The “Moms’ Eye View” series highlights timely parenting themes and issues that emerge from the Circle of Moms community. The topics and questions that fascinate moms the most are the fodder for this space; for each Moms’ Eye post, we select one particularly lively thread and attempt to capture the consensus (or lack of consensus) that percolates through the thread.
What is child abuse? There are many different ways of looking at it: are swats on the bottom considered abuse? How about spanking? Yelling? Name calling? And where do the moms of Circle of Moms – some 8 million strong – draw the line?
Almost a hundred responded to a recent thread posted in one of Circle of Moms’ largest and most diverse communities asking for a definition of child abuse. The vast majority agreed that spanking seems to lie in a grey area between abuse and punishment. Here’s what they said:
Krista, mother of one, says, “Some tactics and approaches are very obviously abusive to a child. But when looking at the gray area of things like spanking and yelling, I would say that it becomes abusive when it negatively affects the child’s health, or their sense of security, safety and comfort with his or her parents.”
Melissa, mother of one, agrees with Krista saying, “I feel that spanking is appropriate when used in the right manner, like if [he] is about do something to hurt [himself] or someone else. I feel that when a child becomes afraid of you that’s when it has turned abusive.”
Sara, mother of one in Louisiana, was spanked as a child by parents she considers loving and demonstrative. As she explains, “I think it is the manner in which a child is spanked that makes the child afraid or not afraid. I knew that if I disobeyed, fought with my sister, etc. I would get a spanking. The point is don’t spank out of anger. If you have a tendency to “lose it” then spanking shouldn’t be something that you do.”
And Kylie, mother of one in Australia, believes that the word abuse stretches over other parental actions as well, “abuse is any action verbal or physical that is used to harm or break down a child. You don’t have to leave a mark to be abusive. Words can be just as abusive as a belt.” Jackie, mother of one, adds “also remember there is another form of ‘abuse’ which is child neglect; the lack of appropriate care, which in my experience, can be just as harmful to a child.”
Interestingly, The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends against spanking, which they’ve found to be no more effective than any other approach in managing undesired behavior, and moms generally agree. If spanking is done out of anger and without proper explanation, they say, it renders the message of the spanking pointless while creating an aura of abuse. And as Sandi, mother of one in England, points out, “if it’s pointless you may as well not do it in the first place.”
What do you think?
For more information:
- “So what IS child abuse” thread
Child abuse comes in many forms, each harmful, and none more detrimental than the other, in my opinion. Take for example: spanking- this is physical punishment, and if taken to the extreme, is child abuse; but if done with discretion and totally without anger, can be a tool to reprimand, and teach that wrongdoing has painful consequences. However, while name- calling and degrading words spoken from a parent to a child may not be physically harmful, these can have lasting psychological effects, the scars of which may never go away and may negatively affect the child’s life forever. We must be careful to punish our children when they purposefully do what is wrong, so that we raise a generation that has a good conscience and feels responsible for their own actions. But our punishment must be done with kindness and the goal to guide our children to be the best example of goodness that they can be.