Physical punishment effect on children. Arguments

PHYSICAL PUNISHMENT EFFECT ON CHILDREN
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Physical Punishment Effect on Children
Introduction
Many children pass through harsh parenting towards adulthood. Most of them are physically punished in a quest to correct their bad behaviors. Physical punishment is the utilization of physical force to cause discomfort or body harm to correct bad behavior (Straus & Paschall, 2003). This includes slapping, whipping, paddling, pinching, hitting and spanking among others. However, physical punishment may correct bad behavior over the short term and not over the long term. Physical punishment has proven ineffective as it may cause behaviors to get worse as time passes by. For example, spanking children may increase aggressive behavior. Therefore, physical punishment is not the best form of discipline compared to other forms of discipline like grounding for instance.
Arguments
A. Physical punishment causes mental health issues. A child’s brain becomes altered when regularly physically punished. The child develops less gray matter in some regions of the prefrontal cortex which links to addiction, depression, anxiety and other mental health problems like alcohol and drug abuse (Cuddy & Reeves, 2014). This is because harsh physical punishment associates with increased abnormalities of personality disorders, substance abuse, anxiety disorders and mood disorders. Also, physically punished children feel pressured to do the right thing. Parents forget about their child’s personality. A parent needs to look at their child’s strengths and interests to help them discover what might be fun. Meeting resistance and using physical punishment to address this resistance means the parent has their own motivations for punishing the child towards a specific direction. Physical punishment is unhealthy, and children may feel pushed too far and this can cause them retreat inwards to become resentful and develop great anxiety about attempting new things.
More so, physically punished children become self-abated when they relate to others. Physical punishment has an adverse effect on the victim’s self-esteem. Self-esteem has a wide-reaching effect on one’s life in various areas (Quatman & Watson, 2001). It has an important role in one’s development and a negative impact of physical punishment implies affected self-esteem which impacts their educational and psychosocial development and general well-being. From the emotional stand point, children with low self-esteem tends to show high levels of anxiety, psychosomatic symptoms, depression, lack of personal acceptance as well as submissiveness. This is because low self-esteem is a significant predictor of maladaptive and disruptive behaviors which cause self-abatement (Aunola, Stattin & Nurmi, 2000). Therefore, physical punishment causes self-abatement which then leads to poor social functioning irrespective of whether it was done by the mother or father or both.
B. Physical punishment teaches children the use violence to address a problem. Utilizing physical pain to halt a child from involving in bad behavior teaches them that it is right to address issues using violence (Grogan-Kaylor, 2004). The children ...