The Line

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Minding The Line
Dale Lewis

Professor Meredith
ENGL. 1302: Sec. 2230

10 May 2016

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Table of contents
Writing topic………………………………………………………………………………2
Original Image…………………………………………………………………………….3
Annotated Bibliography…………………………………………………………………...4
Edited Image………………………………………………………………………………6
Essay………………………………………………………………………………………7
Works Cited……………………………………………………………………………...11

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Writing project 3 topic
My project will discuss the importance of recognizing that there is a line between
disciplining your child and actually abusing your child. I will use my visual argument to
emphasize the extreme case of child abuse. Disciplining your child has been an argument
that has been on going since the younger generations credibility for an opinion, meaning
they grew up to where their opinions were not disregarded due to age, and until the issue
is officially resolved the argument will stay in American culture well beyond a decade in
the future.

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Annotated Bibliography
Source 1) Picture
Citation: Weddle, Kirk. Nevermind. Album cover. 1991. Pasedena.
Relevance: I chose this picture to express the extreme case of attitude correction in a
child. In this case it is a young child being thrown into a pool. This will hopefully help
people to recognize the line of misbehavior correction and the utter abuse of a child that
fails to understand most reasoning due to the fact that the child is so young. It makes the
argument of the line needs to be minded instead of eliminated.

Source 2) Okey Chigbo (For corrective child behavior tools and against anti
spanking)
Citation: Chigbo, Okey. "Disciplinary Spanking Is Not Child Abuse." Child Abuse. Ed.
Louise I. Gerdes. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2004. Opposing Viewpoints. Rpt. from
"Antispanking Activists Should Take a Time-Out." Next City (Summer 1998). Opposing
Viewpoints in Context. Web. 4 May 2016.
Relevance: This article makes the argument for the spanking of children and the arguable
fact that it is considered child abuse due to the alleged theories concerning the mental
well being of a child who has been subjected to “abuse”. He takes into account the many
studies that have been gathered against his standpoint and refutes many of them with
simple fact and statistic. He is not however for the complete ignorance of somebody who
only swats their misbehaving child but defends the parents who use swats sparingly with
the pairing of verbal warning and proper actions taken.

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Source 3) Brenda Smith (American Psychological Association)
Citation: Smith, Brenda L. "The Case Against Spanking." American Psychological

Association. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 May 2016.
Relevance: This article makes the argument against spanking and all forms or what they

call corporal punishment due to the numerous studies that say it condones
violence in children. She also uses statistical evidence gathered from these studies
to argue that it would be better to use a non-violent approach that would help
build trust between a parent and their child. Smith believes that spanking and
other forms of corporal punishment only solve the issue in terms of short-term
solutions and fails to recognize the long-term effects that such abuse could inflict
onto a child.

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Discipline: Minding the Line
It has been argued over the more recent years that swatting a child, spanking, or
physical correction, in response to an action viewed as misbehaving, is seen as abuse. By
a very broad definition with no regard to the situation, environment, or behavior, it is
considered abuse. However, the definition given to us by the Canadian Pediatric Society
states, "[It] is physically noninjurious, administered with an opened hand to the buttocks,
and intended to modify behavior"(Chigbo). This definition, which was accepted by the
American Academy of Pediatrics, explains that spanking, or swatting, your child in a way
that does not injure your child but corrects misbehavior, is not deemed child abuse, but in
fact recognizes that there is a line, between child abuse and disciplinary action, that
people need to see. Not as creating theorized negative long-term defects, but to teach a
lesson in cause and effect, action and consequence, and bring to light an issue that is key
to understanding the culture of the American populace.
The image depicted personifies the extreme case of child abuse in which the
action taken against the behavior of the child was, and will be, considered abuse. But this
image is to show the extreme case that most people are relating simple attitude correction
to. Many anti-spanking supporters will associate any contact between a parent’s hand and
a child’s buttox with any and all forms of child abuse, such as attempting to drown the
child, punching a child, or whipping a child. In fact, corporal punishment, as it is often
described, is supposed to be an action taken after the child has expressed refusal to
authoritative command. The argument either for or against the approval of the actions
taken to correct a child’s behavior has been on going since the emergence of the
millennial generation’s credibility to an opinion, meaning that the generation had grown

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old enough to argue their point of view without being written off as juveniles. Therefore
this issue on whether or not the line of child abuse should be drawn at the very contact of
skin or not will be relevant well beyond a decade from today.

Chigbo in his argument states that spanking is and should remain a tool for
disciplinary correction. Should it be the first tool to reach for when selecting the
appropriate action to misbehavior? No, but it should not be considered abuse. To outlaw
the use of spanking would lead to a dramatic increase in adolescent crime. We can see
this correlation by comparing the rates of crimes from a time when spanking was widely
accepted in American culture and today. Harvard's James Q. Wilson, author of Crime and
Human Nature and The Moral Sense writes that, “[…] there is at least three times as
much violent crime today as there was 30 years ago”(Chigbo). He says this while also
using the statistic that 99 percent of people back then accepted the use of spanking as
opposed to the 70 to 90 percent of people today. Further study reveals and challenges the
claim that spanking causes societal violence. Between the years of 1985 and 1993, crime
decreased by 20 percent among males 25 or older while at the same time increasing for
males ages 14 to 17 by 165 percent, this is according to the U.S. crime statistic. Even if
you were to make the claim that Americans are by nature more violent, Sweden in 1979
outlawed spanking. Since then teen violence has risen by over six times the original
amount. Non-abusive spanking researcher Dr. Robert Larzelere declares that “[w]hat is
happening in Sweden is gang violence, mobbing as they call it over there”(Chigbo). He
later explains that within the past ten years, in Sweden alone, that violence has
dramatically increased. Therefore the argument that spanking induces violence can be
refuted by global statistics.

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In opposition to the argument Dr. Graham-Bermann states that physical discipline
can stop the behavior but only in short term aspects while also creating long-term defects
such as increased aggressiveness. In relation to her claim, there was a study in Child
Abuse and Neglect that concluded that families that endorsed physical punishment had
children that believed that violence was the solution to solving conflicts with others their
age. It has also been concluded that physical punishment could lead to mental disabilities
and antisocial behavior according to the alleged numerous studies conducted.

To counter offer a solution to the issue Dr. Alan Kazdin proposes a reverse
psychology approach to the issue. By allowing children to throw practice tantrums while
under the supervision of a calm, authoritative adult, the child will be subject to a lessened
tantrum when it cam time to throw one. This will give the parent or guardian a chance to
use nonviolence to solve the issue and avoid physically correcting the child entirely. This
paired with time-outs and a strong disciplinary plan that rewards good behavior can help
build a trust between the child and parent and teach that discipline is not arbitrary or done
out of anger. But in sparing the rod and considering any contact of hand to child “child
abuse”, are we also condemning the parents who use the proper method of disciplinary
action to being considered outlaws and be tried for criminal child abuse charges?

The answer would be yes. People are associating all contact to a child a form of
abuse and, in exaggeration, a prehistoric method to correcting a child’s behavior. But the
fact of the matter is that there is a line between child abuse and disciplinary correction
that people are failing to see. In one instance you have someone whose only method of
correction would be to hit his or her child whereas someone who offered the chance for
reasoning was refused and resulted to a swift non-injury effecting action diffusing what

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could have been a loud and disruptive situation. To eliminate the line would mean that
the only way to raise a child would be from a step away and talk to a being that does not
fully understand reasoning and logic. To facilitate methods that take away the authority a
parent should have and replace it with methods that condone the act of throwing a fit
because someone said no to a child. It is not about instilling violence in a child, it is
teaching that there are consequences to actions that cross the line and if a parent were to
cross the line of child abuse, which results in injury and increased aggressive behavior in
their child, then there are also consequences to those actions they the parents failed to
see. Therefor the argument that will continue on into the future should not be whether or
not swatting a child is child abuse but where the line lays that accommodates the correct
use of the method while also defining that too much of any physical action taken in
response to misbehavior is in fact child abuse.

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Works Cited
Smith, Brenda L. "The Case Against Spanking." American Psychological Association.

N.p., n.d. Web. 04 May 2016.
Chigbo, Okey. "Disciplinary Spanking Is Not Child Abuse." Child Abuse. Ed. Louise I.

Gerdes. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2004. Opposing Viewpoints. Rpt. from
"Antispanking Activists Should Take a Time-Out." Next City (Summer 1998).
Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 4 May 2016.
Weddle, Kirk. Nevermind. Album cover. 1991. Pasedena.