Spanking and Poverty
How parents choose to discipline their children is a deeply personal choice; but what about when it isn’t a choice at all?
Listen, I spank my kids. But I’m a strict parent, and I’ve seen what happens to children who lack discipline. This sentiment has echoed across my life so many times. First, during my financially unstable childhood, by my mother and other similarly exhausted grownups. Up to today; by chatty acquaintances and brusque strangers throughout my relatively stable, but still low income, Queens community. Honestly, though, what does it mean? When did we decide to conflate discipline with violence; is it not possible to have one without the other?
A host of factors contribute to home violence; with race, gender and inherited trauma being high indicators. However, overarching these contributing factors is financial instability. Spanking and corporal punishment rise higher as the discipline of choice for families with lower incomes. It is essential to acknowledge that, although most financially insecure families DO NOT physically abuse their children, children in low-income homes are three times more likely than economically secure children to experience violence (Conrad-Hiebner). Poverty and abuse are often intertwined processes. Impoverished parents lack the time, resources, and support necessary to implement other sorts of non-violent discipline.
Poor parents, especially poor single parents, are forced to work long hours for less money at jobs that are both physically and mentally taxing, only to scrape by with barely the necessities. And sometimes without them. When these parents make it home they pull a longer second shift, that amounts to more of a constant assault. Thus begins the budgeting with pennies for home maintenance, deciding what bills must be paid and what can be turned off for a few days; then the inevitable bargaining with co-workers for extra shifts to pay for unexpected car maintenance, childcare, school fees, braces, and urgent care visits. Parenting while poor is ensuring that everyone is getting what they need when the idea of enough is always slightly out of grasp. Very little time exists for unexpected disciplinary issues.
When these parents encounter poor behavior they often don’t have the time, or energy, to engage in long discourses or extended forms of discipline. Who will oversee the timeouts or months-long groundings? Who will make sure the teacher gets her handwritten apology? Who’s checking to make sure that Timmy is making his bed every morning? Especially when mom or dad is the first out the door in the morning, and the last home at night? Parents are looking for quick and impactful punishments, that they hope that will dissuade the child from repeating that behavior ever again, and here enters spanking.
Of course, we know that spanking doesn’t work out that way. A short term solution like spanking at best yields short term results. After a spanking most children will generally wait just a small amount of time before repeating the behavior, only now tacking on an increased element of secrecy. Fear abates. Physical violence doesn’t get to the root of the behavior or redirect the impulse. It only serves to confuse the child. They walk away having learned nothing except a suspicion of their caregiver and a sense that their body is at risk. Recent studies reveal how detrimental the long term effects of spankings are on people; linking it to increased alcoholism, drug use, poverty, and risk of suicide in adults (Afifi). And really who is to blame? The parents, for whom few other options are available? Or the system that forces them to sacrifice their relationship to their children in order to provide for them?
A less sympathetic voice would insist that it is the parents choice to have these children; therefore, their inability to provide the care they would like to give is their own fault. However, in 2019 we live in a world where access to sex education, contraceptive aid, and family planning support are essentially nonexistent in most places. Not to mention mental health care. Which is expensive and still viewed by many to be an ineffective luxury of the wealthy. Economically disadvantaged parents are often doing the best they can, entirely on their own.
When we realize that spanking is less of parenting decision and more of a toxic stress response to parenting-while-poor, then we as a society can come together and do the necessary work of providing stabilizing measures for impoverished or at risk families. Measures like free quality community childcare, family therapy, and increased government aid for impoverished families. The cycle of violence in underserved communities can be attributed, in far too many instances, to a lack of community support. Most parents don’t want to hurt their children, they would much rather implement more effective disciplinary strategies. They just lack the resources, and it’s up to us as a society to provide them. Until we choose to invest in vulnerable families these destructive cycles will continue to persist. We owe it to the children of our nation to change the narrative around corporal punishment and to provide essential aid to the parents who need it most.
Works Cited:
Afifi, T. O., Ford, D., Gershoff, E. T., Merrick, M., Grogan-Kaylor, A.,Ports, K. A., … Bennett,
R. P. (2017). Spanking and adult mental health impairment: The case for the designation of spanking as an adverse childhood experience. Child Abuse & Neglect, 71,24–31.
Brigid Schulte, WASHINGTON BUREAU. “Study Takes a Hard Slap at Effectiveness of
Spanking//Kids 6 to 9 Misbehave More, Researcher Says; Others Defend Practice.” St. Paul Pioneer Press (MN), 15 Aug. 1997. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsnba&AN=0EDCB7DD8DBE6B9C&site=eds-live.
Burkhart, Kimberly, et al. “Decreasing Caregivers’ Positive Attitudes Toward Spanking.” Journal
of Pediatric Health Care, vol. 32, no. 4, July 2018, pp. 333–339. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1016/j.pedhc.2017.11.007.
Conrad-Hiebner, Aislinn, and Katherine W. Paschall. “Determining Risk for Child Physical
Harm through the Classification of Economic Insecurity.” Children and Youth Services Review, vol. 78, July 2017, pp. 161–169.