The Ethics of Spanking: A Continuing Debate
By R. Hal Ritter, Jr., Ph.D.
Licensed Professional Counselor, Waco, TX
With the increasing awareness today of child abuse, the ethical dimension of spanking often enters the conversation. Children learn by example, and when spanking is used as an option for problem solving, then children learn that the use of violence is one way to solve problems. But the issue of spanking, or corporal punishment, is very complicated because many parents do not associate spanking with violence. Many parents believe that spanking is a way of modeling firm limits and consequences.
Theologically, the Bible is often quoted as the source for the necessity of spanking. Proverbs 22:15 (RSV) says, "Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him [her]." And Proverbs 23:13-14 (RSV) says, "Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you beat him [her] with a rod, he [she] will not die. If you beat him [her] with a rod you will save his [her] life from Sheol." These verses feel more awkward when the female pronoun is added to them. Somehow, it seems more appropriate to "beat" a boy than to "beat" a girl. However, the use of the word "child" in verse 23:13 makes it clear that both male and female are intended.
In the New Testament, there is no reference to spanking. The ethics of Jesus for Christians is that we are to live and teach love and peace. We are to love others and be peacemakers. Some take these verses as the total renunciation of violence, while others see limitations in this world to these values being totally actualized.
In Ephesians 6:1-2a, 4 (RSV), the Apostle Paul makes a brief reference to parenting: "Children [boys and girls] obey your parents [father and mother] in the Lord, for this right. Honor your father and mother. . . . Fathers [mothers], do not provoke your children [boys and girls] to anger." There is a difference between "children obey your parents" and "honor your father and mother." When children are young, obedience is taught and encouraged. As children transition during adolescence toward adulthood, they make the often confusing journey toward honoring father and mother. As adolescents move into young adulthood, parents struggle with how to stop treating them as children who must give obedience, and how to welcome them as adults who are respected in their own right as persons. However, these same young adults are also struggling with what it means to honor father and mother, without rejecting them outright.
What Do Parents Want?
Ultimately, what is the goal of parenting? Oftentimes, parents do not take a long-term view of how they want their children to be as adults. They may vaguely think that they want adults who are Christians, who are honest and who are compassionate. But how are these values taught to children? The oft-quoted proverb says, "Values are caught more than taught." In other words, parents do a lot of teaching in the way they behave toward one another, toward their children, and toward those in the community around them. Hopefully, the values being taught are clear and healthy and do not represent an attitude which says, "Do as I say, not as I do."
In other words, when a parent spanks a child, is this action teaching a lesson that says that hitting is an acceptable method of problem-solving with other people? Most parents will answer that spanking and hitting are not the same thing, and this is probably the correct response. Hitting is an aggressive behavior intended to inflict hurt and pain on another person. Spanking, on the other hand, is a disciplinary action intended to teach appropriate behavior. However, this definition of spanking must be carefully understood in order to be meaningful.
Before using spanking as a disciplinary action, it is important for parents to discuss spanking as a teaching method. What is being taught? Are honor and respect being taught? Is obedience being taught? In the emotion of the moment of spanking, does the child understand the parental motive of instruction, or does the child merely experience his or her own powerlessness in the presence of the parental anger and outrage? These are serious questions that deserve serious answers.
Most parents will answer that the parental intent is to teach "appropriate behavior." However, this part of the definition is often ignored in the carrying out of the spanking. Somehow, parents assume too easily that children will connect the correct behavior with the spanking. Certainly, spanking does stop whatever behavior is currently being manifested. But what children actually learn in this case is that in order to avoid pain and hurt, they must not engage in the undesirable behavior-at least not while the parents are in view.
Spanking does stop the behavior, but it does not teach an acceptable alternative. Spanking does not teach the child the correct behavioral response to whatever is the current situation. The additional point that is often missing with spanking is the parental care and nurture and training in what is the desired behavior. Children are not little adults, and much of their learning is trial and error. They learn at a very early age what "No" means, and they hear "No" much more often than they hear "Yes." Children continue doing what they are doing until they cross a limit and are told to "Stop." At the moment of "Stop," the parental responsibility becomes that of teacher, to make sure the child understands the limit and also understands the alternative, desired behavior.
Does this all mean that parents are to explain everything to children? Not necessarily. Children do not need everything explained to them in adult detail. Since they are not adults, they will not understand lengthy explanations. On the other hand, children are due the respect of some explanation that helps them know why the current behavior is unacceptable, and what behavior is appropriate instead. And additionally, they may need some personal training in how to exhibit the preferred behavior.
A child running into the street must be stopped and protected. However, just stopping the behavior and putting the child back into the yard does not teach an alternative behavior. The child must be taught the dangers of the street as well as the proper way to cross the street and when crossing the street is appropriate. Otherwise, the child will be confused, because the child will see others crossing the street and will wonder why he or she is forbidden from doing the same thing.
What`s A Parent To Do?
Hopefully, parents have some understanding of why they parent as they do and why they spank. Most parents do parenting the same way they were parented as children. If their parents yelled a lot, they may yell at their own children. If their parents spanked, they may spank their own children. Parents often say, "I got spanked, and I didn`t turn out so bad," as if the spanking is what made them fully functioning adults. While there may also have been a lot of time and love that went into the parenting they received, spanking may seem to be the only real source of discipline and teaching that they remember.
What parents generally want their children to learn is self-discipline, self -regulation, and self-control. Galatians 5:22 reads that the fruit of the Spirit includes self-control. The emphasis of this two-word phrase is often on the word "control." If a child-or any person-acts in an inappropriate or undesirable way, people often say that the person needs to learn to "control" themselves. In this way, the term self-control is understood as a behavior, that is, the person needs to "behave" themselves. Thus, what parents want for their child is for the child to learn the proper behavior for different circumstances of life.
However, self-control also functions on another level, namely, that of the "self." The person who behaves appropriately is in control of their personhood, their sense of self. When the self is out of control, the behavior is often disoriented and out of control: "As a person thinks in one`s heart, so one is." If the child is in control of the emerging sense of person within, then the behavior will be controlled. When the person, the self-the emerging identity for this situation-is out of control, illogical and irrational behavior often follows. Thus, what parents may actually want for their children is a clear sense of self, of personhood, that values and clarifies decisions, and makes decisions that bring appropriate behavior to the situation at hand.
When children see that parents respond irrationally to the various situations of life, they often fail to understand what appropriate behavior is, and what it is that is being expected of them. The biblical call to peace and love is not some romantic, illogical, sappy view of life. It is a call to love God and to be at peace with God, and to love others and be at peace with others. This call to love and peace is based in one`s love of self and being at peace with one`s self. It is a call to serious character formation within one`s own relationship with God in Christ. And it includes the sacred parental responsibility of helping to shape the character and behavior of the children entrusted to parents, by God.
Jesus says that we can find a speck in someone else`s eye when we, in fact, have a log in our own eye. Parents sometimes pick apart the various specks of a child`s behavior, while having a woodpile full of logs in their own life. Parents want perfect children, and yet, no one is able to model what that perfection is. The only model is Jesus` call to love God and be a peace with one another.
The family is a laboratory of life, and children spend about eighteen years in that laboratory, watching, observing, experiencing and learning. It is here that they learn valuable life lessons that will guide their future decision making for all of life. When they marry, they will behave and act as a husband or a wife based upon what they observed and learned at home as they watched their parents for eighteen years. In other words, they will be a spouse to their spouse, the way they saw their parents be a spouse to one another. And when they have children, they will parent their children the way they were parented. If they learned love and peaceful correction, then they will parent with love and peaceful correction. If they learned anger and violence, then they will parent with anger and violence.
So, what are parents teaching their children? Hopefully, they are teaching Christian values and personal character formation. Law and grace. Limits and love. Discipline without anger. While spanking generally makes the parent feel better, the real question is, does the child learn? The answer, of course, is yes, the child does learn. But, more specifically, what does the child learn? These are important questions for anyone who is engaged in the sacred honor and responsibility of nurturing and guiding and leading the precious children who God has entrusted to families, to parents, the very children who are being formed as the future of the kingdom of God.
