work. But it is noble work. It’s a God-given responsibility and blessing. I wish you and your wife well in your child rearing.

Pastor Frank Senn  

Much better outcome!

Frank Senn

I’m a retired Lutheran pastor. I was in parish ministry for forty years and taught at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago for three years. I've been an adjunct professor at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, IL. Since my retirement in 2013 I've also taught courses at Trinity Theological College in Singapore, Satya Wacana Christian University in Salatiga, Central Java, Indonesia, and Carey Theological College in Vancouver. I have a Ph.D. in theology (liturgical studies) from the University of Notre Dame.

This Post Has One Comment

  1. Frank Senn

    Rodney James Calmes writes:
    Things Often Neglected In Articles Talking About The Negative Effects Of Spanking

    One of the things people neglect to talk about is how spankings can involuntarily stimulate the child. This happens 3 ways.

    1. Through the Common Iliac Artery where impact to the buttocks forces blood to the genitals causing stimulation.

    2. The neurological transmissions from the buttocks to the genitals creating sensations.

    3. The hormones and endorphins that get released during a spanking.

    Children don’t understand what is happening to their bodies at that time.

    I will share based on my experience, I was spanked with sticks bare butt as a child and hated it at the time, but starting at age 8, became fascinated with spankings. When everyone else thought of exploring people of the opposite sex during puberty and fantasized about them, I went through puberty thinking and fantasizing about being taken behind the woodshed, stripped naked and spanked or whipped. I often longed to live in the old days to get whipped on my butt. I started self spanking at age 15 until my butt was bruised, and I cannot be aroused without being spanked or thinking about being spanked. I am sharing this because people need to know that spanking a child can be just as gross as molesting a child. I would like to see this being brought up about childhood spanking. I hope you will share my story on this so that people can think about what they are doing before they spank a child.

    Thank you,
    Rodney Calmes

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