Corporal punishment
Corporal punishment is the infliction of physical pain in response to wrongdoing, typically by methodically striking a particular part of the offender's body with an implement such as a paddle, or with the open hand. Its purpose is to correct, reform and deter the miscreant, and to deter others from similar misconduct. In the state of Texas it is lawful for a public official to use a four-foot-long board to strike a woman's hand, hip, leg and buttocks with sufficient force to cause bleeding.[1] In the state of Mississippi it is lawful for a public official to use a paddle to strike the buttocks of a woman who is 5 months pregnant.[2] This sort of beating causes shock waves that propagate through the ears, brain and other organs of the fetus, damaging the fetus and shortening its life.[3] In addition to this physical damage, the woman's stress responses to the beating will cause further damage the fetus.[4]
Parents are urged by the Bible to "beat" their offspring when they misbehave.[5] In modern times, such beating often involves striking a child's buttocks with an open hand or with a paddle. However, since a girl's buttocks and the upper third of the backs of her thighs contain sexually sensitive nerve endings[6] that, when stimulated, send nerve impulses directly to her clitoris, striking these areas may cause her to learn to associate violent assault with sexual stimulation. In the case of Garcia v. Miera, a girl was held "upside down by her ankles" and beaten on the fronts of her thighs.[7] This procedure avoided striking sexually sensitive areas of the girl's body.
Darrel Reid, head of Focus on the Family - Canada (an evangelical Christian group) said that "The theological underpinning for family corporal punishment is tied up with the responsibility that God gives families for raising the young. You can find it particularly in the early books of the Bible, where God says your responsibility is not just nurturing but also correcting them."[8]
Some people oppose the spanking of children, and in some countries (e.g. Sweden) it is illegal even for parents to do so. Swedish Member of Parliament Sixten Pettersson stated "In a free democracy like our own, we use words as arguments, not blows. We talk to people and do not beat them. If we can't convince our children with words, we shall never convince them with violence".
In some states of the United States a foster parent may not spank a foster child.
Claiming to draw upon the latest research on brain development, a "therapist", Alice Miller, attacks childhood corporal punishment and asserts that spanking causes emotional blindness and leads to mental barriers that cut off awareness and the ability to learn new ways of acting. If this cycle repeats itself, the grown child will perpetrate the same "abuse" on later generations, Miller alleges.[9]
Judicial corporal punishment is the infliction of physical pain upon a person's body as punishment for a crime or infraction, such as by caning or whipping. This kind of penalty remains on the statute book in several Asian, Middle Eastern and African countries.[10]
The last US State to retain whipping as an official punishment for crime was Delaware, in the 1950s.[11]
In a broad sense, corporal punishments include flogging, beating, branding, mutilation, blinding, and the use of the stock and pillory. The Torah (Judaism) describes some forms of corporal punishment for certain crimes and sins. The Bible contains seven verses that relate to the spanking of children.
References
- ↑ Deana Pollard Sacks, (2009). "State Actors Beating Children: A Call for Judicial Relief". UC Davis Law Review, Volume 42, No. 4, page 1167, April 2009.
- ↑ A Violent Education: Corporal Punishment of Children in US Public Schools. Page 52.
- ↑ "Violence against women impairs children's health". Biology News Net. September 11, 2008, 11:19 PM.
- ↑ Stress: Portrait of a Killer. First broadcast on September 24, 2008.
- ↑ Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell.
- ↑ These nerve endings are naturally stimulated during dorso-ventral copulation. See "saddle area".
- ↑ "Miera hit Garcia five times on the front of the leg between the knee and the waist".
- ↑ Child corporal punishment: spanking at "Religious tolerance" website.
- ↑ The Natural Child Project.
- ↑ Country Files at World Corporal Punishment Research.
- ↑ Newman, Graeme. Just and Painful, Chapter 9. Macmillan, London (1985). ISBN 0-02-923130-2