Author: ah75588n

A recent article published by CNN brought up the issue of how spanking and other types of violent punishments effects a child’s future relationships. The article was focused around a study published in the past couple of weeks in the Journal of Pediatrics. The basis of the study was to ask seven hundred and fifty-eight kids between the ages of nineteen and twenty how often they had been spanked or slapped as form of punishment when they were younger. The study’s lead author, Jeff Temple, a psychiatry professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch, stated that, “Kids who said they had experienced corporal punishment were more likely to have recently committed dating violence.”

Dr. Bob Sege, a spokesman for the American Academy of Pediatricians who specializes in the prevention of childhood violence, commented to CNN about the published study stating that the results, “were not surprising.” The study was factual proof that children who experience any type of violence at home will be more likely to use violence later on in their lives. Social learning theory, for example, suggests that children who are spanked may become more likely to adopt aggressive behaviors because their parents have modeled aggression to them as an acceptable form of behavior. This theory is defined by Exploring Social Psychology by David G. Myers as a theory that we learn social behavior by observing and imitating and by being rewarded and punished. By observing and experiencing corporal punishment at such a young age, a child will be more likely to imitate the act continuing into their adult life.

Parents are extremely important and looked up to in a child’s eyes. They learn from their parents social norms and how people should behave toward each other. The article continued to state the obvious negative effects of spanking. Thirty-six studies of spanking were analyzed and it was found that parents who said they had spanked their children were three times more likely to say their children had aggressive behavior in the following years.

Parental spanking can be seen as a form of instrumental aggression. This type of aggression is a type that aims to injure, but only as a means to some other end. It is motivated by goals other than harming the target. This relates very well to the idea of spanking because the underlying goal of spanking would not necessarily be to harm the child to a large extent, but to prompt reaction from the child showing that they learned some sort of lesson. The key word of this concept is “aggression.” The ultimate goal of this article was to give evidence as to why any type of aggression, such as spanking, should not be shown or taken out on a child of all people.

Spanking is a form of corporal punishment. The article states that the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has taken action against all types of corporal punishment. The committee’s Global Initiative has persuaded fifty-three countries since 2001 to pass laws banning corporal punishment, even in the privacy of a home.

 

References:

LaMotte, Sandee, and Carina Storrs. “Can Spanking Lead to Relationship Violence?” CNN, Cable News

Network, 6 Dec. 2017, www.cnn.com/2017/12/05/health/spanking-dating-violence-study/index.html.

Myers, David G. Exploring Social Psychology. 7th ed., McGraw-Hill, 2012. Berlin, Lisa J., et al. “Correlates and Consequences of Spanking and Verbal Punishment for Low-IncomeWhite, African American, and Mexican American Toddlers.” Child Development, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 2009, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2987237/.

In a recent article released on November 11, 2017 by National Public Radio: Health News, there was an overview of some instances in which a man named Dr. Roberto Montenegro had been subject to hurtful displays of discrimination against him.

He speaks of the night that he had gone out with friends to celebrate the great achievement of receiving his PhD, which brought him one step closer to his dream of becoming a physician-scientist. At the end of dinner, Dr. Montenegro and his girlfriend left to pick up their car from the valet. While waiting in line, a Jaguar pulled up to the curb. A woman got out of the Jaguar and passed two other couples before stumbling upon Dr. Montenegro and his girlfriend. She dropped her keys in Dr. Montenegro’s hands, assuming that he was a valet because of his race. The other valet’s were Latino, like Dr. Montenegro and so the woman made an incorrect assumption. This happened twice that night.

Discrimination is unjustified negative behavior toward a group or its members. There is a clear show of discrimination and stereotyping. In this situation, Dr. Montenegro experienced an instance in which the woman in the Jaguar made an overgeneralization. She presumed that all Latino people hold low paying jobs and in this case, that Dr. Montenegro could not have been a highly educated and professional Doctor. Her behavior was clearly discriminatory because she directly singled out Dr. Montenegro as a valet.

Another concept that could be at play in this situation is a process of stereotyping called subtyping. Subtyping occurs when a person responds to a member of a target group who disassociates from their stereotype by seeing them as “exceptions.” They put this member of the target group in a separate subcategory apart from members who confirm the stereotype. For instance, the woman driving the Jaguar, after realizing that Dr. Montenegro was not a valet, could’ve simply believed that he was an “exception,” to her personally confirmed belief in the stereotype that all Latino people.

Dr. Montenegro explains how he has endured many other instances of discrimination and felt just as confused and shocked each time. He now has an M.D. in addition to his Ph.D. and is a postdoctoral fellow in child psychiatry at Seattle Children’s Hospital. He seeks to find out if repeated experience of discrimination has effect on the human body and what those effects would be.

“Assessing mediators between discrimination, health behaviours and physical health outcomes: a representative cross-sectional study,” is one of the first studies to demonstrate that discrimination is associated with physical health outcomes and behaviors through distinct pathways. The results of the study helped to demonstrate that stress, lack of control and feeling powerless as a reaction to racism emerged as significant mediators of the relationship between racism and self-rated general mental health.

Dr. Montenegro, similarly to the results of the cross-sectional study, hypothesizes that chronic stress might be a key way racism contributes to health disparities. The idea is that the stress of experiencing discrimination over and over might wear you down physically over time. The study stated previously has found proof to this idea. Dr. Montenegro, after experiencing continuing experiences with discrimination, may suffer similar symptoms later on in life just as the participants in this study. It was shown that discrimination was negatively related to many health behaviors in the participants. For example stress levels were elevated and people were less likely to engage in leisure time, physical activity, and fruit and vegetable consumption due to prolonged depressive moods. Hopefully, with more knowledge on this subject Dr. Montegro and others will be aware of the health issues and seek ways to fight it.

 

CITATIONS

Bichell, Rae Ellen. “Scientists Start To Tease Out The Subtler Ways Racism Hurts Health.” NPR, NPR, 11Nov. 2017, www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/11/11/562623815/scientists-start-to-tease-out-the-subtler-ways-racism-hurts-health.

Myers, David G. Exploring Social Psychology. 7th ed., McGraw-Hill, 2012.

Bastos, J. L., Celeste, R. K., Silva, D. S., Priest, N., & Paradies, Y. C. (2015). Assessing mediators between discrimination, health behaviours and physical health outcomes: A representative cross-sectional study. Social Psychiatry And Psychiatric Epidemiology, 50(11), 1731-1742. doi:10.1007/s00127-015-1108-0