All interviewees remain anonymous, at their request. Dodge Kenneth, McLoyd VC, Lansford Jennifer E. The Cultural Context of Physically Disciplining Children. The article proceeds as follows: Part II describes what is known about how the relevant institutional actorslegislatures, CPS, and courtscurrently find and define the line between reasonable and unlawful corporal punishment.15 Part III separately describes the parental-autonomy norms and scientific knowledge that currently compete for primacy in the discourse about corporal punishment and, as far as we can tell, largely contribute to decisions about the lawfulness of particular incidents on the ground. Part IV begins with an argument for definitional and methodological changes that reflects both parental-autonomy norms and scientific knowledge and follows with specific suggestions for policy reform. Parents rights and family privacy may be considered as essential factors to be balanced against harm to the child or as relatively insignificant in light of the agencys mandate to focus on child welfare.60 Parents motivation is more or less relevant to agencies or social workers depending on the extent to which they believe the inquiry should focus entirely on medical harm to the child; when motivation matters in the analysis, parents may be permitted to cause more harm than they would when it is not a consideration.61 Relatedly, CPS professionals may consider the familys ethnic or cultural background, as in assessing whether a particular form of corporal punishment is normative in the familys community.62 As with parental motivation, however, those who focus primarily on medical harm to the child will tend to discount or ignore diversity of parenting practices.63, The factors that a particular CPS social worker or agency considers in drawing the line between reasonable corporal punishment and abuse, and the weight the factors are given, depend on two circumstances: the extent to which the agency or social worker is administratively (by regulation, policy, or protocol) constrained and the decisionmakers own community norms, disciplinary training, and personal ideology. Consistent with this argument, policy reforms that can ameliorate the three negative effects targeted by this articlethe failure of existing law to satisfy its expressive function, inconsistent outcomes, and a risk of false-positive and false-negative findings of maltreatmentinclude changes to the structure of some child-abuse statutes and clarification of their included terms. All Rights Reserved, Victims of Child Abuse, Domestic Violence, Elder Abuse, Rape, Robbery, Assault, and Violent Death, A Manual for Clergy and Congregations, Special Edition for Military Chaplains, Section I: Child Abuse and Neglect, Effects of Child Abuse on Children: Abuse General, Effects of Child Abuse on Children: Child Sexual Abuse, Injuries to Children: Physical and Sexual Abuse, Effects of Child Abuse on Adults: Childhood Abuse, Effects of Child Abuse on Adults: Childhood Sexual Abuse, Child Physical Abuse and Corporal Punishment, Nationwide Crisis Line and Hotline Directory. Comment on Gershoff(2002). A review of appellate-court decisions suggests that lower-court records contain little or no information about the emotional and developmental effects of physical discipline on the child.111 Even when these effects are recognized, however, courts are still likely to give them very little weight.112 One judge has surmised that this bias is because judges in general lack the expertise to evaluate evidence related to the emotional or psychological impact of physical discipline on a child.113 Whatever the case, interviews with CPS professionals in one North Carolina county suggest that emotional- and developmental-impact evidence rarely makes it into the record notwithstanding its importance because neither the lawyers (for the state or the parents) nor the judges involved are interested in these facts; they simply want to know the circumstances in which the immediate physical injury occurred and the relevant medical details.114, Related to the circumstances in which the injury occurred, and in contrast with the practice of at least some CPS professionals, courts often consider a parents motivation for administering physical discipline when they evaluate the reasonableness of the disciplinary act. Psychometric Evidence for Indirect Assessment of Child Abuse Risk in Child Welfare-Involved Mothers. HHS Vulnerability Disclosure, Help Rev. Corporal Punishment by Parents and Associated Child Behaviors and Experiences: A Meta-Analytic and Theoretical Review. Provides a guide for parents on when parental discipline crosses the line and is considered child abuse. Although these three areas of law have some different objectives and concerns, there is merit to a jurisdictions considering adoption of a single unified rule, as doing so would send a consistent message to the relevant legal actorsincluding parents, CPS, and judgesabout the states position on corporal punishment. For children in abusive families, discipline is neither educational nor constructive. But we encourage serious consideration of the question, and in particular, a focus on the different implications of a decision to base normativeness on the views of the broader community in which the family lives or on those of the familys particular communitythe immediate or extended family, including its affiliations, religious and otherwise. (Note: the reference here has been to Christian scholarship. The Shaken Baby Syndrome: A Clinical, Pathological, and Biomechanical Study. The requirement of a disciplinary motive is inherent in the allowance, see. However, a statement on the subject by the Medical Director of a Child Protection Team in a Florida Regional Medical Center seems to fit, more appropriately in this definition section. When is Parental Discipline Child Abuse? Together to #ENDviolence: Leaders' Statement. Spare the Kids: Because Disciplining Children Doesn't Have to Hurt. These approaches vary from state to state and judge to judge. This study found that in both cohorts, chronic mild spanking in children from ages five to nine led to increased antisocial behavior problems in adolescence.174 It must be noted that the children who suffered these outcomes were regularly spanked mildly over a long period of time, which was not the case in other studies where the child subjects experienced mild spanking very infrequently.175 The best scientific evidence thus indicates that the impact of regular mild spanking on a child aged one to nine appears, on average, to be significantly adverse but modest in magnitude.176 In general, children who have been regularly, mildly corporally punished by parents are likely to become less cognitively skilled and more aggressive over time and to use aggression in solving future problems, including in raising their children; rarely, however, do they become criminally violent as a result of mild corporal punishment alone.177. WebSpecifically, acceptance of physical punishment of children at the national level and child physical abuse are significantly related (Gershoff, 2002; Straus & Stewart, 1999; Whipple & Richey, 1997), a pattern which is apparent internationally (Gracia & Herrero, 2008). We adopt this approach for two reasons. The line between reasonable corporal punishment and abuse will never be exact. Spanking with a bare hand across the buttocks is relatively common in the United States, whereas in other cultures, different practices are relatively common, such as beating with a stick, coining a child by rolling a hot coin across the back, and forcing a child to swallow hot peppers.219 Practices vary across jurisdictions even within the United States. At least some case workers appear to be using a combination of valid evidence, intuition, or presumed knowledge about the nonphysical sequelae of physical injuries. Dodge Kenneth A, Bates JE, Pettit GS. Before WebPhysical punishment was captured in three groups: mild corporal punishment, harsh corporal punishment, and physical abuse, and both caregiver- and child-reported punishment measures were considered. Norms are customary or widely held beliefs that may either influence or be influenced by law. Corporal punishment itself is more common in the South than the North, among African American families than European American families, and among lower socioeconomic-status families than middle- and higher-status families.220 Also, religious cultural groups may encourage or discourage specific practices, creating the possibility that a parent will find the use of a corporal-punishment practice to be normative within a narrow religious culture even though it is unusual in the broader society. Just over half of state definitions contain only broad language and fail to provide specific examples of injuries or acts constituting physical abuse or to elaborate otherwise on the meaning of physical harm or injury. Further, cultural norms have changed across generations. Because the line between corporal punishment and child abuse can be pretty fuzzy. Case Mary E. Abusive Head Injury in Infants and Young Children. This is the concept of the family as a village within a town, within a county, within a state, within the country; the village being primarily and in the first instance responsible for bringing up the young to become well-adjusted, productive individuals and citizens.136 Parental autonomy is also said to be good for society because children need to be raised by some adult(s), and neither the state itself nor any other individual or group of adults can replace parents as first best caretakers,137 and because societys interest in the perpetuation of heterogenic democracy is best fulfilled when an ideologically diverse group of individuals raises the children.138 Parental autonomy is viewed as being good for parents because it honors the natural bonds of affection that tie them to their children and also because it compensates them for taking on the responsibilities of parenting.139 Finally, parental autonomy is viewed as being good for children because, among the adults and institutions that might be imagined as caregivers, parents, guided by their natural bonds of affection, are most likely to take the best care of their own children and to do the best job raising them to be successful adults.140 That aspect of parental autonomy that sees the family as sovereign territory is specifically viewed as being good for children because, when parent and child are bonded, interference by outsiders to the relationship harms their emotional and developmental well-being.141, The theories that support parental autonomy have changed significantly over time. Indeed, if the question before the court involves, in some respect, a parents right to make a child-rearing decision, the constitutional doctrine of parental autonomy will and should be front and center. The second involved a series of interviews with CPS professionals, including CPS directors, supervisors, and frontline social workers in counties in several states across the country. Freedom from abuse, neglect, and exploitation FOIA Third, as a practical matter, most parents do not have the knowledge or resources necessary to prove the standard proposed below, particularly the second prong: that the corporal punishment at issue does not cause functional impairment. Canandian Found. This blog post is sponsored by BetterHelp, but all opinions are our own., Counseing.info may receive compensation from BetterHelp or other sources if you purchase products or services through the links provided on this page., 2023 Copyright Therapists.com. State Intervention on Behalf of Neglected Children: A Search for Realistic Standards. At the same time, we suggest that these costs are worth bearing if they can fix the problems inherent in the current process, specifically its tendency to produce inconsistent and erroneous outcomes. The only question in these cases, then, is whether the force used was reasonable. An Introduction to Child Maltreatment in The United States: History, Public Policy and Research 89110. Children who have been physically punished tend to exhibit high hormonal reactivity to stress, overloaded biological systems, including the nervous, cardiovascular and nutritional systems, and changes in brain structure and function. A large body of researchshows links between corporal punishment and a wide range of negative outcomes, both immediate and long-term: There is some evidence of a doseresponse relationship, with studies finding that the association with child aggression and lower achievement in mathematics and reading ability became stronger as the frequency of corporal punishment increased. WebCorporal punishment includes any use of physical punishment against a child in response to misbehavior. Nuances complicate this picture, however: First, mild corporal punishments do not have a uniform impact on child outcomes across all contexts and circumstances. These suggestions include proposals for redefining reasonable and unlawful corporal punishment and for sorting cases along the continuum of nonaccidental physical injuries. In the former, more typical case, the determination whether something is reasonable is made by the trier of fact, usually the jury. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the In the end, the decision whether a parents behavior constitutes physical abuse may be best construed as a judgment by a scientifically informed expert. Ann. Zero Abuse Project (2017) 2023 Mar 13;10(3):545. doi: 10.3390/children10030545. When a parent meets this burden, the state is required to prove that the assault was not privileged or excused. Long-term follow-ups of children found by CPS to have been maltreated indicate that they are likely to suffer a variety of functional impairments, including an increased tendency to commit violent crime, to abuse alcohol and drugs, to acquire sexually transmitted diseases, to suffer from depression, and to victimize their own children.186 Although these studies bring the certainty that comes with identifying and following children whose physical abuse has been officially substantiated, they are complicated by the problem that the interventions accompanying official substantiation (such as removal from the home and labeling the child as abused) might be the actual adverse causal agent rather than the abuse per se. In other words, litigants do not appear to work systematically to make the evidence of emotional and developmental welfare relevant to the courts, given the courts particular orientation and doctrinal constraints. Depending on the severity, chronicity, or context of corporal punishment, however, parental behavior can also harm the child, including to the level of functional impairment, and that thus should be identified as physical abuse. Deater-Deckard Kirby, Dodge Kenneth, Sorbring Emma. Placing the ultimate burden on the state is appropriate for three reasons. Evidence of the presence of these contexts is thus relevant to establishing child abuse. Because legal cases cannot wait for an ultimate outcome, which might not be apparent for years, published scientific research suffices as evidence that a particular parental behavior is abusive.
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