Above all thought, children are linked to adults by the simple fact that they are in the process of turning into them. — (Phillip Larkin (1923-1986)
In Massachusetts An Act Relative to Nonviolent Discipline.
Section 24M. The Department of Public Health shall collaborate with the Massachusetts Children’s Trust fund, the Department of Education, the Department of Early Education and Care, and the Department of Children and Families to develop and implement a comprehensive and coordinated state-wide public awareness campaign to expand the knowledge of parents, caregivers, and the general public on the advantages associated with the use of positive parenting techniques. The department shall work with public and private universities and not for profit organizations to obtain grants and private funds to implement the provisions of this section. For the purposes of this section, positive parenting is a non-violent, solution-focused approach that includes but is not limited to: clear communication of expectation, rules, and limits; building a mutually respectful relationship with the child; teaching the child life-long skills; and developing long-term solutions that develop the child’s own self-discipline.
The Law Still Stops for Some Family Members
On page 19 of the 1984, United States Department of Justice Attorney General’s Task Force on Family Violence report it notes that, “An assault is a crime regardless of the relationship of the parties.” On the same page it also notes that, “The law should not stop at the front door of the family home.” The fact is that the law continues to stop at the front door for family assaults only against children including assaults with belts or other injurious instruments.
It should also be obvious that we cannot arrest and incarcerate our way to safer homes, families or neighborhoods. Most public policy makers and domestic violence interveners, fail to recognize that the criminal justice system provides reactionary not preventative interventions. Education not incarceration and proper role models are the best and most cost effective panaceas for assaults inside and outside our homes.
Domestic Violence Laws
Massachusetts General Law 209A define abuse and domestic violence, in part, as the following:
“Abuse”, the occurrence of one or more of the following acts between family or household members:
(a) Attempting to cause or causing physical harm;
There is nothing in the majority of laws that limit domestic violence to chronic or serious assault or to a specific age or gender. However, in most states a threat, a simple attempted assault, a minor battery between adults or a custodial dispute can trigger a mandatory arrest. Assaults against children continue to be minimized or dismissed as harmless.
To read the Massachusetts law, in its entirety please use the above 209A hyperlink. If you want to read individual state domestic violence laws please use this state law hyperlink.
The United States Department of Justice defines domestic violence in part, as the following:
We define domestic violence as a pattern of abusive behavior in any relationship that is used by one partner to gain or maintain power and control over another intimate partner. Domestic violence can be physical, sexual, emotional, economic, or psychological actions or threats of actions that influence another person. This includes any behaviors that intimidate, manipulate, humiliate, isolate, frighten, terrorize, coerce, threaten, blame, hurt, injure, or wound someone.
If you want to read the complete United States Department of Justice (USDOJ) definition of domestic violence please click here.
If you want to read this authors columns about the many dangers inherent in state and federal laws that label every act of family conflict, regardless of how minor or serious, as domestic violence crimes please use this hyperlink Understanding Domestic Violence.
Role Modeling
Research reveals that there is rarely a single reason or simple solution for anything. However, criminal justice data suggest that family or community role modeling are primary reasons for the replication of physical assaultive behavior. Criminal justice data documents that the majority of violent offenders come from homes where assaultive behavior is common, many of the offenders live in violent neighborhoods and the home of their parents or community does not value the role of education. It can be that simple.
Physical Assault
A physical assault is generally defined as intentional physical contact with another person without their consent.
(1) Spanking is a physical assault that is used by a parent or guardian to gain or maintain the dominant parental position in the family and is used to control or alter the behavior of the child.
(2) On page 2 of the Glossary section of the EBPCEV report it provides the USDOJ definition of domestic violence. The USDOJ definition could be summarized as, “coercive behavior or a physical assault that is used by one intimate partner to gain or maintain the dominant position in the relationship and is used to control or alter the behavior of the other intimate partner.”
(3) On page 4 of the same section the EBPCEV report notes that Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is a serious, preventable public health problem that affects millions of Americans. This type of violence can occur among heterosexual or same-sex couples and does not require sexual intimacy.
Spanking (1) above is a physical assault that remains condoned behavior in all fifty states. The majority of Americans continue to use or condone this form of physically assaultive behavior. However, all fifty states condemn the physical assaults in (2) and (3) above and most of the physical assaultive behaviors in (2) and (3) are recognized as domestic violence crimes.
It is difficult to understand this disconnect of logic or reasoning (2 & 3 are crimes while 1 remains accepted behavior). Perhaps, one explanation for this particular and peculiar acceptance is that most Americans are unwilling or unable to recognize spanking as physically assaultive behavior that rises to abusive behavior or a crime because most Americans continue to assault their children and believe spankings are necessary for reasons of discipline.
Children’s Exposure to Violence (CEV)
On April 5th, 2011 the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (USHHS) jointly released the report Evidence-Based Practices for Children Exposed to Violence: A Selection from Federal Databases (EBPCEV).
However, both the USDOJ and the USHHS have yet to acknowledge the basic finding of their report. Neither the USDOJ nor USHHS has taken a formal public stand against all familial physical assaults.
Historically, the reason most often given for condoning the use of physical assaults by authorities in the community or the family was that these physical assaults are used only when they are necessary to maintain community or family discipline. On page 1 of the glossary section of the EBPCEV it notes that:
Physical abuse is the use of physical force such as hitting, kicking, shaking, burning or other show of force against a child (italics added).
Most public policy makers, domestic violence interveners, members of the media and the general public have decided that physical assaults between adult family members are abusive behavior while family physical assaults against children by adults are not. In 20 states our public policy makers, domestic violence interveners, members of the media and the general public have decided that schools may continue physically assaulting children and in all fifty sates we continue to condone parents physically assaulting children and that includes beating them with belts.
On page 9 of the glossary section of the EBPCEV report the first intervention listed is primary prevention. Primary prevention attempts to prevent the problem from occurring. Central to this legislative effort are strategies that attempt to prevent the initial victimization or perpetration.
In the final section of the EBPCEV report it lists prevention and intervention efforts. Listed last are indicated interventions. The EBPCEV report notes that indicated interventions are approaches that intervene with people who have already perpetrated violence or have already been victimized. Indicated intervention is the primary role of law enforcement.
Cognitive Dissonance
The majority of Americans oppose legislation that would prevent or limit spanking because it flies in the face of their personal experience and they do not encounter a cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance arises from the uneasy and awkward feelings caused by holding two opposed ideas in mind at the same time. Many Americans seem unwilling or unable to accept that hitting someone to teach them that hitting someone is wrong, is wrong.
However, on a national level many surveys reveal most people [about 75%] do believe it is wrong for people who are not parents or guardians to hit children to change or alter their behavior. At the same time other surveys reveal that people [about 75%] believe it is right for parents or guardians to hit children to change or alter their behavior.
Another difficulty is the fact that we have placed almost every family conflict incident regardless of how minor and regardless of individual and specific needs or desires, in a criminal justice system where one person must be found absolutely guilty and the other absolutely innocent. This “only one person is responsible principle” can make it difficult to reach a consensus or compromise on any incident that is not absolutely black or absolutely white.
Regardless, reasonable people should be able to disagree reasonably. The data clearly demonstrate most children who are spanked are well behaved and will become law abiding adults. However, reams of data document that children raised without spanking are also well behaved and grow into law abiding adults. Hence, spanking is not necessary for all children to behave or to achieve law abiding citizenship.
Risk Factors
The majority of people who speed in cars do not get into accidents and kill people. The majority of people who drink alcohol do not become alcoholics. The majority of people who smoke do not get lung cancer. However, that data does not demonstrate that there are no risk factors involved in speeding, drinking alcohol or smoking.
Every state has public educational and health based efforts that demonstrate the potential negative effects and risk factors of the above behaviors. It cannot be denied that immediate and obvious pain and suffering is a negative effect of spanking. Many studies demonstrate that pain and suffering are not the only negative effects of spanking for some children.
In Massachusetts, Family NonViolence Inc. (FNI) is not asking the Commonwealth to criminalize spanking. FNI only asks that the Commonwealth provide education concerning any potential negative risk factors of providing discipline primarily through the use of physical assaults. In Massachusetts, similar to most states, there is no definition of reasonable force and it is legal to discipline children with belts or other injurious instruments. It should be, however it is not, obvious that anyone hitting children with a belt or other injurious instrument is not using reasonable force.
Initial Victimization or Perpetration
Not long ago in America it was legally and morally acceptable for adults who held authority over other adults to physically assault the latter for the purpose of discipline and behavioral correction. In this 21st century this conviction is held primarily by totalitarian regimes.
On page 24 of the findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey report, Extent, Nature, and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence, it documents that:
For example, 40 percent of surveyed women and 54 percent of surveyed men said they were physically assaulted as a child by an adult caretaker.
These findings suggest that many of the physical assaults may be spankings. Contemporarily in America physical assaults between adult family members or between family members of the same age is illegal.
Hence, we remain a society that expects that it can somehow mysteriously and magically both condemn and prevent physical assaultive behavior between family members or intimate partners when they reach adulthood primarily through the use of a reactionary criminal justice system, while continuing to use or accept the use of physical assaults against children.
Discipline
Historically autocratic rulers and the privileged members of society had the right to use physical assaults, both minor and lethal, to control the behavior of the minority or disempowered members of society. Today, many Americans have parents or grandparents who were minority or disempowered members in their community.
In the 1940s and 1950s] the use of corporal punishment was legal and common in American public and private schools. In fact, many people in the academe and the general public believed that physical assaults were not only necessary to achieve discipline in schools they also believed that corporal punishment played a role in the learning process.
Children not only need discipline, many children want to be disciplined. Children become better citizens when they understand the reason for and the purpose of discipline. However, discipline and spanking are not always one and the same. Some studies demonstrate that spanking a child might quickly and temporarily end that specific misbehavior. Spanking often can provide a quick and simple remedy. However, reams of recent research and studies document there are other effective ways to achieve proper behavior.
Today, the majority of states, people, and both public and private schools recognize that discipline and learning can be established without the use of corporal punishment. There are few to no empirical studies that document students who endure corporal punishment will behave or learn better than students who do not.
Empirical Evidence and Common Sense
Spanking should be considered as one of many risk factors for family conflict. The Centers for Disease and Prevention Control list twenty-nine (29) different risk and protective factors just for intimate partner violence.
Empirical Evidence – If you click on the hyperlink the Institute for Economics and Peace you will find a map that documents the states with high rates of violence. If you use this hyperlink World Corporal Punishment Research you will find a map that demonstrates violence is higher in most of the states where corporal punishment is still legal.
If you explore the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics you will discover that most states that use corporal punishment in schools or communities that accept spanking more readily than others have higher rates of aggravated assault than states and communities that do not. It is a fact that correlation does not specifically demonstrate cause. However, this data should demonstrate cause for concern about this particular and curious correlation.
Common Sense 101 – It is not unusual for parents to hit/spank siblings when they fight each other. Is not hitting someone to stop them from hitting someone else illogical?
We cannot expect that children should do as adults say and not do as adults do. Role modeling is the most important learning tool we have. It will be difficult, if not impossible, to teach children in particular and society in general that it is wrong to use physical assaults to resolve family conflict while adults role model physical assaults to resolve family conflict.
Conclusion
Law enforcement officers in all fifty states are mandated to intervene – and in some states mandated to make an arrest – when adult family members use physical assaults against each other, regardless of chronicity or seriousness.
It seems illogical to use a reactive arrest process as the primary procedure to prevent future family physical aggression while at the same time continuing to condone the use of physical aggression by adults against children. Domestic violence interveners, public policy makers, the USDOJ, the USDHHS, and the mainstream media have yet to question these apparent contradictions.
It is time interveners and public policy understand that law enforcement has not and cannot prevent people from using minor or lethal physical assaults, both inside and outside the home. As long as adults continue to role model the use of physical assaults against children and among each other to achieve goals, physical assaultive behavior will continue regardless of age, gender, sexual orientation or relationship. In Massachusetts FNI is attempting to begin this discussion. This discussion is needed because until we begin at the beginning there will be no end in sight.
To read all of the above hyperlinked articles and studies you may use the online hyperlinked version of this paper that can be found at https://familynonviolence.wordpress.com/. If you have any questions about this paper please contact the author, Richard L. Davis, President – Family NonViolence Inc. at rldavis@post.harvard.edu
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