Parents should / should not spank their children. essay
Michelle — she was about three — managed to undo the front gate and get out. I looked out the window and she
was in the middle of the street, and just then this car came over the hill. So I went tearing out — I think I went
through the screen door — and I ran out and grabbed her, and the car swerved, and I spanked her. I said, ‘Don’t you
ever go out there again!’ Whack!” The moving car, the oblivious child, the terrified parent… the spanking. This
particular memory belongs to Hugh MacMillan, the father of two school-aged girls — but what parent doesn’t
recognize the scenario? It’s such a familiar story that it’s almost part of our collective experience. But for how
long? Around the globe, corporal punishment has been put on the agenda as a human rights issue for children.
Since 1979, when Sweden banned parental use of corporal punishment, five other countries have followed suit.
Corporal punishment in schools has been banned through most of Western Europe, and in many other countries as
diverse as China, Jordan and Ecuador. In North America, the vast majority of high-profile child-rearing experts and
parent educators advise against spanking. The Canadian Paediatric Society and the American Academy of
Pediatrics recommend alternatives to physical punishment. They won’t get any arguments from MacMillan. He has
already given up spanking, partly because of how this particular story ended: “Later inside, after everything was
calmer, I said, ‘Now, why should you not go out the gate?’ And Michelle answered: ‘Cause you’ll get angry.’ So what
happened there was, first of all, I was scared out of my mind, then I was relieved, and then I felt love towards my
kid and stuff like that — I had this whole range of emotions in about 3 1/2 seconds, and all she got was the anger:
Don’t do that because Dad will get angry
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