Trigger Warning: Child abuse, domestic violence
We offer so much consideration and understanding to adults. We accept that they make mistakes. We say that teachers and parents are not perfect, and they’re trying their best. Yet, when it comes to children, who, due to their barely developed brains and relatively new arrival to this world, should be deserving of more consideration, we set extremely unrealistic expectations for them and go off on them at the tiniest of mistakes. Normal child behaviour is criticized. From these unrealistic expectations, we accept and deem corporal punishment as necessary.
For example, children’s brains are biologically not as developed enough to exhibit self-control as easily and at the same level as adult brains. So your child is biologically at a disadvantage when it comes to putting down the phone or controlling their temper. You cannot expect them to do so perfectly because you gave them a lecture or tried a less punitive parenting measure. And you can not, in turn, use the failure of those measures to justify corporal punishment as necessary.
It would be best if you ditched those unrealistic expectations you have and once you do that, keep repeating those positive parenting techniques or pushing them in the right direction, patiently, without expectations of an immediate result. As their brains develop, with help from your consistent positive efforts, they will develop the skills.
The same goes for other behaviour. We need to ditch all extreme, perfectionist and immediate expectations of children and give them time and guidance instead of resorting to violence to compel perfection. Even fully developed adults have many of these same problems. Many adults are short-tempered. If you’re using corporal punishment, you’re most likely one of them.
Then why is it so unacceptable that a child might throw tantrums or behave disrespectfully towards parents in a fit of anger? I’m not saying ignore such behaviour, just that it is normal, and as such, any action should be patient and non-punitive and guidance based. Adults struggle and make messes and have huge flaws that result in massive consequences and fail and have so many problems. It is unfair to expect anything less from children.
Children deserve respect. They deserve dignity. Corporal punishment is a highly disrespectful assault on this dignity. Many folks say that a misbehaving child deserves to be spanked or slapped. But, if misbehaviour and making mistakes makes you deserving of physical violence, can a child subject their parents to the same?
Slap their parents when they lose their temper or make a costly mistake at their jobs? How unthinkable that is. Such would instantly be called “No respect for one’s parents. They are not perfect, so what if they lost their temper once?” and categorized as elderly abuse—the hypocrisy.
To those pointing out the age difference, age means you’re supposed to act more rationally, mature, and responsibly. It does not mean that you have special rights to disrespect, insult, or use violence and does not grant you more respect than others. Despite what Indian society might tell you, age is not, in fact, an accomplishment.
Indians have this makes-no-sense belief of the elderly having more rights and more privileges compared to others when logically it should be that they have more of a responsibility than others. Age has long been used as a tool of oppression and a platform of egoistic supremacy.
Corporal Punishment
Many proponents of corporal punishment support a false dichotomy of good and bad corporal punishment. They oppose a complete ban instead of supporting its regulation. The ideal corporal punishment that is good leaves no physical marks or injury, is delivered in private, is used as a last resort when other techniques fail, and is handed out not out of anger or irritation. Still, calm rationality is followed by an expression of love, an explanation of why it was necessary, and other such limitations.
According to them, such forms of corporal punishment are good, not harmful and should not be banned. I think it’s safe to say that overwhelmingly most instances of corporal punishment do not meet these parameters. They are also impossible to legislate. Are courts supposed to find out the mindset and emotional state of a parent while meting out physical punishment? Or criminalize it based on how often it is used? Or whether or not it is used as a last resort or misused for every tiny mistake?
It’s either banning corporal punishment wholly or letting children be used as outlets for parental anger, letting them be hit for every tiny instance without any attempt at reasoning and using it as a means of humiliation accompanied by verbal abuse and mockery. That’s a straightforward choice for me.
Dismantling The System
Corporal punishment against children needs to be viewed in the larger context of a system that dismisses children and their rights. The problem cannot be solved until we dismantle the system on which it rests.
That can start with our education system!
With a code of conduct and training for teachers, and abandoning all rules that disrespect, dismiss and violate a child’s rights, such as standard Indian school rules on children’s length of hair, and a structure with a space for students to express themselves like student unions.
In the parental and family systems, children need to be included in decision-making, adults must be subjected to the same rules and accountability, and children need to be seen as partners rather than subjects. In the legal area, a strong, comprehensive child protection service needs to be created.
On top of this, we must work on the intersections of corporal punishment. Poverty and social marginalization remain two big reasons for all forms of continued systematic violence in India. Correcting the massive power imbalance between the young and the old is also necessary.
The elderly are systematically favoured in our power structures and decision-making systems. The law prohibits the youth from running for parliamentary elections with minimum age requirements set way above 18. Our leaders are and have always been significantly aged people. There are no clear laws regarding requirements on parents to support their adult children financially up to a certain age or level of financial independence even though at 18, a person has not even completed their graduation. It is time we started treating our child population as more than cattle.