Physical Punishments: Effective?

"It will only get into his brain after I hit him hard."

"It's for her good, if not she don't understand."

"He made me so angry, I had to whack him!"

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Physical punishment may be familiar to many of us in Singapore due to its common use amongst parents who were of the Baby Boomers (born 1946 - 1964) or Gen-X (born 1965 - 1980)'s generations as a parenting method. It was a method mostly observed in parents who were less educated and thought that they do not know how to teach their children. In addition, it seemed to be a rather effective method as children would behave accordingly after being punished.

However, as we become more educated (wanting to use rationalising to teach), and for those who went through childhood punishments, the questionability of the effects of physical punishments arises. Firstly, we may have concerns on children's development (especially psychologically) when we administer physical punishments, such as their self-esteem. Secondly, we ask ourselves, is physical punishment truly effective to teach our children well?

To tackle these questions, we came across a parenting study published in 2022 conducted by Singapore Children’s Society and Yale-NUS College on 747 parents and 667 young adults in Singapore. Its findings are discussed in the Expert Says section below.

Tips To Consider

In our current society, spanking is a last (or never) resort to most parents. The guilt and pain that we have after physically punishing them is heavy on us. Thus, before spanking becomes your choice of punishment, we have prepared some actions that you can take on and forget it as an option:

• Time-out: This can be one of the most useful methods as it gives you and your child some allowance to "calm down" and rethink about your thoughts as well as feelings. Often the 2 to 5 minutes break from the intense moments can help to "salvage" the situation. The words that you use will be less "hurtful" as compared to the immediate lashing.

• Get another party involved: Although some parents might feel that others shouldn't intervene when one is disciplining his/her child, when the situation gets too heaty, we know another person's help is good to "neutralise" the situation. As adults, we can let the other adults know too - how they can help to talk things through when such situations occur, and not to put both the adult or child's words down.

• Pause & breathe deeply: If you think time-out is not possible, at least some pauses and deep breaths can help in such situations. More deep breaths will help to circulate more air to flow into your body and that can help you calm nerves and reduce stress.

Remember, we want to discipline, instil right teaching to the children, but not to vent our anger. We must constantly think what is the best way that our children, your own child, can truly understand your intention. There's a saying: Punishment teaches kids to listen and follow out of fear. That's even more so when the punishment gets harsh, or gets physical. However, when children outgrow this fear and realise they will be fine, they will no longer listen to you, the person who gave the punishment. Often, the lack of respect follows on. While we recognise that punishment "reminds / emphasizes" on what children should not do, perhaps we can spend more time to introduce ways for them to remember what they should do. And we shall bear in mind, we always need reminders and encouragements to be a better person. Same for children!

What Expert Says?

From the 2022 paper mentioned above, some of its findings were interesting:

• On use of physical discipline,

  • Out of the 747 parents, 44.8% of them used physical discipline at least once in the past year while 30% of them used more often.

• On effectiveness of using physical discipline,

  • Among the 30% who do so, about half of them considered it to be mostly ineffective.

• Out of the 747 parents, about 70% generally do not believe that physical punishment is effective.

• On acceptability of using physical discipline,

  • About 75.6% sees it as generally unacceptable

• On whether physical punishment must be used as a method of discipline, 83.5% of parents disagreed.

With the data above, different aspects were utilised and analysed to help us understand the relationships between physical punishments, consequences from its use and various aspects of parents' use.

• Choo et al. (2022) found, from interviewing 20 parents in the study, that while physical punishment was often used as a last resort, or when parents wish to emphasise the severity of their child’s wrongful behaviours, parents’ mood and stress are also factors that affect parents choice of using physical discipline.

  • Interventions should focus on helping parents regulate their emotions effectively in discipline situations, and to provide behavioural support for parents who may struggle to change existing discipline patterns.

• From the 747 Singaporean parents, Lim et al. (2022) observed that parents who had younger children, and those who held more positive attitudes towards physical punishment, and experienced more physical punishment during childhood were more likely to be harsh disciplinarians.

• Among 20 young adults who reported having physical disciplined during childhood, Chan et al. (2022) conducted interviews to delve deeper into the consequences and effectiveness of physical discipline.

  • It was highlighted that the pain from physical punishments impel compliance and consequently children learn not to repeat certain misbehaviours to avoid pain.

  • They felt that physical discipline had "little instructive value" and only taught them how to avoid future discipline, with many saying that it was a distressing emotional experience involving fear and pain.

  • It resulted in a distant and strained parent-child relationship in the long-term.

  • For some, their childhood discipline experiences were so deeply ingrained that they negatively affected their present-day social relationships.

We Say....

We have previously discussed 4 parenting styles that parents would engage in. It seems that authoritarian parents would most likely use physical discipline as they have very high expectations of their children, but provide very little in the way of feedback and nurturing. Feedback tends to come in the form of yelling or corporal punishment.

The study shows that for parents who were trying to use physical discipline to instil good values or correct behaviour to their children failed in their original intentions. To their children, they may not have understood what was wrong in their behaviours and would seek to avoid being "caught" and punished again. It was more of an emotional trauma and affects the parent-child relationship.

It may be an intergenerational transmitted teaching method or mirroring of societal values, but it is key to note the negative consequences of using physical discipline. The impacts may be huge and irreversible, both physical and psychologically to children and may scar them for years or decades to come.

The next time if you think about using physical discipline, think again - will it truly meet your original intention to discipline or you're simply venting your anger and show your superiority?