Corporal Punishment of Children and Change of Attitudes – a Cross Cultural Study

Corporal punishment of children and change of attitudes – a cross cultural study

By Örjan Bartholdson Art. nr. 2001-2656 Save the Children ﬁghts for children’s rights.We deliver immediate and lasting improve- ments to children’s lives worldwide.

Save the Children Sweden publishes books and reports to disseminate knowledge about the situation of children, to provide guidance and inspire new thoughts and discussions. Our vision is a world which respects and values each child, a world which listens to children and learns and a world where all children have hope and opportunity.

This is a joint cooperation between Context and Save the Children Sweden.

Context is a journalist cooperative focusing on global development issues and development co-operation. Its members are journalists with extensive professional experience of development co-operation in Latin America, Asia and Africa. (www.context.nu)

ISBN 91-89366-67-0

© 2000 Örjan Bartholdsson, at the request of Context and Save the Children Sweden Project leader:Annika Malmborg Production manager: Ola Höiden Linguistic review: Diana Strannard Graphic design: Petra Handin, Kapsyl Reklam Cover illustration: Mia D’Angelou Printed by: Save the Children Sweden

Save the Children Sweden 107 88 Stockholm Tel:08-698 90 20 Fax: 08-698 90 25 Internet: www.rb.se/bookshop E-mail: [email protected] Table of Contents

Foreword ...... 4

1. Introduction ...... 5 Objective and method ...... 6 Deﬁnitions of punishment in this study ...... 6 Limitations ...... 7

2. Models for changing attitudes and behavior ...... 8 The importance of issue involvement ...... 8 Contexts of attitude change ...... 9 The need of an integrated approach ...... 13

3. Childhood – a universal phenomenon ...... 15 Cultures of rearing – a matter of personhood ...... 16 Rearing, punishment and abuse in western societies ...... 17 Cross-cultural understanding ...... 18

4. Corporal punishment ...... 19 General deﬁnitions ...... 19 The widespread use of corporal punishment ...... 20 Children’s right to integrity and physical safety ...... 21 Consequences of punishment ...... 21 Vulnerable categories of children ...... 22 Links to societal violence ...... 23 Alcohol and substance abuse ...... 24 Social networks and interference ...... 24 The potentially negative role of social networks ...... 27 Class identity ...... 28

5. Family relations in Latin America ...... 30 Machismo – the exaggeration of maleness ...... 31 Alternative caretakers ...... 32

6. Conclusions ...... 33 Regulatory context ...... 33 Relational context ...... 34 Ideological context ...... 36 Experiential and biographical contexts ...... 37

References ...... 39 Foreword

This report forms part of an external evaluation of a campaign against corporal punishment and mistreatment of children in Central America and Mexico. The main objective of the study is to understand how corporal punishment of children can be addressed, in programmes and projects, mainly with a focus on the Central American region. The findings in the report will be used as a comparison when analysing the strategies and methods used in the campaign in Central America. However, the findings in the evaluation is of relevance for anyone working with the issue of corporal punishment, as it gives a framework of analysis for understanding the deep rooted values and conceptions underlying the use of corporal punishment of children. A tool to analyse how to approach corporal punishment in different contexts, is essential for anyone developing programmes or campaigns on the issue. The report begins with an introduction to communications theories, and to models for changing attitudes and behaviour. The second part deals with different cultures of child rearing as a matter of person hood. The third part intro- duces the reader to the issue of corporal punishment, and analysis it in relation to consequences for children, to class belonging, and to societal violence. It also describes why it is as a child rights issue, and how negative attitudes in social networks can prevent the development of the issue. Fourthly, specific aspects of family relations in Latin America are discussed briefly, before the final conclusions are presented. At the end of the report, a rich list of references is included, which inspires to further reading on the subject. Save the Children Sweden would like to thank and acknowledge the profes- sionalism of the evaluation team at Context, who has managed to use both an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural approach in analysing the issue of corporal punishment of children. The cooperation has been most awarding.

Annika Malmborg Save the Children Sweden

“Chen Wenxun scolded his son when the latter brought him a cup of cold tea. The father poured the tea on the ground and picked up a stick with which to beat his son. The son ran away and the father chased after him. The ground was slippery because of the spilled tea and Wenxun lost his footing, struck his head, and died as a result of his injury. The son was charged with a crime and the verdict was ‘detention in prison for strangling” [Scharfstein 1974].

4 Corporal punishment of children and change of attitudes 1. Introduction

Child rearing is a universal phenomenon, practiced among all cultures and social categories. All groups of adults utilize praise and punishment as methods to socialize their children into a desired behavior in order to make them respected and/or successful members of their group. Methods of punishment may vary widely. Some groups use mild forms of social isolation, others resort to spanking, while, in extreme cases, children may be hit with sticks or even hung in ropes above the ground. In almost all cultures, however, corporal punishment is an integral part of rearing. During most of mankind’s history corporal punishment of dependent categories of people has not been questioned by the society at large. The victims have always been categories that have been regarded as lacking sovereignty over their own bodies, and/or not possessing full human value. Such categories have consisted of slaves, serfs, manual workers, women, and children. During the last century, however, one by one, groups have either ceased to exist, as in the case of slaves and serfs1, or gained full human value and respect, at least in international conventions and legislation. But there still remains one category that is regarded as lacking the full rights to their own bodies by large groups of people and that is children. In most societies there still exists powerful cultural reinforcement, through behavior and discourse, that physical punishment of children is not to be equated with violence, even where a directly comparable assault on adults would constitute an illegal act. Notions of children and childhood, however, often have different social meanings in distinct cultures. In many cultures, for example, there is no extended transition period between childhood and adulthood. Boys and girls have to go through a rite of passage that transforms them into young adults, that burden them with all the responsibilities of being a grown-up. Even the period of adolescence, that plays such important role in western societies, is to a great degree a product of the youth culture that emerged in the 1950s. Notions of childhood may vary but all societies base their classifications on aspects of age and gender. The definitions of these criteria have a large impact on the forms of corporal punishment and on up to what age children may be subjected to punishment. In some cultures children are believed to be incapable of responsible behavior and will therefore only be subjected to very mild forms of physical punishment while people in other cultures regard castigation as absolutely necessary in order to inculcate the appropriate behavior. Boys and girls are, furthermore, mostly brought up differently and both forms and frequency of punishment often vary depending on gender. The last decades, however, have witnessed great progress in the protection of children’s rights, and more than 190 countries have ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Convention stipulates that a person is a child

1 There are several regions in the world where in reality both slaves and serfs exist, but it is condemned both by national legislation and international conventions.

Corporal punishment of children and change of attitudes 5 until 18 years old and that all children have the same rights regardless of gender. The highest international authority on the human rights of children, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, asserts that the UN Convention is not compatible with legal endorsement of corporal punishment. Despite the Con- vention, however, corporal punishment is still both widely used and even defen- ded by the authorities in some nations.

Objective and method This study forms part of an external evaluation of the campaign against mistreatment of children in Central America and Mexico, 1996–2000. The objective of the study is to identify potential indicators that can be used to evaluate the strategies used in this campaign. The method of this study is largely based on an anthropological comparison of the social and cultural context of corporal punishment in different cultures. As psychological and psychiatric research has focused more on the detrimental effects of corporal punishment on children, this study combines findings from the former disciplines with anthropological research and conclusions. In general, anthropologists have not identified punishment that is socially accepted by a specific culture as a problem. They have described rearing in its cultural context, including both praise and punishment. More attention has been given to punishment and mistreatment that is regarded as socially and morally deviant in a specific culture. It has to be emphasized, though, that what is regarded as socially accepted punishment, and what is seen as abuse often lack a clear line of definition. This study analyzes the prevalence of cultural patterns of corporal punishment and different forms of mistreatment of children. Great emphasis is put on the categorization of factors that may be of use in the combat of corporal punishment. Among these, the most important is deemed to be a change of attitudes concerning corporal punishment, both among parents and in the society at large. Such changes demand a theoretical discussion of persuasion and communication, which is also attempted. In order to succeed with projects of persuasion the initiator needs a thorough knowledge of how the system of meanings, beliefs and values of the target group is structured. It is the aim of this study to give a basis that will contribute to such knowledge.

Definitions of punishment in this study Corporal punishment: This study will use the term corporal punishment according to the definition made by Straus and Donnelly (1993): “The use of physical force with the intention of causing a child to experience pain but not injury, for purpose of correction or control of the child’s behavior”. The interpretation of which type of punishment that may be classified as corporal punishment varies, however, between different societies and cultures. This report will use the term corporal punishment for all forms of physical castigation that are socially accep-

6 Corporal punishment of children and change of attitudes ted, either by a whole society or by a speciﬁc subgroup of people. Scholars furthermore often divide corporal punishment into the categories ‘severe’ and ‘mild’. This distinction is, however, often based on very subjective classiﬁcations and will be avoided in this report2.

Abuse: The term refers to different forms of assault, such as beatings, neglect, sexual abuse, etc. Abuse is often not a punishment that is inﬂicted in order to correct children’s behavior, but instead an act intended to hurt and/or dominate. There are instances, however, when abuse may consist of incontrollable punishment. This might be the case, for example, when parents lose their temper and hit indiscriminately. The most important distinction between corporal punishment and abuse is that the latter is regarded as a departure or deviation from culturally accepted norms.

Mistreatment: A vague term that may either allude to severe corporal punishment or abuse, or embrace both acts. Due to its vagueness this term will be avoided in this study.

Limitations Structural economic and social injustices often affect and increase forms of domestic violence, primarily abuse of spouses and children, but due to lack of space such structural causes will not be dealt with thoroughly in this study. It is worth mentioning, however, that there has been an increase of studies of struc- turally related abuse during the last decade (e.g. Scheper-Hughes 1992, Scheper- Hughes and Sargent 1998, Stephens 1995). Such structural factors may include poverty, inadequate housing, poor health care, inadequate nutrition, unemployment, high crime rate, etc. Another limitation is the lack of research on the speciﬁc topic of corporal punishment. Scholars of various disciplines in Western nations have conducted far more research over the years on child abuse than on corporal punishment, which many times has been regarded as a culturally and socially accepted form of punishment.

2 For a more elaborated discussion of this terminology, see page 18.

Corporal punishment of children and change of attitudes 7 2. Models for changing attitudes and behavior

The importance of issue involvement In order to execute an efficient campaign for attitudinal change, the initiator has to define and locate the appropriate target group of information, define the objectives of the project of communication and its expediency. Lars Palm (1994) has defined three necessary steps in order to be able to reach the intended recei- ver of the initiator’s message: 1. First of all, the target group must be able to clearly note that somebody is trying to communicate with it. 2. The target group must also be able to identify the content of the message. 3. Finally, it is of utmost importance to analyze how the members of the target group will interpret the message according to his/her cultural and individual experiences, attitudes, needs and motives. The initiator has to make sure that the target group’s interpretation of the message will be more or less equivalent to the sender’s intention.

The target group’s attention to the message depends on its level of interest in the subject. Palm (ibid.) labels this interest ‘issue involvement’. In every area of high issue involvement there will also exist decisions and behavior that the target group finds less important. For example, while parents in a certain culture may give much attention to child rearing, they might find questions concerning corporal punishment less appealing. If parents feel directly accused by a message, there is a great risk that they will not be receptive to its content. The solution to this problem may be to present the message from a vantage point that lies closer to the perspective of the target group. The focus could be directed at child-rearing methods at large, where alternatives to punishment are presented as the positive effects of praise. Ideally, it will then be possible for the target group to incorporate the intended message into their own view of child rearing. By using a campaign to make boys in Sweden use bicycle helmets as an example Palm shows the consequences if the target group has a low issue involvement. A majority of the boys reject the use of helmets because they fear being regarded as sissies by their friends. Palm concludes that it will not be possible to make the boys use helmets by alluding to issues of safety and risk. He recommends that the campaign instead should focus on the specific values cherished by the boys. In this particular case the campaign should not be centered around questions of what and why, that is, demonstrating the risks of not wearing a helmet. The most precious value of the peer group is in fact risk taking. Instead the campaign has to accept this value, and rather focus on ways of expressing toughness, while using a helmet.

8 Corporal punishment of children and change of attitudes Contexts of attitude change The sociologist Phillip W. Davis (1999) has studied a group of 22 North Ame- rican parents who made a concerted effort to stop physically punishing their children. Although their stated reasons for ceasing to use corporal punishment vary, cessation is generally associated with new meanings that turn old beliefs into excuses and that define non-violence as progressive behavior. Davies suggests that cultural inducement and social support of the parents is as important as learning alternative disciplinary techniques in order to get parents to stop resorting to methods of physical punishment. Three scholars, independently of each other, have found that there exists a minority of parents in the United States who have given up hitting their children, in spite of the social pressure from the society at large that successful child rearing requires the use of corporal punishment3. These parents tended to have higher education, fewer children, and milder temperament than the parents who continued to spank. But above all, they almost unanimously stated that they had hated being physically punished when they themselves were children4. The reason that they have reflected more on how their own children perceive being hit than other parents have done seems to be that they still vividly remember and feel how they were treated harshly at home and in school. Davis draws on their findings and recommends that parents in general should be given opportunities to reflect over their own childhood and how they themselves were punished. These reflections will help the parents to experience how hurt their own children feel when they are punished. It is also interesting to note how the parents in Davis’ own study are situated in a contradicting crossroad between a cultural pressure that corporal punishment is a necessary method of rearing and information that it is detrimental to the mental health of their children (Vissing, Straus, Gelles and Harrop 1991). Davis (ibid.) argues that in order to change the occurance of corporal punishment, it is necessary to alter the meanings that the practices of rearing, punishment and praise have for the adults concerned. Based on the account above, Davis presents a model for classifying factors of importance in order to combat corporal punishment. The factors are classified according to five different contexts that are described below.

The experiential context The experiential context refers to the feelings parents experience when they physically punish their child. Nobody in Davis’ study was afraid of injuring their children or dealing with authorities. However, a majority said they felt guilty for the reactions of pain and fear that the children showed due to the punishment.

3 Carson, B. (1986), Mishkin, A. (1987), Sherman, R. (1997), quoted in Davis (1999). Their sample is relatively small, amounting to less than 500 parents. 4 These statements correspond to Rohner’s and Kean’s (1991) ﬁndings in S:t Kitt in the West Indies, where corporal punishment is endorsed to a great degree by the inhabitants. Rohner and Kean note that the children in S:t Kitt are negative towards corporal punishment, but slowly start supporting this form of punishment when they have become adolescents, and then fully endorse it when they are grown up.

Corporal punishment of children and change of attitudes 9 The desired result is to make parents identify with their children in the moment of punishment. In order to apply this context to projects that oppose corporal punishment it is necessary either to work with parents individually or in groups. This context demands large resources of personnel. The experiential context thus relates to the biographical context (see below).

The ideological context The ideological context refers to the parents’ notions, ideas, and beliefs about parental force, children’s rights and family violence. Projects with the goal of changing attitudes towards corporal punishment aim at changing the content of this context. Some of the parents in Davis’ research group assert that they abolished corporal punishment after serious reflection on who children are, how they ought to be treated, and whether physical force was something that they believed should be used on dependent human beings who they loved and whom they supported. The transformation of the ideological context occurred through books, media, parent-education courses, and talking to people in their vicinity. These parents now define corporal punishment as something they do not believe in. Punishment has become an issue within a wider context of events and circumstances that led them to reflect over their own behavior, to rethink relationships, criticize notions of the self, and connect new and old ideas. Their rejection of old thinking is a turning point embedded in a larger set of meanings: it is a sign of modernity, of new ways to link right and wrong, violence and non- violence, themselves and others, and the relation between parents and children. This context may often correspond to a stage where the target group, that is the parents, has knowledge of reasons why it is detrimental to use violence, but are still not convinced that these reasons are correct. The parents may also agree to stop using violence, but they have not given it up entirely. According to Palm (1994) they have picked up messages of what-and-why- information, concerning corporal punishment but they still lack the most crucial part, that is, information of how to act. How-information refers to how to make their knowledge concrete, how they should educate their children if they cannot punish them physically, and how they should act to be able to resist social pressure to use physical punishment.

The regulatory context The regulatory context refers to public policies against physical punishment and sanctions of different kinds towards people who continue to use corporal punishment. As will be elaborated below, it is absolutely essential that public institutions ban corporal punishment, both in their statutes and in practice. Furthermore, parents often stop using corporal punishment when they face real or perceived ofﬁcial sanctions, regulatory control, or administrative disapproval. There are several instances and levels where sanctions and preventive measures may be imposed. In the ﬁrst instance there are the neighborhoods. Instructors

10 Corporal punishment of children and change of attitudes in mandated parent-education classes, which instruct about child rearing methods and make home visits have been another efficient vehicle for change of punishment habits in the part of the United States, researched by Davis (ibid.), and Chamberlin (1996). It is also of utmost importance that teachers at school do not punish students physically. Regular healthcare controls that, among other tasks, check on children’s well-being can also play an important preventive role. According to the theory of forced compliance it is possible to change behaviors and attitudes by altering undesired behavior by legislation or other forms of sanctions. The changed behavior will then gradually transform attitudes linked to the behavior, and then, during the last phase, the target group will actively search for information that corresponds to the changed behavior and attitude (Palm 1994: 70–71). If the model of forced compliance is used the authorities will start by legislating against corporal punishment. This will ideally make the majority of the parents stop hitting their children, then their attitudes towards corporal punishment will successively alter, and finally the parents will search for knowledge that matches their behavior and attitude. Sweden, which so far has provided the most successful example of legislation against corporal punishment, has not strictly adhered to this model, however. First of all legislation was introduced gradually, banning corporal punishment in public institutions. The attitudes then changed successively, and when physical punishment by parents finally was prohibited in 1979 more than half of the population already supported the new law. Parents were subjected to public campaigns of changed attitudes both before and after the legislative process in order to reach an optimal result. The intention of the new law, furthermore, was to make physical punishment socially and culturally unacceptable, not to bring reluctant parents to court. Palm (ibid.) argues, however, that immediate sanctions, in combination with a high level of issue involvement, make individuals pay increased attention to messages concerning specific subjects. The increased attention ought to make the target group susceptible to what and why information. The first type of information consists of pure facts, while the later type focuses on threats and promi- ses directed at the target group.

The relational context The relational context refers to the pressures and inﬂuence of the immediate social network, that is, kin, friends, and neighbors. The cross-cultural comparison of punishment and abuse in this study emphasizes the importance of this context. We will see that a large social network has the ability to alleviate the situation of exposed parents, thereby decreasing the risk of harsh punishment because of stress and tension. Others can stop inadequate rearing, excessive punishment and abuse before the child is hurt or the parents become socially isolated. Another important issue is that it is socially accepted or even required that persons belonging to the social network may interfere in case of domestic violence. From their kin, their friends or their acquaintances parents have to understand

Corporal punishment of children and change of attitudes 11 that the abolishment of corporal punishment is not only a topic debated by authorities, scholars and child-rearing experts, but something that will not be tole- rated by the neighborhood. In many western countries it is necessary to strengthen the notion that the integrity of the nuclear family is not more important than the well fare of an abused child. In order to achieve this it is necessary to ﬁnd regular means to interfere when extended kin is lacking. It is of utmost importance to succeed in making the social network at large reject corporal punishment, if this context will have preventive effects. If there exists a strong network that endorses this form of punishment, it may even have a conservative effect on corporal punishment.

The biographical context Finally, there is what Davis labels the biographical context. He refers to the parents who testify that they gave up using corporal punishment, after reflexi- vely bringing to the surface their thoughts, memories and feelings about their own childhood and the corporal punishment they themselves received. The parents in Davis’ study say that these memories did not stop them from resorting to violence initially, but that they gradually started altering their belief in physical punishment. The gradual insight that they themselves had been hit too hard, too often, too angrily and unjustly formed a biographical context in which giving up corporal punishment started making sense. In this context parents redefined corporal punishment as a harsh and unjust practice, which they eventually decided to quit.5 As noted in the section on the experiential context, this method of convin- cing parents to reject corporal punishment demands large personell resources. The parents will need either personal sessions or group discussions. These groups have to be quite limited, though, since it is necessary to make every parent individually reflect on his or her own reaction towards corporal punishment. Furthermore Davis’ group consisted of highly educated parents in a culture with a limited network of kin. If the parents have lower level of education and are embedded in dense social networks with large social authority, the need to work on the social network simultaneously will be much greater than in the case Davis refers to. According to Palm’s (1994) theories, the need of information on how to withstand social pressure will be greater than in the case of the American parents studied by Davis.

5 In an experiment conducted by Murray Straus (1996) in the United States, 270 college students were asked to try to recall their reactions to the ﬁrst time they could remember being hit by their parents. 42 percent of the students could still vividly remember their hatred of their parents who inﬂicted this punishment on them. Straus then alleges that this hatred has been unconsciously channeled towards their environment at large.

12 Corporal punishment of children and change of attitudes The need of an integrated approach Paisley (1989) asserts that the most efficient method to make people change deeply rooted behaviors is by combining the contexts Davis proposes. He states that engineering, enforcement and education should ideally be connected. In the specific case of trying to abolish corporal punishment engineering refers to reforms and expansion of the infrastructure, that is, the need of preventive health care, child-caring institutions, functioning social networks, etc. Enforce- ment is simply the legal ban on corporal punishment and education stands for the access to alternative child-rearing methods. One of the persons who has emphasized the need to combine the factors defined by Paisley is Robert W. Chamberlin (1996). He believes that the only way to efficiently combat the use of corporal punishment is to alter the social ecology of the community as well as child-rearing styles. He argues that it is more effective to emphasize promoting affectionate and cognitively stimulating types of parential behavior that appear more directly related to positive development outcomes, rather than focus on whether or not the parents use physical punishment. Chamberlin further proposes that the following structural changes are necessary in order to eradicate physical punishment: comprehensive health care, family support in the form of home visits to new mothers, paid pregnancy and child care leave, neighborhood family resource centers, high quality affordable child care and early childhood education programs for young children.

The Swedish example Perhaps the most astonishing change of attitudes towards corporal punishment has occurred in Sweden. In 1965, 53 percent of Swedes supported corporal punishment. By the end of the 20th century this support had declined to 11 percent. Of Swedes under the age of 35 only 6 percent believed in this form of punishment. Sweden legislated against domestic corporal punishment in 1979, thereby becoming the ﬁrst country in the world to do so. A legal process lasting more than 20 years, when punishment was abolished in public institutions, preceded this legal ban. In order to make parents take the law of 1979 seriously, the Ministry of Justice carried out an extensive pamphlet distribution to households with information on the law and suggestions of alternative disciplinary measures. Additionally, information about the law was printed on milk cartons in order to make parents and children jointly discuss the implications and meaning of the law. This campaign resulted in the fact that in 1981 an overwhelming 99 percent knew about the law (Durrant 2000). It is questionable, though, if knowledge about the law would have had such penetration among the Swedish population if the legislation had not been preceded by successive abolishment of corporal punishment at all levels of society. The popular knowledge of a law does not necessarily to imply that the population accepts it and/or changes its behavior according to its content. There are many examples of laws and regulations that are widely known, but have little

Corporal punishment of children and change of attitudes 13 practical impact. The Swedish legislation against corporal punishment was above all intended to change peoples’ attitudes towards physical punishment. By combining the three factors Paisley (ibid.) regards as essential, the Swedish campaign achieved its objectives.

14 Corporal punishment of children and change of attitudes 3. Childhood – a universal phenomenon

The last half-century has witnessed a large questioning of previous held beliefs about childhood and child rearing. In the discipline of history Philippe Ariés (1962), for example, has argued that in medieval Europe the modern notion of childhood, the particular awareness of the child as phenomenologically distinct from the adult, did not exist. According to him, childhood as a concept only emerged in the seventeenth century. Previously children had exclusively been regarded as miniature adults. In anthropology Margaret Mead (1949) was a pioneer in studying how to dis- tinguish between the culture of the community and the psychology of the individual. She specifically looked at how culture constructs personality. The assumption that guided her research, and that of others, was that behavior is determined primarily by culture. Just like Ariés, Mead thus contributed to a critique of beliefs in universal patterns of human behavior, not least concerning child rearing and general stages of biological and psychological development. Even though these scholars have been thoroughly contradicted during the last decades (e.g. Freedman 1974, Pollock 1983, Scheper-Hughes 1987), they have nonetheless contributed to changing the beliefs in universal criterions for childhood and child rearing. Contrary to Ariés’ belief, however, most contemporary scholars agree that children during all historical epochs and in all known cultures have constituted a separate category, different from adults, but what childhood implies and its duration varies considerably through time and space. The historical and cultural variations concerning child rearing are not less. Even so, it is possible to make a broad definition of child rearing that encom- passes its role in all cultures. This study argues that it is a mean to socialize6 or rather mold children and adolescents in such ways that they will be able to achieve a socially accepted and respected role in their (sub) culture, or in Baumans’ (1992) words, habitat7. LeVine (1977, 1981) has suggested that care taking eve- rywhere can be seen as sharing a common set of goals. These include the physical survival and health of the child; the development of the child’s capacity for self-reliance and eventual independence and the cultivation in the child of cherished cultural values and attributes. There are however circumstances and categories of children in certain cultures and among specific groups when both neglect and actual abuse are practiced.

6 Many scholars avoid using the concept socialization since they find it far too one-dimensional, not giving account of the mutual interaction between children and adults, and children’s agency. For a discussion of socialization, see Norman 1991, Ochs and Schieffelin 1987, and Hendry 1986. 7 Bauman suggests that the concept habitat can be used to define the space of meaning in which agency opera- tes and which it also produces, where the individual finds his/hers resources and goals as well as limitations (Bauman 1992, Hannerz 1996).

Corporal punishment of children and change of attitudes 15 Methods of child rearing differ immensely among different cultures and social categories, but means of punishment and/or praising are always utilized, in a greater or lesser extent, to achieve the aims of the caretakers and the surrounding society. Punishment is an ambiguous conception and its position in child-rearing practices and ideologies varies over time, between cultures as well as between individuals. Adults all over the world exert some form of control over their children, but the degree to which they will explicitly attempt to regulate their children’s behavior and thoughts differ in relation to a social and ideological context. The caretakers in an overwhelming majority of cultures utilize different forms of punishment to succeed with this regulatory process, but not all, and the forms of punishment do not necessarily have to be corporal.

Cultures of rearing – a matter of personhood Patterns of punishment and praise are intimately interconnected to the type of personhood that is most valued in a specific culture. The cherished personhood may also vary depending on class affiliation and gender. Liberal western policies, documented in conventions, regulations, and laws, for example, tend to stress a conception of independent and rights-bearing individuals, as opposed to ideas of social personhood embedded in, and subordinate to, larger social units, including extended families, lineages, clans, and neighborhood communities. This western conception of personhood is tightly interwoven with the particular child rearing in many western countries, where autonomy and flexibility of the child is praised. These notions stand in stark contrast to ideals of personhood in other regions. The Japanese, for example, put great emphasis on career and social mobility, just like in western countries, but embeddedness in networks of kin is much more profound, and individual social mobility is an honor for the whole family, just as failure is a shame for the entire group of kin. In India, especially in rural areas, child rearing aims at producing, in many ways, a passive and obedient behavior using authoritarian and restrictive discipline. In many western societies, for example, praise is regarded as a positive method of rearing, while punishment often is valued negatively. Minturn and Hitchcock (1973) conclude that villagers in India believe that praise of children is detrimental to good rearing, since it will contribute to form a disobedient and independent child who will not accept the authority of the family. Among ethnic Chinese, rearing has also concentrated on molding a personality that will revere the elders and authorities, and accept that the collective rates higher than the wishes of individuals. The authoritarian discipline needed to achieve this goal still permeates schools, public speeches, theatrical performan- ces, children’s storybooks and promotional articles in newspapers and magazines in Taiwan (Hsiao 1973, Wu 1981). Furthermore, the ideal personhood that males and females are expected to display often differs drastically in most cultures. In order to make the boys and girls adhere to their gendered roles they are brought up in different ways. Generally males have dominant roles in the public sphere and their upbringing is related

16 Corporal punishment of children and change of attitudes to preparing them for public tasks, while the treatment of girls many times has evolved out of the need to prepare them for their future domestic and reproductive roles (Poffenberger 1981, Scheper-Hughes 1992, Sargent and Harris 1998).

Rearing,punishment and abuse in western societies The ﬁrst analytical distinction that has to be made is between forms of punishment that are accepted or even encouraged in the cultural patterns of the caretakers, and forms of punishment that are regarded as departures or deviations from cultural norms, which are labeled abuse in this study. Many forms of punishment enacted in cultures in different parts of the world would be described as abuse in western societies, even though it is socially accepted or even seen as absolutely essential in the culture where they are practiced. It is hard to avoid the trap of ethnocentrism, when condemning punishment forms in other regions and cultures, while, at the same time, practicing child- rearing methods that are regarded as unacceptable by non-westerners. Korbin (1981) states that practices of rearing that are widespread throughout western society, such as isolating infants and small children in rooms or beds of their own at night, making them wait for readily available food until a schedule dictates that they can satisfy their hunger, or allowing them to cry without immediately attending to their needs or desires would be at odds with the child rearing philosophies of many non-western cultures. This is just mentioned to show that there always exists a great risk for criticizing ideas and traits of other cultures, while being blind to negative aspects of one’s own culture. Nancy Scheper-Hughes (1987) has asked whether child battering and abuse, for example, may actually be one unfortunate side effect of the preoccupation of modern western parents with producing well behaving and high achieving children. At least some of the rejected and abused children are those found wanting in personal qualities or propensities necessary to compete successfully within the family, at school, or in the community at large. Scheper-Hughes (1987, 1998) goes as far as alleging that the relatively strong modern ideology that all children are wanted and that all births should be intentional has given rise to the phenomenon that children who are “birth control fai- lures” or are otherwise unwanted or inconvenient may be subjected to years of psychological rejection, unmotivated punishment and physical abuse by their parents. She has further argued that the dominant media images of children in the Uni- ted States as dependent, frivolous, and voracious consumers may contribute to parental pride in their children, but may also stimulate parental rage and resentment of their “worthless”, “lazy”, and “greedy” children. This, she suggests, may actually be one of the causes of the current “epidemic” of child abuse in North America.

Corporal punishment of children and change of attitudes 17 Cross-cultural understanding It is equally important to avoid extreme forms of culture relativism, which could actually even legitimate corporal punishment, provided it is a socially approved form of punishment in a speciﬁc culture. One has to combine two perspectives. On the one hand an insider perspective, in order to grasp what anthropologists traditionally have labeled “the native points of view, his relation to life, to reali- ze his vision of his world” (Malinowski 1922:25). On the other hand this has to be complemented by a wider form of referen- ce, based on an understanding of the cross-cultural record, so that behavior can be interpreted within the broader context of human experience. Both perspectives, that of the particular culture and that obtained from a wider cross-cultural data base, are prerequisites to sorting out the context in which behavior, including corporal punishment and abuse, takes on meaning.

18 Corporal punishment of children and change of attitudes 4. Corporal punishment

General definitions The discussion of how to define punishment and abuse is often confused. It is therefore necessary to discuss practices and the discourse of punishment. First of all it is essential to make an analysis of the popular understanding of the diffe- rence between corporal punishment and abuse. In most cultures parents argue that the use of corporal punishment is not intended to injure the child, merely to inculcate the desired behavior. It has thus a correctional and intentional purpose. Straus and Donnelley (1993) define corporal punishment as “the use of physical force with the intention of causing a child to experience pain but not injury, for purpose of correction or control of the child’s behavior”. Corporal punishment can be defined as a method of punishment that is culturally accepted by the society at large or by a certain category. Scholars, however, often use the term abuse when they themselves react negatively towards such practices. When Perilla (1999), for example, discusses wife battering in Latin America she labels it abuse, even though she argues that it is part of a common cultural male repertoire in Latin America. The purpose of this sort of domestic violence is often both correctional and intentional. The distinction between corporal punishment and abuse therefore may often seem rather blurred. Both forms of violence furthermore aim at domi- nation of a particular category of people. Abuse may be both impulsive and random, but so may corporal punishment.8 Furthermore, scholars tend to oscillate between the terms severe corporal punishment and mild corporal punishment, without carefully defining these labels. Most parents state that they punish their children mildly and with love. In western discourse the term mild corporal punishment has often been reser- ved for hitting with the hands, while the term ‘severe’ has been more linked to use of rods, sticks etc. Severe punishment is mostly defined as intending to cause injury or psychological damage (Lansdown 2000). Most psychologists agree that corporal punishment is psychologically detrimental for children, and that parents lack the means to predict the future outcome of their acts. The analytical value of a distinction between severe and mild forms is, in other words, doubtful. There is also a widespread tendency to use different types of euphemisms in order to mitigate the links between punishment and violence. As Lansdown (2000: 417) writes: “…it is not the action which differs when children, as opposed to adults, are being hit. It is the social attitude that accompanies it.” There is a large contrast between the construction of language to describe the violence against adults and violence against children. Taste words like a gentle

8 Straus (1996) refers to a study of 1 003 randomly selected mothers in two Minnesota cities, in the USA. Almost half of the respondents stated that they used corporal punishment when they had lost their temper because of some act a child had committed.

Corporal punishment of children and change of attitudes 19 smack, a loving tap, or spanking. These words imply actions that are not only harmless, but also potentially constructive and beneficial. Lansdown states that these semantic constructions help adults to avoid linking their use of physical punishment to violence. The euphemisms implicitly contain the beliefs that adults have a right to physically hurt another person, and that this act is socially approved.9 Some societies also exclude corporal punishment of children from the definition of domestic violence. This is the case in England, for example. In these societies the term domestic violence primarily stands for violence against women. Such distinctions have no analytical value, however, but are just ways to explain away or mitigate the beating of children. One of the most farfetched definitions of corporal punishment and other forms of domestic violence has been made by the psychologist Marcus (1994). She compares domestic violence with terrorism and alleges that they have three basic tactics in common: surprise and seemingly random (but actually well- planned) acts of violence, psychological and physical warfare to silence protest and minimize opposition and the creation of an atmosphere of intimidation in which there is no way to escape. Because children are not sure when an attack will happen there is a prevailing sense of insecurity, passivity, and defeatism. Such comparison would draw a line between different cultural contexts of corporal punishment, however. If it is regulated, possible to foresee and collective rather than individual, however, it does not fit Marcus’ description. The latter form of punishment does exist in several cultures.

The widespread use of corporal punishment Corporal punishment may be deﬁned in various ways, but it is beyond questioning that it constitutes the most widespread form of punishment, and it is accepted in the most diverse societies across the globe. Statistics are often hard to ﬁnd, but here are some examples: • In the United States it is approximated that more than 90 percent of all parents slap or spank their young children, and about half of them continue to do so during the child’s early adolescent years (Straus & Donnelly 1993). • In the United Kingdom a large government survey, conducted in 1995, found that 91 percent of the children questioned had been physically punished. • In Korea a similar survey, conducted in 1982, revealed that an astonishing 97 percent of the interviewed children had been beaten, many severely. • A survey in India discovered that 91 percent of males and 86 percent of females had been physically punished in their childhood (Save the Children Swe- den, Epoch 1992).

9 A consultation in the United Kingdom that embraced 70 children aged 5–7 demonstrated that they did not share the euphemisms used by the adults. When they were asked what they understood by the term ‘smack’, they all described it as a hit (Willow and Hyder 1998).

20 Corporal punishment of children and change of attitudes Children’s right to integrity and physical safety There are two main assumptions that are guidelines in the rejection of corporal punishment, regardless of its cultural embeddedness. On the ﬁrst hand, children ought to be regarded as individuals whose physical and emotional integrity should be preserved, just like all other human categories. Studies demonstrate that children themselves do not appreciate being punished physically, independently of cultural context (cf. Straus 1996, Rohner and Kean 1991). The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child expresses this belief in the child’s right to integrity, and physical safety. Article 19 of the Convention demands that State Parties ensure that “...all appropriate legislative, administrative, social and educational measures to protect the child from all forms of physical or mental violence, injury or abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation, including sexual abuse, while in the care of parent(s), legal guardian(s) or any other person who has the care of the child.” According to the Convention children are entitled to the same legal protection as adults. More than 190 countries have ratiﬁed this Convention, regardless of their culture of punishment. On the second hand, there is a large amount of research that indicates that corporal punishment, even if it is an integral part of local upbringing, has detrimental consequences for children (Strauss 1994, 1996; Burn, Straus 1987; Hol- den, Miller, Harris 1999; Turner, Finkelhor 1996, Rohner and Kean 1991). These consequences are elaborated in the paragraph below.

Consequences of punishment Rohner’s and Kean’s (1991) research on children on the Caribbean island St. Kitt, for example, demonstrates that physical punishment per se has signiﬁcant direct and negative consequences for children’s future psychological condition. The children on St. Kitt turned out to feel rejected in direct proportion to the frequency and intensity of the punishment they had received. Even though the cultural context of St. Kitt was permeated by a large acceptance of physical punishment, this did not make the punished children feel less rejected. A number of scholars argue that mistreatment of spouses is intimately linked to corporal punishment and abuse of children (Gil 1979, Straus and Yodanis 1996). There is, however, no unanimous agreement on this correspondence. Other analysts assert that there are no inextricable connections between corporal punishment and mistreatment of wives (LeVine and LeVine 1981, Olson 1981, Poffenberger 1981). Two of the scholars that support this connection are Straus (1996) and Lev- inson (1989). They both allege that there seems to be a clear correlation between the extent to which corporal punishment is used and the extent of wife-beating. According to Straus, children that have continuously been subjected to corporal punishment during their childhood will run greater risk of turning into persons full of hatred. There is, among other things, he argues, a risk that such hatred will make punished children more apt to hit their future offspring and if they

Corporal punishment of children and change of attitudes 21 are boys, their spouses. According to a study made by Farmer and Owen (1995) in England, three out of five cases where children had been subjected to severe punishment, abuse, or neglect the mothers had also been beaten by their male partners. Many scholars stress that parents’ patterns of controlling their children by hitting them will be transmitted to their children who will use the same methods against their children and spouses when they have grown up (Straus and Yodanis 1996, Hendry 1998). Even if their arguments may seem a bit farfetched there is other research that, at least partly, confirms his correlation of corporal punishment and its negative consequences in the future.10 Other scholars confirm the universal applicability of these findings. Xu, Tung, and Dunaway (2000) conclude that children or adolescents who are physically punished are likely to show tendencies toward psychological distress, depression, low self-esteem, experience of alienation, aggres- siveness, less compliance with adult requests, problematic peer relationship, authoritarianism, or plainly antisocial behavior. Chamberlin (1996) is critical, however, of making gloomy predictions of the future behavior of children who have been physically punished. He reminds us that the use of corporal punishment is only one of many risk factors that threa- ten children’s development. It is rather, he argues, the accumulation of multiple risk factors that pile up over time that cause the most damage. In other words, the findings above may be correct, but they lack descriptions of the social ecology of the children’s communities, of the economic, social, and cultural capital of their parents and analysis of the society at large.

Vulnerable categories of children It must be emphasized that while children in general may be highly valued by a cultural group, there are categories of children who are more vulnerable than others to corporal punishment and other forms of abuse. These include illegiti- mate children, adopted children, deformed or retarded children, high birth order children and females and males in general. This vulnerability depends to a large degree on the cultural context. Adopted children, particularly girls, may be more susceptible to mistreatment in a society such as Taiwan, than, for example, in Brazil or in Polynesian cultures. Female infants in many cultures also run a much greater risk than boys to be neglected or even actively killed (cf. Poffen- berger 1981, Korbin 1981, Einarsdóttir 2000). There are also cases where there is reason to believe that boys are more harshly treated than girls. Poffenberger (1981), for example, states that even though boys are preferred to girls in India, boys are often punished more than girls and treated with less emotional warmth by their mothers. Sargent and Harris (1998) reports that the same tendency exists in Jamaica. On a general level it may be argued that the socialization of boys in many cultures make them targets for hars- her and more physical punishment than girls. Girls are trained to have domes-

10 A study of 403 families, undertaken by Nobes and Smith (1997), discovered that children who were frequently aggressive were four times as likely as those who were rarely aggressive to have been severely punished at home.

22 Corporal punishment of children and change of attitudes tic and reproductive roles and their freedom of movement is much more restricted than the boys. They will often constantly be under the supervision of their mothers and other female adults. In a number of cultures their socialization will be directed at obedience and restraint from earliest infancy (cf. Poffenberger 1981, Bohman 1984, Bourdieu 1987, Scheper-Hughes 1992). Boys on the other hand are often encouraged to be daring and outward seeking. When they exceed the cultural barriers of conduct they will often be punished severely. Soci- eties are also frequently permeated with beliefs that the boys have to learn to endure pain and punishment in order to become respected men in their societies (cf. Harris 1978, Bohman 1984, Bourdieu 1987). The cross-cultural approach, however, will mostly demonstrate how difﬁcult it is to pinpoint target groups of corporal punishment that are valid universally. Just as an example, the age when children in the USA are spanked the most is when they are three years old, which probably is related to the psychological pro- pensity of children in that age to start to expand their autonomy (Holden, Mil- ler, Harris 1999). On the other hand, children in many cultures, such as the Tur- kish and Chinese, are not considered to be competent, or to “have sense” below the age of seven or eight, and caretakers therefore can see no reason why they should be punished (Olson 1981, Wu 1981, Korbin 1981).

Links to societal violence There are many scholars who allege that there is a clear correlation between the intensity and frequency of corporal punishment and societal violence (Gil 1979, Straus and Yodanis 1996). Other analysts argue, however, that such links either do not exist or that it is impossible to prove any connections (cf. LeVine and LeVine 1981, Olson 1981, Poffenberger, 1981). Many of the advocates of links between corporal punishment, abuse, and societal violence have not, however, taken sufﬁcient account of the form of societal violence, the links between this violence, family patterns, types of punishment and time factors. It is crucial, for example, to analyze if there has occurred a dramatic increase or decrease of violence in a society during a speciﬁc time span, in order to understand changes in patterns of domestic violence. Concrete examples of societies which have been subjected to quick and inten- sive increases of societal violence are El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala, where devastating civil wars have profoundly affected households, social networks, as well as the societies at large. Martin-Baro (1994), for example, has argued that the effects of the civil war in El Salvador cannot be fully understood in theories rooted in the individual psyche, but rather have to be seen as collective trauma, brought about by the violent disruption of social relations. There are and have been many cultures dispersed over the globe where warfare is frequent, but which do not display a high level of domestic violence. Such examples could be found among Indian tribes in North and South America, among tribes in New Guinea, Africa, etc (cf. Wolf 1982, Harris 1978, Rappa- port 1968). It is possible for a society to be in a state of warfare while maintaining a stable social structure.

Corporal punishment of children and change of attitudes 23 But if there occurs a violent and large-scale transformation of a society during a short period of time, then such transformations usually have disruptive consequences for social networks, gender roles, and the upbringing of children. Such ruptures often decrease the reciprocity, loosen family structures and increase both societal and domestic violence (Taussig 1987, Martin-Baro 1994). By omitting the time perspective and making superﬁcial studies of the links between families and societal violence, many scholars create a far too static analysis of interaction in the family and patterns of punishment.

Alcohol and substance abuse Another factor that both risks increasing the frequency of corporal punishment and transforms punishment into outright mistreatment is adult abuse of liquor and drugs. Bourgois (1998) has studied the kinship relations in Spanish Harlem in New York, an urban area of social and economic misery. This neighborhood had suffered extreme economic and social transformations, with working-poor fathers who increasingly find themselves unemployed, thus unable to fulfill the working class and patriarchal dream of maintaining a wife confined at home with many children. In spite of the economic transformations motherhood roles have remained fixed, while women’s rights and the structure of the traditional families have undergone profound changes. Mothers, especially those who are heads of single-parent households, are still saddled with the exclusive responsibility for nur- turing their children. In increasing numbers these women take to the streets and there is, subsequ- ently, a dramatic increase over the past generation of child abuse and neglect. Here it is possible to outline three interrelated transformations that all affect child rearing: structural problems of poverty and segregation, changing gender power relations and the increasing substance abuse.

Social networks and interference Embeddedness in kin and community network is another crucial factor to consider when analyzing the frequency and intensity of corporal punishment and abuse. As Korbin (1981) argues, children, because of their immaturity and dependent nature, are particularly vulnerable to the “we/they”, and “insider/outsider” dichotomy. Or to put it more frankly, the child who does not have a network of individuals beyond the biological parents who are concerned with his or her welfare is at increased jeopardy. The works of many anthropologists demonstrate that child rearing that is a concern for a whole group rather than an exclusive domain and responsibility of individual parents ensures a certain level of child standard and prevents large deviations from this standard (Korbin 1981, 1992, Ritchie and Ritchie 1981, Bourgois 1992).

24 Corporal punishment of children and change of attitudes A society where many people actively participate and assist in child rearing is very different from a society where only one or two biological parents are expected to ﬁll all supportive and rearing roles at all times to all their children. There is thus a clear linkage between social isolation, limited social networks and a lack of social support systems on the one hand, and a high frequency of corporal punishment and child abuse on the other.

The case of China An example of the importance of social networks and the right to interfere in family affairs in order to reduce corporal punishment and abuse is without doubt the People’s Republic of China. If we are to believe analysts of Chinese culture, child and adolescent upbringing among ethnic Chinese has traditionally been characterized by extreme deference for elders, and subjugation of offspring, summarized by the Chinese term, xiao (Wu 1981). David Wu argues that this authority system, among other things, implicates that no matter how unre- asonable parents’ demands may be, or how harsh the treatment or punishment of a child is, a son or a daughter has to obey and endure.11 When a child is considered to “understand things”, that is when it can talk, walk and receive instructions, it is believed necessary to start using corporal punishment. However, there are certain safeguards against excessive punishment by parents. A child, in particular a son, does not belong to the parents alone. He is also linked by emotional ties to other relatives and friends, and a child is usually cared for by a wide range of kin, friends and neighbors. Chinese adults, whether they belong to the family or not, are obliged to punish a child for his wrongdoings. The large numbers of caretakers and medi- ators in Chinese society alleviate the parents’ burden of rearing and make physical punishments socially controllable. Wu (ibid.) argues that when the society respects elders, child abuse is less likely to occur, since the elders have the authority to interfere and act as brake against abuse. Shortly after the communists came to power in the People’s Republic of China they legislated against various forms of mistreatment of children and females in their country. The marriage law of 1950, for example, sought to break the absolute authority that the patriarchal head traditionally had of the family, and prohibited various forms of family violence, including severe corporal punishment (Korbin 1981). Korbin argues that the communist government has put emphasis on the importance and needs of children, while breaking the strict deference towards elder men. The traditional respect and deference of authorities and elders, which seems to be one of the reasons for the belief in harsh punishments, is one of the factors that has been crucial in the state’s combat against corporal punishment in China.

11 The belief in xiao is expressed in the classical writing Shuo Yuan that contains a story about one of Confucius’ disciples. A son accidentally offends his father who becomes so furious that he picks up a big pole and starts beating his son. The son gets knocked down and even becomes unconscious for short while, before he comes around. The son then jumps up and says “I have offended your lordship. You beat me with such strength I am worried whether you might have hurt yourself”.

Corporal punishment of children and change of attitudes 25 The state has transferred the respect of the elders to a respect for the state representatives. It is fascinating to read Korbin’s (ibid.) description of how the state has managed drastically to reduce the rate of corporal punishment and abuse. Even if Korbin’s account would be exaggerated, and her ﬁndings particularly concern the urban area, it clearly gives three important insights when attemp- ting to abolish corporal punishment: the importance of a clear policy against corporal punishment by all public institutions, a will to see that this policy is enforced and members of social networks that do not hesitate to interfere if necessary. Child mistreatment in contemporary China is broadly deﬁned. Parents may have to answer for any actions that are believed to damage the physical, moral and intellectual development of the child. The Chinese authorities do strongly disapprove of all kinds of corporal punishment, but they do not interfere in case of occasional, lighter spanking. If such punishment is used frequently, and is becoming severe, Korbin (ibid.) states that either/or kin and representatives of the authorities intervene in order to warn the caretakers. One of the most important reforms in the People’s Republic of China has, without doubt, been the total ban of physical punishment in schools. Another important factor in the abolishment of abuse is the neighborhood vigilance. It enforces conformity to social rules. For example, if a child is heard screaming or crying very often the neighbors are expected to investigate. If a child should be hurt and the neighbors have not interfered, they in turn will be criticized and even held accountable for any harm the child has suffered. Since people will interfere early on, a process of child abuse will often be stopped before it has a chance to escalate, and the possibility that the offender will alter his/her behavior increases. Children are expected to visit health stations regularly, and if parents fail to bring the child there the health care provider will make a visit to the child’s home instead. Korbin notes that this situation stands in striking contrast to the Uni- ted States, where the public interest in particular children is much less and a child therefore easily can be denied the support of the authorities12. The two main factors that have been crucial in combating child abuse in China, the right of outsiders to interfere in the affairs of the nuclear family and the culture of deference before authorities are at odds with the situation in most western societies. It emphasizes, however, the importance of persons that may interfere when mistreatment is suspected and that the authorities make clear that they do not tolerate physical punishment in any sphere of society. The reason for the Chinese government’s changes in policy towards corporal punishment seems to be an upgrading of societal value of children and a will to break the anci- ent moral of Confucius, that underlines absolute submission to elders. The case of China demonstrates the immense importance of legislation against corporal punishment, and of the readiness to enforce the law. Further-

12 Female children have traditionally been lowly valued in China and there has been a frequent occurrence of neglect and even infanticide to get rid of daughters (Korbin 1981). This study has chosen not to enter into that discussion. Authorities in the People’s Republic of China have tried to ameliorate the situation for females and have succeeded in many ways. The one-child campaign does however induce clear risks of increasing neglect and infanticide of daughters.

26 Corporal punishment of children and change of attitudes more that people outside the nuclear family have the cultural right to interfere in family affairs. On the negative side, however, is the authoritarianism that is demonstrated. Not only would this not be accepted in Western societies, but also it is doubtful if attitudes towards corporal punishment in China have been thoroughly changed. Yang (1996) has vividly described that the authoritarian measures in China to eradicate old customs have, to a large degree, not succeeded in changing the people’s belief in them.

The potentially negative role of social networks Kin and friends of social networks, however, may not always intervene to mitigate punishment and stop child abuse. Jill Korbin (1992) has written a devastating document of mothers in the USA, where the use of physical punishment may escalate to fatal abuse. This, she argues, is due to an uncritical over-attachment to the idealization of maternity and mother love, an attachment that is praised to such an extent by all those persons that might have had the possibility to intervene and stop the abuse, such as family, friends, and even child professionals of various kinds. Korbin has studied the case of nine women who all were convicted for battering one of their children to death. Professionals, kin or friends knew the mistreatment of their children. The professionals in the study, however, put great emphasis on maintaining or returning the abused child to the maternal home, while the network of kin and friends minimized the seriousness of abuse and instead highlighted the image of the mother as “good mother” that had made a singular bad judgment. The reassurance of the social network was perceived by the mothers as supportive. This support, however, shaped a collective denial of child abuse that made it possible for the women and their kin and friends to minimize and ratio- nalize a pattern of fatal child abuse.13 Not even in Sweden that was the ﬁrst country in the world to legislate against corporal punishment, in 1979, are caring professionals especially prone to publi- cly denounce suspicions of corporal punishment and outright abuse. According to the relief-organization of abused children in Sweden, BRIS, only 17 percent of adults, who had knowledge of child abuse, chose to intervene in order to stop the mistreatment (Jansson 2001). Several factors may contribute to this weak result: a belief in the right to family integrity, a fear of having to face a tiresome legal process and being personally exposed, and a notion that the result of the denouncement may actually aggravate the child’s situation.

13 Child abuse and neglect are underreported and downplayed in the USA, and Jason, Carpenter, and Tyler (1983) estimate that approximately 85 percent of child-maltreatment deaths are misrecorded as accidents and diseases of various sorts. Korbin (ibid.) states that one-fourth to one-half of the cases of child abuse that have lethal consequences occur in families that were previously known to helping agencies and professionals.

Corporal punishment of children and change of attitudes 27 Class identity In a very interesting essay Donna M. Goldstein (1992) has demonstrated the existence of two very different class conceptions of personhood and child rearing in Brazil. On the one hand there is the notion of the modern protected and inno- cent child, held by the urban middle class, on the other hand, a specific shanty town notion that is reminiscent of the pre-modern version of the child as a miniature adult. Childhood as such belongs to the middle- and upper classes, and middle class children are pampered to an even higher degree than is customary in western societies. Goldstein vividly proves that while upper- and middle class parents can afford to let their children experience indulgence, love and affection, lower class parents are forced to discipline their children harshly so that they can take care of themselves as fast as possible, and have a chance of surviving. The means to achieve the last of these aims are stern discipline and frequent physical punishment. The perhaps most astonishing part of her essay tells the story of how a single mother in a shanty-town in Rio de Janeiro, punishes her children and foster children harshly and quite capriciously whenever they behave in a way that she does- n’t approve of. But during the daytime she works as a maid in a middle-class household taking care of their children. There, on the other hand, she protects the children excessively and lets them prolong a childhood without responsibilities. She is, in other words, conscious of the different forms of rearing of the lower and middle classes. At the age of five or six the woman’s own children had to participate in household chores and already at nine or ten many of them had to start working outside their home. Goldstein emphasizes that differences of child rearing methods between classes many times are larger than between cultures. She is critical of put- ting the blame for abuse on individuals, rather than on the ordering of society at large. She even goes as far as to suggest that the conditions of poverty and the lack of options actually make extreme forms of discipline and punishment both understandable and even acceptable. Field observations of child rearing practices among different cultures and classes indicate that they are often based on what Anthony Giddens (1986) refers to as practical consciousness (cf. Briggs 1978, Graburn 1987, Bourdieu 1987, Kor- bin 1998); that is, tacit knowledge that is skillfully applied in the enactment of conduct, but which the caretakers are not able to formulate discursively. The ability of reflexive monitoring of one’s behavior, or in other words, the capabilities of caretakers to ‘explain’ why they act as they do by giving reasons for their conduct may vary substantially between different social categories. There is reason to believe that a large part of child-rearing methods among a majority of the population in Latin America is based on practical consciousness. The utilization of child-rearing practices is a mixture of incorporated behavior, transmitted notions of children, praise and punishment from generation to generation and discursive beliefs. These components may vary widely between different cultures and social categories and it is essential to analyze them carefully in order to be able to oppose corporal punishment as efficiently as possible. In the case of

28 Corporal punishment of children and change of attitudes many low-income groups with little education in Latin America most anthropological studies indicate that practical consciousness make up a large part of the upbringing (cf. Bohman 1984, Isbell 1985, Scheper-Hughes 1992, Goldstein 1998). Different methods of rearing between classes are as common in Mexico and Central America as in Brazil (Lewis 1961; Kaufman, Jasinski, Aldarondo 1994). Child training for early independence, toughness and autonomy is equally essential to urban survival. The books of Oscar Lewis (1961, 1966) describe in detail the hard and exposed life of poor families in shanty towns in Mexico City, and demonstrate the use of the same discipline and punishment as in Goldstein’s study. Lewis even coined a concept for the way of life of the poor: “culture of poverty”. This came to be a perfect example of what Goldstein refers to as “blaming the victim”. Oscar Lewis argued that this culture of poverty consisted of a number of traits; among them a high level of spouse and child abuse. Conservative policy makers in the USA became fascinated with Lewis’ analysis and concluded that the most important task for professional caretakers was to transform attitudes among the poor, not to change their economic vulnerability (cf. Valentine 1968). Even though a number of studies demonstrate that children whose parents belong to low-income groups and have little education tend to punish their children harder than other parents (Bronfenbrenner 1958, Rohner and Kean 1991, Davis 1999, Xu et al. 2000). This does not prove that middle and upper class parents do not hit their children. First of all it is impossible to make generaliza- tions that are valid all over the globe. In some cultures where the importance of punishing children is emphasized, educated parents may be more eloquent advocates of an ideology of punishment than parents with low education (cf. Wu 1981). The respect of the family may also be intimately linked to the behavior of their children, which might make parents prone to punish social deviations harshly (cf. Blanchet 1996). The high frequency of hitting and paddling students in public schools in England demonstrates that middle and upper classes may believe that an ordeal of punishment is essential if their children shall be able to gain the toughness and discipline that their future social roles may require. Scholars also have to be careful of the fact that it is usually much more difﬁcult to study middle and upper classes, than lower income groups. It is more costly to make in-depth studies of the former group, and its members are more capa- ble of concealing unpleasant facts and beliefs.

Corporal punishment of children and change of attitudes 29 5. Family relations in Latin America

In Latin America the family is a central focus of emotions and resources and family members share strong feelings of loyalty, reciprocity, and solidarity. Latino families are usually highly integrated and the extended family serves as a strong social support system for family members14. The Latino father has traditionally been perceived as the head of the family, the sole provider, the protector, and a ﬁgure of authority. Traditionally, on the other hand, the mother has been the moderator, the interceder, and the heart of the family who is well respected by her children. She is the person in charge of child rearing and of the well-being of her family and is thus abnegated and ready to take care of others before her- self (Abalos 1986). Latino families are, however, undergoing rapid transformations due to migration to cities and the need for women to earn money, which deeply affect both gender roles and child rearing. There is an increasing trend in Latin American cities of impoverished single mothers. In a study made in a shanty town in northeastern Brazil, Bartholdson (1997) approximated that one third of the women belonging to the poorest category lived alone with their children. In studies from El Salvador and Honduras 35 percent of poor mothers were found to be single (Buvinic, Vega, Bertrand, Urban 1999). This phenomenon puts great stress on these mothers and their economic capacity to support their children. They also often have less time than other mothers to dedicate to their children, and have to rely on older children and networks of kin and friends to take care of younger children. Children in Latino families are generally pampered and overprotected, even if there are large deviations depending on class, location and context (see below). As young children they are often treated with some permissiveness, an element that changes with the onset of puberty (Queralt 1984, Perilla 1999). The child’s relationship with the parents is generally quite close, although it varies depending on age and gender of the child and the gender of the parent. Mothers seem to be attached to both sons and daughters, whereas fathers are somewhat distant, especially with male children. Children, on their hand, are expected to be respectful, obedient, and loyal to their parents and other family elders (Bohman 1984, Scheper-Hughes 1992). Latino boys are given more resources, priority, and freedom than those given to girls. They are encouraged to run, explore and question, whereas their sisters are kept at home, learning to take care of the house and younger children. These rearing differences are related to different expectations of their gender roles as grown-ups. Boys and girls are expected to fulﬁll different roles. Males have dominant roles in the public sphere and their upbringing is focused on preparing them for public tasks. Girls on the other hand are trained to have domestic and repro-

14 It has to be emphasized that even though it is possible to highlight certain cultural structures and character- istics that are shared more or less by a majority of families in Latin America, there are large deviations depending on class, region, ethnicity and degree of urbanization.

30 Corporal punishment of children and change of attitudes ductive roles and their freedom of movement is much more restricted than that of the boys (cf. da Matta 1987). The girls will often constantly be under the supervision of their mothers and other female adults and their upbringing will emphasize obedience and restraint (cf. Bohman 1984, Scheper-Hughes 1992). Since boys are encouraged to be daring and outward seeking they will be punished more frequently and harder than girls15.

Machismo – the exaggeration of maleness The specific notions of masculinity in a large part of Latin America, machismo, has by some scholars been regarded as an expression of the exaggeration of maleness to the detriment of the feminine constitution, personality, and essence (Bohman 1984, Perilla 1999). It is the exaltation of physical superiority and brute force, the legitimization of a stereotype that uses unjust power relations (Lugo 1985) or, according to Diaz-Guerrero (1996), a ratification of the cultural supremacy of men over women. There are different opinions concerning what role machismo plays in domestic violence, both concerning battering of wives and corporal punishment of children (cf. Villar-Gaviria 1990, Scheper-Hughes 1992, Ruiz 1998, Perilla 1999). That is, to what extent do women who themselves are beaten, resort to violence towards their children? Some scholars see a definite link between spouse-battering and women’s use of harsh punishment against their children, while others argue that it is not possible to find a direct correspondence (Olson 1981). Perilla (1999), for example, asserts that some battered women, who lack support from kin and friends, resort to physical and emotional mistreatment of their children that may escalate to abuse. Many scholars argue that there exists a clear transmission of violence from generation to generation: concerning both abuse of wives and corporal punishment of children (Rouse 1998). In a study of intervention with abused Latin American women Perilla (1999) found that 92 per cent of the men in the bat- terers’ group had witnessed their fathers physically abusing their mothers. The abusers almost unanimously stated that they stopped the battering as soon as they had obtained the desired response from their partner. The violence is thus clearly linked to power and influence and the same pattern may be found in child punishment. Perilla (ibid.) concludes that the reliable outcome of physical abuse functions as a reinforcer for this type of behavior. In a survey made in El Salvador in 1999, by the Universidad Centroamerica- na, José Simeón Cañas showed that a mere quarter of the women knew that men had no legal right to maltreat them, in spite of battering being the most common offence against women. In fact, over half of the interviewees stated that no outsider had the right to interfere to stop domestic violence. Latino men tend to learn from an early age that their gender provides them rights and privileges that they perceive as natural. A man’s wife and children are his possessions and they must attend to his needs and expectations. Women

15 A survey that was made in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, demonstrated that boys of all income-groups were hit both more frequently and harder than the girls (Azevedo and Azevedo Guerra 2001).

Corporal punishment of children and change of attitudes 31 often blame themselves for being abused, carry shame and guilt about speaking to anyone regarding the abuse, and may be psychologically unable to ask for help (Walker 1994). Women’s cultural counterpart to machismo focuses on attributes such as self-sacriﬁce, abnegation, passivity, and “sexual purity” (Perilla 1999, Scheper-Hughes 1992, Bohman 1984). The same pattern of shame and guilt can be found among children who are punished physically, which might make them suppress the feeling of being punished when they have grown up (cf. Holden, Miller, Harris 1999). Wome- n’s experience of abuse may also make them regard violence among family members as natural, a matter of life that has to be endured.

Alternative caretakers The flexibility of responsibility for child rearing which is connected to a wide social network, consisting of kin and community, both provides a source of alternative caretakers and allows for redistribution of children who run a risk of being punished harshly, abused or, even worse, neglected. The availability of alternative caretakers may relieve biological parents from a burden of child rearing that they, for different reasons, cannot handle. Furthermore, children who are undesired by their parents may be welcomed by other households, where they are nurtured and receive emotional warmth. The social mechanisms to achieve such interchange of children may range from child lending to fostering and means of informal adoption. Scheper-Hughes (1992) has documented how adoptive patterns among poor and socially vulnerable women in shanty towns in Brazil give more children a chance to survive than otherwise would have been the case. During my own field work in Salvador, Brazil, I discovered that it was very common for poor women to “give away” one or two children for a shorter or longer time span to more affluent relatives. These “adopted” children did not only benefit in economic and educational terms, but also often received much less punishment than they would have had in their family of origin (cf. Scheper- Hughes 1992). This depended mainly on two major factors: on the one hand the economic and social pressure on their new family was less severe, and on the other hand, their new foster parents tended to have a higher level of education, which made them less prone to resort to violence. Even though these “adopted” children often are treated with warmth and care, the biological children of the households are nonetheless mostly given more economic and social support. The foster children often have to run errands and do more household chores than the parents’ own children and are not given the same possibilities of education, etc. The fate of these children would often have been immensely worse, however, if they had continued to live with their biological parents. The well-known phenomenon of Brazilian street-children, for example, is a tragic example of poor households with many children, often consisting of single mothers who lack the social networks where alternative caretakers may be found (Dimenstein 1990, Scheper-Hughes 1998).

32 Corporal punishment of children and change of attitudes 6. Conclusions

This report has tried to locate a number of social and cultural factors that are deemed important for understanding both the prevalence and restriction of the use of corporal punishment in different cultures. These factors are believed to be essential in order to reduce and, eventually, abolish the use of corporal punishment. They form the necessary contexts that must be analyzed if it shall be possible to change the attitudes towards corporal punishment among parents and other caretakers. Speciﬁc emphasis has been put on relations of culture, gender, and class in Latin America. The conclusions that can be drawn from the discussions of these factors are presented below. They are linked to the ﬁve contexts that Davis (1994) propo- sed could be utilized as an analytical frame of factors that are essential for altering caretakers’ attitudes to corporal punishment: the experiential, ideological, regulatory, relational and biographical contexts (see page 12).

Regulatory context Importance of legislation: As the case of China demonstrates there is an immense importance of legislation against corporal punishment and of the readiness to enforce the law. Paisley’s (1989) assertion of the need to combine engineering, enforcement, and education has not been followed, however (see page 16). Apart from their ﬁerce authoritarianism, the Chinese authorities have not inves- ted heavily in campaigns and projects that aim at changing parents’ attitudes towards physical punishment. The successful project of abolishing corporal punishment in Sweden, though, has been in line with Paisley’s recommendations and legislation now has deep support among the population. Transformations of attitudes must, ideally, be complemented by changes of the ofﬁcial policy of corporal punishment. It has to be followed-up by concrete measures against corporal punishment in public institutions that deal with children.

Effects of societal violence: Societal violence is connected to both the regulatory and ideological contexts. Changing economic, social and cultural conditions often have disruptive effects on family relations and social networks and the sub- sequent stress may lead to higher frequency of spouse abuse, corporal punishment and child abuse. Examples of such effects are the increased economic strains on households during the last decades in Mexico and Central America and the civil wars that have taken place in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guate- mala. There is a risk that the issue involvement in child-rearing methods generally, and in debates about corporal punishment speciﬁcally, may decrease because of the large economic and social problems that the families face. High levels of societal violence, such as in Mexico and Central America, may

Corporal punishment of children and change of attitudes 33 furthermore weaken the citizens’ belief in state authority. This may affect the credibility of new legislation, such as bans on corporal punishment.

Increase popular participation: A further conclusion is that public campaigns of various sorts against the use of corporal punishment will have very little effect if they are not combined with participation at local levels. Public campaigns could, however, contribute by changing attitudes in the community and strengthen the position of parent’s decision not to use corporal punishment. There are a number of public institutions in Latin America, whose policies of and position towards corporal punishment may have profound impact on society. The two most inﬂuential of these institutions are perhaps the schools and the Catholic Church. If the authorities in a determinate way abolish corporal punishment in the schools, this will make it easier for caretakers to resist social pressure to use physical punishment. It will also contribute to change attitudes towards corporal punishment in society at large. Furthermore, the church permeates the social fabric in communities in Latin America and often exerts a profound inﬂuence on families, especially women (cf. Bohman 1984). It is therefore important that the Church reject corporal punishment of children.

Relational context Existence of social networks: A cross-cultural study of corporal punishment demonstrates the importance of large social networks of kin and friends. When child rearing is a concern for a whole group rather than an exclusive domain and responsibility of individual parents it ensures a certain level of child standard and prevents large deviations from this standard. Social networks in Latin America are both large and supportive. The networks function as channels of ﬁnancial resources and information. These networks also help parents, especially mothers, in taking care of and protecting their children. Gender roles are very differentiated between men and women and daily care-taking of children is almost exclusively the task of women. It is reasonable to argue that women’s engagement in upbringing, that is, their “issue involvement”, is very high. Women may believe that “mild” corporal punishment is an integral part of rearing. It would therefore probably be a wise strategy to direct their interest at child rearing at large and in that frame promote alternative methods of punishment and socialization.

Means of interference: Large and inﬂuential social networks may have a negative role if they are supportive of corporal punishment. It will not be sufﬁcient, though, to merely change the parents’ attitudes towards corporal punishment, since the network of kin exercises a large social pressure. Projects directed at the parents will have to be complemented with campaigns against corporal punishment that reach the whole community. Since it is plausible that the issue involvement of this subject initially will be low in the community, such campaigns would be greatly helped by an enforced ban on corporal punishment in all public institutions.

34 Corporal punishment of children and change of attitudes The women will also have speciﬁc needs of information on how they shall defend their decisions to not use corporal punishment. That is, if the parents are convinced that it is detrimental to use corporal punishment, the initiators of a project against violence will have to clearly deﬁne for the parents how they will be able to withstand the social pressure of the network. In Latin America the strongest pressure will most certainly come from other women, mostly the elder ones, so networks of women that embrace different age categories will be of great importance. It is also common in different cultures that the nuclear family has such social integrity that members of social networks will not interfere in cases of severe punishment and abuse. In such cases campaigns both on why people should interfere and how they should act to do it are important. The threshold of interference has to be made as low as possible.

Identify gender roles: As we have seen, gender relations in Latin America are com- monly very differentiated, both genders displaying distinct roles and attitudes. Child rearing is primarily the domain of women, while men ideally should be protectors and breadwinners. Efforts concentrated on changing attitudes in order to abolish corporal punishment will probably have a larger chance of suc- cess if they do not oppose these gender roles, but rather play on distinct attitudes and values. Boys and girls are brought up in distinct ways because of the different social roles that are expected of them. Even though female children tend to be the most oppressed group this does not mean that they are punished more than boys. On the contrary, notions of the more public role of boys and beliefs that they will have to learn to endure pain often make them targets of physical punishment to a greater extent than girls.

Emphasize positive values: Mothers carry out the major part of child rearing in Latin America and, accordingly, punishment. It is urgent not to put the blame on mothers, who often have a very difficult and exposed situation, but instead emphasize their roles as “good mothers”. Using this method it is easier to discuss child rearing at large and the use of corporal punishment as a detail that can be corrected. Palm (ibid.) states that if there is any realistic possibility to raise the target group’s involvement in the concerned issue, it should be done before the actual campaign starts. If that should not be possible, however, the message should be directed at specific and limited questions. In order to make a campaign against corporal punishment the initiator could either try to raise the issue involvement of this particular question or focus on a related question that women are likely to initially be interested in. Analysis of different class and gender logic of corporal punishment must be made, in order to be able to present better alternative child-rearing methods. It is absolutely vital that alternatives to corporal punishment are clearly identified in the message directed to the target group. Hovland, Harvey and Sherif (1957) argue that it is important that messages, which the target group might consider hostile, shall not appear that way. This is

Corporal punishment of children and change of attitudes 35 avoided by expressing the position of the sender in such a way that it actually seems close to the position of the target group. The target group will then, hope- fully, merge their own positions with the key message that the sender really intends to communicate. Palm (1994) asserts that if the ﬁnal objective is to stop a certain act, it may often be wise to approach this in stages. Translated to the Latin American context it can be seen as a support for the idea of ﬁrst concentrating on child rearing, and then gradually focusing on physical punishment. Generally, the use of corporal punishment will be based on customs, transmitted notions of the need of hitting and the lack of alternative methods of child rearing. It is more seldom the result of programmatic and discursive beliefs (see page 28).

Make the problem collective: Furthermore, in many societies, not least in Latin America, domestic violence is mostly regarded as an individual or family affair that has little to do with the surrounding community. It is therefore important to remove the question of corporal punishment from the private sphere into a collective setting (cf. Perilla 1999, Marcus 1994). Efforts could therefore be made to strengthen community-based groups of women, linked, for example, to a healthcare station, where questions of the well-being of their children can be emphasized.16 Linking punishment to both rearing at large and economic and social issues will ease the risk of women feeling accused of being bad mothers. On the contrary, since motherhood is such a central theme in Latin America, it will continuously have to be stressed that they are good mothers and that their involvement in these groups is a further proof of this.

Ideological context Present clear alternatives: Palm further discusses the importance of being able to argue against beliefs that are held by large groups. In the case of physical punishment this means that not only must parents/caretakers be convinced of the detrimental effect of corporal punishment, they must also be able to defend their position in their community. Palm stresses the need of “how”-information, how will a mother behave in order to defend her position in front of her husband or other women? If there is large collective pressure on using corporal punishment, effort must be made to support parents/caretakers in defending their positions. They must be given practical advice on how to explain why they have quit punishing physically, explanations that do not make them target for resentment or hostili- ty. In this situation they will be helped if they can refer to prestigious people who state that they do not hit anymore. If, moreover, the local public authorities demonstrate that they seriously oppose physical punishment this will further strengthen the parent’s decisions.

16 This method is in line with the measures that Amaro and Nieves (1999) suggest for Latino women who have been subjected to abuse and risk transmitting their traumas to their offspring. They recommend a family- focused model of treatment, which requires counselors and other staff on child development, behavior management, child maltreatment and parenting support.

36 Corporal punishment of children and change of attitudes Special focus on men and machismo: In order to take pressures off women who have decided not to use physical punishment efforts must be made to try to stop Latino men from resorting to violence in order to maintain power. Masculinity in Latin America is often permeated by values such as a belief in control and the right to use domestic violence. There are also more positive values linked to masculinity, among them responsibility, honesty and the protection of wife and children. In this situation the application of Brown’s (1967) so called “value association technique” might prove useful. This technique implies that a concept will be associated with a value that is signiﬁcant for the target group. By analyzing the common denominator of the values linked to machismo, that is being a real man, a campaign can focus on those positive values. Negative practices such as domi- nance and domestic violence will then be linked to unmanly behavior. Examples and campaigns of respected males who emphasize positive male values and express contempt of negative acts and values can ﬁll an important function. Palm (1994) asserts the importance of connecting positive and desired attributes of cultural values to a change of attitudes. There has to be new func- tional connections constructed between behavior and values and/or positive norms.

Empower the children: Children are not passive objects, but active subjects that can contribute to strengthening bans on corporal punishment. The example of Sweden demonstrates that children are highly aware of the fact that parents may not beat them. When the Swedish legislation against corporal punishment was introduced the authorities stressed that all members of the families should get information about the law. It is important, though, that children are given possibilities to denounce transgressions.

Experiential and biographical contexts Combat alcohol and substance abuse: Substance and alcohol abuse have consequences for the experiential, ideological and regulatory contexts. Such abuse usually has very detrimental effects on family relations, child rearing and patterns of punishment. Alcohol and substance abuse is often combined with other types of problems, such as unemployment and other negative economic and social conditions. The sensitivity and compassion of intoxicated parents will be low, making them more prone to resort to violence. They will also be less apt to reﬂect over children’s rights and obey legislation. Alcohol and substance abuse is a signiﬁ- cant problem in Mexico and Central America, especially among men. Organi- zed networks of women may give each other support and protection and also make it easier to break up from a destructive relationship. It will be necessary to work on a community level to face substance and abuse problems.

Analyze class belonging: In Latin America, as well as in most other parts of the world, corporal punishment and abuse are most common among impoverished

Corporal punishment of children and change of attitudes 37 and exposed families, who have more difficulty than the upper and middle classes in affording the luxury of self-reflexivity (Rohner and Kean 1991, Straus and Donnelly 1993). In Latin America children in middle-class homes may be pampered until they reach adolescence, while children of low-income groups may have to start working at the age of five. This often means that they are deprived of their right to a childhood and that they run a much a higher risk than middle class children of being physically punished or abused. In order to successfully combat physical punishment among the most vulnerable groups there is a need of understanding their exposed situation and how they respond to these circumstances.

The importance of self-reflection: An additional challenge to the discussion of personal childhood mistreatment among Latino women is the particularly strong cultural norms against speaking about issues of family abuse (Gil & Vasquez 1997). Hortensia Amaro and Rita Nieves (1999) have found, however, that psycho-educational group approaches that do not force women to speak of their experiences but that provide information and build understanding about emotional and physical boundaries, intimacy and mutuality, self-esteem, a sense of empowerment, facilitated women to handle post-traumatic stress. Their findings were related both to physical and sexual abuse. This further stresses the importance of linking corporal punishment to larger questions of rearing and of women sharing their experiences in an environment of people they trust. It also shows that there might be an initial resistance towards self-reflexion, bringing up to the surface feelings, thoughts and memories of how they were physically punished themselves. Even so, a reflection of childhood experiences might be very important. Generally, the use of corporal punishment will be based on customs, transmitted notions of the need of hitting, and the lack of alternative methods of making children obey. It is more seldom the result of programmatic and discursive beliefs.

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