When Parents Beat Their Kids, How Does The Us System Function?

Hitting a child can lead to distress, anger, fear, shame, and disgust, which can result in children becoming bullies and future abusers of their own children and partners. Many US professional organizations have recommended parents refrain from hitting children, but research shows that physical punishment is associated with increased delinquency, antisocial behavior, and aggression in children, while decreasing the behavior.

Most parents will experience hitting at some point during their parenting journey, and most evaluation programs are behaviorally based. In these programs, parents are encouraged to be more responsible and discipline their children. The use of physical force against children has deep roots, with many American adults believing that children sometimes need a good hard spanking from their parents.

Corporal punishment involves the application of some form of physical pain in response to undesirable behavior. It is legal to hit a child in all fifty US states and the District of Columbia, but states differ widely about what is allowed. The law generally allows parents to choose how they discipline their children, but serious issues can arise under both civil and criminal laws.

The Texas code allows school personnel to hit children with objects (“paddling”) and use “any other physical force” to control them, as long as it takes the form of spanking or slapping the child with an open hand or striking with an implement such as a belt, slipper, cane, hairbrush, paddle, etc.

This study suggests that children who are physically punished are running the same brain circuitry as children who have been abused. While it is illegal in the US, it never occurred to me that in 2022 it would be at all common. If the parent commits wanton and needless cruelty upon their child, either by imprisonment of this character or by inhuman beating, the law will punish him.