“What a child doesn’t re­ceive he can sel­dom lat­er give.” -P.D. James (Phyl­lis Dorothy James), nov­el­ist (Aug 3, 1920-2014)

For many, spank­ing is con­sid­ered a nor­mal re­ac­tion of an adult to a “mis­be­hav­ing” child. “Spare the rod and spoil the child!” sort of thing.

Apart from the ghast­ly thought that it is fine to hit any­one, un­less in self de­fence, far less a small­er crea­ture, with a “rod” (de­fined as a long, thin, straight bar or stick made of wood, met­al, or oth­er hard ma­te­r­i­al), or whether we use it in the Bib­li­cal sense, rod mean­ing dis­ci­pline, au­thor­i­ty or di­vine pow­er which it­self eas­i­ly be­comes an ex­cuse to use strength to force some­one small­er to do some­thing that the hold­er of the “rod” wish­es. This moves us in­to the realm of au­thor­i­tar­i­an, “strong­man” prin­ci­ples to de­fend cru­el­ty, in this case, to chil­dren.

This em­pha­sis on cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment was not al­ways so. Every ob­ser­va­tion of ear­ly hunter-gath­er­er and trib­al so­ci­eties over thou­sands of years, in­clud­ing those that per­sist to this day, il­lus­trates that child rear­ing was deeply com­mu­nal and high-con­tact. Child­care re­lied on “co­op­er­a­tive rais­ing,” where mul­ti­ple care­givers, old­er sib­lings, grand­par­ents and oth­er tribe mem­bers shared the dai­ly work of hold­ing, feed­ing, and watch­ing young chil­dren.

This is the “it takes a vil­lage to raise a child” con­cept, which para­dox­i­cal­ly comes to us from var­i­ous African cul­tures and is praised in our so­ci­ety but which is sel­dom prac­tised to­day, even though it is the bi­o­log­i­cal norm for hu­mans. It was cer­tain­ly prac­tised in Wood­brook in the 50s when I was grow­ing up.

What has gone wrong? Why do adults spank chil­dren? First­ly, it is to al­le­vi­ate their own dis­com­fort in the mo­ment. This may be par­tial­ly due to an over­load of stress, but it may al­so be due to a mis­un­der­stand­ing of child de­vel­op­ment. Para­dox­i­cal­ly, as we have learned more about child de­vel­op­ment, it’s be­come clear that too many adults mis­un­der­stand it, lead­ing to un­re­al­is­tic ex­pec­ta­tions. In a way, there is a sur­feit of in­for­ma­tion, which has tripled with the ad­vent of so­cial me­dia, every­one be­liev­ing they are ex­perts on chil­dren.

Spank­ing is fam­i­ly vi­o­lence and a pre­cur­sor to so­cial vi­o­lence.

Un­der­stand­ing child de­vel­op­men­tal needs can help adults avoid re­act­ing with pun­ish­ment when a child does not go along with their plans. It helps to un­der­stand the way chil­dren at dif­fer­ent ages learn. Yet, the idea that chil­dren learn in dif­fer­ent ways at dif­fer­ent ages, and they should not be pun­ished for it but sup­port­ed in their learn­ing by build­ing up their self-con­fi­dence, is not ac­cept­ed.

Ba­bies, for ex­am­ple, learn about life from be­ing phys­i­cal­ly close to and in the arms of re­spon­sive care­givers. This is be­cause ba­bies are rapid­ly de­vel­op­ing brain and body sys­tems and need help learn­ing to es­tab­lish and reg­u­late their sys­tems in healthy ways. They can­not learn to do this un­less they feel se­cure and con­fi­dent in their sur­round­ings. That means they must trust the big­ger ones around them. Self-con­fi­dence is not built up by beat­ing.

It all starts with the ba­by feel­ing safe.

Tod­dlers learn from mov­ing their bod­ies, run­ning and climb­ing and ex­plor­ing their en­vi­ron­ments. Ex­plo­ration is es­sen­tial for prop­er de­vel­op­ment. De­vel­op­men­tal mile­stones take place in a par­tic­u­lar or­der and must be met for the child to de­vel­op nor­mal­ly. First, the ba­by be­gins to see ob­jects - a face. The face smiles at the child. The child re­sponds. That brings more smiles to the face and words that calm. The child hears the words and be­gins to im­i­tate the words. That brings more smiles. The process re­peats and be­comes more com­pli­cat­ed. But it all be­gan with a smile from the par­ent. No smile, no speech. De­pend­ing on the in­ti­ma­cy of the re­la­tion­ship al­ready es­tab­lished, a frown or a harsh word at any stage may in­ter­rupt the process.

Fi­nal­ly, play is the way chil­dren learn best. It must be self-di­rect­ed. The child learns what it needs to learn. It can­not be led or di­rect­ed by adults. Adults of­ten mis­un­der­stand this and pun­ish its ap­pear­ance.

A rea­son for this mis­un­der­stand­ing is that most adults nowa­days were treat­ed harsh­ly in ear­ly life and de­vel­oped a neu­ro­bi­ol­o­gy of fear, un­der-de­vel­op­ing their so­cial-emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gences, lead­ing to fear­ful re­ac­tions to ‘strange oth­ers’ of one kind or an­oth­er. The pat­terned re­sponse can be ag­gres­sive or ar­ro­gant as self-pro­tec­tion for deep in­se­cu­ri­ty.

A trau­ma­tis­ing cul­ture ac­tive­ly dis­cour­ages at­tune­ment to the young (e.g., ‘it’s nor­mal for ba­bies to cry’) and does not pro­vide the sup­port need­ed for par­ents and car­ers to be nur­tur­ing. And so, gen­er­a­tions of un­der-nur­tur­ing and faulty care con­tin­ue.