Prewriting
The narrowed topic of the research is focused on exploring the prevalence of corporal punishment of children and domestic abuse in the United States. The primary audience includes healthcare professionals, social workers, parents, and social or political stakeholders that influence legislative decisions. It is important to inform the mentioned audience about the problem of domestic violence because they have a direct influence on how this issue is perceived by the general public. The thesis statement is “the effects of corporal punishment and domestic violence are the same, which is why physical punishment should be perceived as the form of domestic violence.”
Topic sentences:
- Corporal punishment deteriorates children’s health;
- There is a lack of adequate legislation to manage corporal punishments;
- The public does not give the problem the attention it deserves.
The method of organization used in the paper will be general-to-specific:
- Introduction: main points, context and background, argument.
- Body: definition of solutions to address the narrowed problem.
- Conclusion: final proposals and suggestions.
Introduction
The problem of managing children’s behavior has always been challenging to the public because there is no unified view on what effective procedures should be implemented for doing so. When it comes to corporal punishment of children, the public has disregarded the problem and did not associate it with domestic violence despite the adverse effect it had on children’s physical and emotional well-being. It is proposed to analyze this problem from a scholarly point of view in order to provide an effective explanation on the negative influence of such punishments and to prove that they are forms of domestic violence.
As mentioned by Hyland, Alkhalaf, and Whalley (2013), corporal punishments that parents use to manage their children’s conduct not only impair their physical health but also lead to mental issues that can deteriorate their behaviors even further. The problem lies in public not giving enough attention to corporal punishments while exploring domestic violence as a pervasive issue. For example, in the report prepared by Fortson, Klevens, Merrick, Gilbert, and Alexander (2016) for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention it was mentioned that one in seven children had been subjected to abuse; importantly, the researchers pointed out that the was not enough legislative approaches that could reduce the corporal punishment of children. Despite the fact that there is some evidence to suggest that domestic violence is a pervasive issue that negatively influences the emotional and physical well-being of children, there is still a need for finding more statistical data that will point to the adverse impact of corporal punishments.
Solutions
When it comes to the suggested solutions to reduce the occurrence of corporal punishments for children, researchers have proposed that parents eliminate spanking when managing their children’s behaviors because this method lacks the expected effectiveness (Gershoff, 2013). In addition, it was found that there had been an increased rate of deaths associated with domestic violence; 64% of victims die from different reasons, which means that corporal punishments should not be disregarded as a category of domestic violence (Sherman & Harris, 2015). It is also important to mention that children and women are the main targets of domestic abuse because of their lower abilities to resist the assaults (Herschell, Scudder, Schaffner, & Slagel, 2017). This means that corporal punishments are forms of violence because children’s physical abilities make them more susceptible toward the manifestations of physical force. Solutions to address the issue of the negative impact of corporal punishments on children require finding studies whose authors propose alternative techniques for managing children’s behaviors.
A possible solution to reduce corporal punishments and domestic abuse of children in general is associated with parents’ education on how to model their behaviors in order to positively impact relationships between them and their children. For instance, mothers who are affectionate and warm toward their children can get away with occasional spanking as a discipline method as opposed to hostile mothers who have tense relations with their children. It is also proposed to facilitate consistency to enhance the effectiveness of reprimanding children for bad behaviors. For example, when parents act erratically and do not have an established system of disciplinary procedures, they resort to impulsive punishments that can later turn into domestic violence. Facilitating healthy child development is another suggestion to avoid corpora punishments; as mentioned by Merrick (2013) in the article “Child health and human development over the lifespan,” there is a range of issues such as bullying, depression, school violence, child abuse and neglect, all of which impair children’s development and lead to the deterioration of their emotional and physical health. The use of appropriate strategies of teaching and psychological counseling is likely to increase children’s self-awareness and make them more prone to being able of expressing their opinions and regulate the tension between them and their parents. Overall, there is a variety of strategies for addressing the problem of corporal punishments of children; however, the issue with laws not addressing these punishments legally is likely to deteriorate the situation even further.
References
Fortson, B., Klevens, J., Merrick, M., Gilbert, L., & Alexander, S. (2016). Preventing child abuse and neglect: A technical package for policy, norm, and programmatic activities. Web.
Gershoff, E. (2013). Spanking and child development: We know enough now to stop hitting our children. Child Development Perspectives, 7(3), 133-137.
Herschell, A., Scudder, A., Schaffner, K., & Slagel, L. (2017). Feasibility and effectiveness of parent-child interaction therapy with victims of domestic violence: A pilot study. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 26(1), 271-283.
Hyland, M., Alkhalaf, A. M., & Whalley, B. (2013). Beating and insulting children as a risk for adult cancer, cardiac disease and asthma. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 36(6), 632-640.
Merrick, J. (2013). Child health and human development over the lifespan. Frontiers in Public Health, 1, 1-10.
Sherman, L., & Harris, H. (2015). Increased death rates of domestic violence victims from arresting vs. warning suspects in the Milwaukee Domestic Violence Experiment (MilDVE). Journal of Experimental Criminology, 11(1), 1-20.