Murray Straus, a professor at the University of New Hampshire, found that children who have been spanked or experienced other corporal punishment are at greater risk as adolescents and adults for verbally or physically coercing their partner into having sex.
Straus analyzed a study, International Dating Violence, of more than 14,000 college students at 68 universities in 32 countries. The students were asked if they had been frequently spanked or beaten before the age of 12 and if they had coerced a sexual partner in the previous 12 months. “It’s more evidence that parents shouldn’t spank if their child’s well-being is at stake,” Straus said.
The study revealed that men who experienced corporal punishment were four times more likely to physically force their partner to have sex than those who had not experienced corporal punishment. Coercion includes holding someone down or hitting them. Women who experienced corporal punishment were also more likely to force their partner to have sex than those who had not been spanked.
Presenting the findings at an American Psychological Association summit, Straus said, “People generalize that the use of coercion, physical coercion, is okay. They learn it from people they love and respect: their parents.”
Straus said this study is consistent with other studies, which show that corporal punishment leads to low self-control and self-esteem, as well as aggressiveness, antisocial personalities and the understanding that violence is okay, which can lead to sexual coercion. . He stressed that there are alternative ways of disciplining children that work better and have no side effects.
Alice Miller, the foremost psychologist who has devoted her career to child abuse in its many forms, including physical abuse, emotional abuse, and child sexual abuse, presented the same results as Straus. Miller studied and wrote about the effects of poisonous pedagogy on children and lasting into adulthood, and the resulting effects on society as a whole.
Twenty-one states allow corporal punishment in schools. In the 2004-2005 school year, 272,028 school-age children in the US were subjected to physical punishment. This is a significant drop of almost 10%, continuing a consistent trend since the early 1980s. This statistic does not include corporal punishment in the home.
States that allow corporal punishment are: Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania (some school districts prohibited corporal punishment), Tennessee, Texas, Wyoming.
A study of 8,000 American families revealed (Straus, MA and Yodanis, CL, 1994.) 78% of the states scored below the national average at the fourth grade level in reading. 75% of states rowing scored below the national average in reading at the eighth grade level (Center for Effective Discipline, 2004). Sixty-seven percent of Ohio rowing schools fell into the bottom 25% of schools on state school report cards in the 99-00 school year (Center for Effective Discipline, 2001).
Miller shows, with the help of her research, books, articles, interviews, and responses to reader emails on her website, that child abuse, such as hitting and humiliation, not only produces unhappy and confused children, it not only destructive teenagers and abusive parents, but also a confused society, which functions irrationally.
Miller sees the roots of global violence in the fact that children are beaten all over the world, especially during their early years, when their brains are being structured. The damage caused by this practice is devastating, but sadly society rarely connects the dots. The facts are easy to understand: children are forbidden to defend themselves against violence inflicted on them, their only recourse is to drive natural reactions like anger and fear deep into their psyche, and they discharge these strong emotions later, as adults, against themselves. children or entire nations. Miller illustrates this dynamic in his books using not only his own case histories, but also his numerous studies on the biographies of famous dictators and artists. The avoidance of this problem in all societies known to her reveals that extremely irrational behaviour, brutality, sadism and other perversions can go unmolested in families (who claim their right to “discipline” their children and who products can be considered as “genetically conditioned.” Alice Miller believes that only through awareness of this dynamic can we break the chain of violence, she dedicated her life’s work to this enlightenment.
Alice Miller developed a concept of therapy which suggests that we must confront our history and acknowledge and thereby reduce the still unconscious but very active fear of the internally beaten child. When we finally manage to feel our justification, anger, and outrage instead of denying it, we can become autonomous and free to choose how to live our lives, free from religious rhetoric or family tradition. . Because it is this childhood fear of abusive parents that leads adults to abuse their own children, as well as to live with serious illnesses instead of taking seriously the cruelties once suffered. Countless esoteric and “religious” offerings serve to obscure the pain resulting from torture once suffered, but completely denied.
Miller believes that his discovery, despite its tragic aspects, actually contains very optimistic options because it opens the door to awareness, to awareness of childhood reality and thus to liberation from its destructive consequences. He understands his search for the reality of childhood as a strong opposition to psychoanalysis, which, in his opinion, maintains the old tradition of blaming the child and protecting the parents. For this reason, Miller resigned from his membership in the International Psychoanalytic Association in 1988.
Alice Miller’s work reveals:
o Poor children, minorities, children with disabilities, and children are beaten more often in schools, sometimes at a rate 2-5 times higher than other children.
o Academic performance is a risk factor in the use of corporal punishment of children.
o Significantly more school shooting deaths were found in states that allow corporal punishment in schools than in those that do not.
o School violence has not increased as the use of paddles has decreased. Violent crime in schools has dropped dramatically since 1994. The annual rate of serious violent crime in 2003 (6 per 1,000 students) was less than half the rate in 1994.
o There is overwhelming evidence that harsh interventions harm children, both emotionally and physically. The effects of such trauma can be compounded when a child has pre-existing learning difficulties. When schools respond to these challenges using harsh methods, children can be further traumatized.
o Corporal punishment in schools is used more widely in southern and southwestern states and in rural districts than in urban and suburban districts.
o Corporal punishment has been abolished in more than 100 countries around the world, but not in the US.
o Corporal punishment teaches children that violence is an acceptable way to solve problems. Research shows that this message is taught to those who inflict pain, to those who receive it, and to those who witness it.
o Corporal punishment of children is related to less internalization of moral rules, greater aggression, more antisocial behavior, greater criminality, greater mental health outcomes, greater adult abusive behaviors, and greater risk of being a victim of abusive relationships in the community. adulthood.
o Corporal punishment reinforces physical aggression as an acceptable and effective means of eliminating unwanted behavior in our society.