A recent report by the Federal Trade Commission charging the entertainment industry with marketing adult fare to youth has triggered another round of discussion on the causes of youth violence. Unfortunately, once again we are looking at the media as the cause of violence.
Experts are uncertain about the effects of virtual violence on the real thing. “No direct, causal link between exposure to mock violence in the media and subsequent violent behavior has ever been demonstrated,” wrote Richard Rhodes in a Sept. 17 New York Times op-ed. Rhodes is a journalist/author who has written on youth violence for many years. And, Rhodes continued, “the few claims of modest correlation have been contradicted by other findings, sometimes in the same studies.”
However, there is little uncertainty among experts that corporal punishment of children, or spanking, is a major cause of interpersonal violence. The evidence is so compelling it has prompted a lengthening number of European countries to outlaw spanking. In the U.S., corporal punishment in public schools was once the norm but now is being banned in a growing number of states. But the movement has yet to make a media splash (except in Oakland, Calif., where an official proposed the city be declared a “no-spanking zone.”).
Americans, by and large, are wedded to the notion that sparing the rod spoils the child. And although the practice of corporal punishment has taken a beating elsewhere in the Western world it remains a big hit here. When our political leaders discuss youth violence, the tradition of adult violence on youth is seldom broached.
In the wake of the FTC report, the Senate called hearings and the presidential candidates seized the opportunity to amplify their contempt for the corrupting influence of popular culture–even as they rake in millions of dollars from industry fat cats. Despite the lack of clear evidence linking virtual violence to literal violence, the entertainment industry remains a popular target of blame. Politicians would be foolish (politically speaking) to ignore the electoral power of that popularity. Cursing Hollywood is good politics, even if it is barking up the wrong tree.
But there is something Americans can do that most experts say would reduce levels of interpersonal violence: Stop spanking children. At least 40 professional organizations–among them, the National PTA, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association, the National Association of Social Workers, The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, etc.–have issued position papers opposing the corporal punishment of children. Despite this widespread consensus on the need to spare the rod, it’s a sure bet that few politicians will begin spouting anti-spanking rhetoric any time soon. Most Americans absolutely refuse to give up the right to inflict pain on their children. The right to spank even has assumed ideological dimensions; last year the state legislatures of Oklahoma and Nevada passed laws that actually encouraged corporal punishment. Some Christian conservatives construe the anti-spanking movement as part of a conspiracy to undermine scriptural prescriptions of child rearing. A socialist plot to feminize America, goes another theory.
In Europe, corporal punishment of children in homes, day care and school is on the way out; it already has been banned outright in nine countries (Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Austria, Croatia, Cyprus, Latvia and Italy – the United Kingdom could well be next) and the list is growing rapidly. Leaders in those countries concluded that the costs of corporal punishment were too high to pay for a society that called itself civilized.
Aside from the sheer injustice of imposing an act of physical violence on someone smaller and weaker, there are the practical considerations. Does it work? Studies by Murray Strauss, a sociologist at the University of New Hampshire and Irwin Hyman, a psychologist at Temple University, among others, have shown that corporal punishment is spectacularly ineffective in managing behavior. Disastrously, it teaches young people that violence is an acceptable option for resolving disputes. What’s more, the American Academy of Pediatrics found that spanked children faced a much higher risk of developing aggressive behavior, low self-esteem, depression and alcoholism.
But these arguments are unlikely to change the attitudes of those addicted to child punishment. Just as men once declared their “biblical” right to punch their wives’ lights out, we cling to the primitive belief that we can assault our children whenever we deem it appropriate. If our politicians really wanted to get at the causes of youth violence, they would convene a hearing on corporal punishment tomorrow.
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Salim MuwakkilSalim Muwakkil is a senior editor at In These Times magazine. E-mail: salim4x@aol.com
