Of course, children shouldn’t be abused, physically or in any other way. Nevertheless, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reports that 1,600 children die annually from abuse and neglect. Close to 700,000 suffer from non-fatal abuse. And the Department of Agriculture reports that 15 percent of American households are “food insecure,” yet another type of abuse.
Then there’s the spanking. We use the term to describe a variety of practices that range from a gentle, open-handed pat on a young child’s behind to extended thrashings of older children with hairbrushes and coat hangers.
However we define spanking, we do a lot of it. A study from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, published in 2010 by Child Abuse Review, indicates that 80 percent of children ages 3 to 5 years are spanked. A prominent study by Elizabeth Gershoff of Columbia University reports that more than 90 percent of Americans were spanked as children.
[Photo by Emily/Flickr]
[For more of this story, written by John M. Crisp, go to http://ireader.olivesoftware.com/Olive/iReader/ProvidenceJournalPress/SharedArticle.ashx?document=TPJ%5C2014%5C08%5C07&article=Ar01501]
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