An edited version of this article ran in the July 2013 issue of Ebony magazine.
Knocking the Sense Out of Us?
She would send us out to get the switch. And you couldn’t come back with a small one either! Well, my daddy, he would take off his belt – or just act like he was gonna take off his belt. And that was all it took. We would just fix our faces and act right. Lemme tell you, my mamma would slap us around with her house shoe?Her house shoe?!… Her house shoe?
You may have heard grown folks chuckle and fondly recall their own childhoods using language a lot like that. Maybe, you’ve even heard lines like these in your own head, when you think back on your own childhood, and remember how it was.
But, maybe, it is time to stop those voices, to re-examine how it was, and to question our collective past – a past when spankings, beatings, “whuppings,” and the occasional knock upside the back of the head were so common, had been around for so long, no one ever thought to question them. Indeed, no one ever dared to.
Maybe it’s time to be daring, especially because, according to many researchers, all those slaps upside the head – and on the behind – may literally be knocking the sense out of our children.
Research suggests that physical punishment has a measurable negative impact on cognitive development, as children who are spanked on a regular basis score as much as 5 points lower on IQ tests than children who are not spanked. And they?re our children. A 2000 National Survey of Early Childhood Health published in the official journal of the AAP found that, while 31% of African American mothers surveyed admitted to spanking their children, only 21% of Latino mothers and 16% of White mothers did so.
Parenting is a hard job. It is exhausting. And frustrating. Children create chaos. However, turning everyday household encounters with these natural-born chaos-creators into opportunities for positive verbal communication will reap huge rewards.
The First Five Years
From birth to age 5, especially, children need the opportunity to reach, grab, taste, examine, and test, test, test – and that behavior can test the limits of any caregiver who also has to cope with the stresses of the adult world. Yet, as their young brains develop through this crucial early period of human brain development, when all the synapses are forming and the mind is getting wired for life, test is what the human baby must do.
When little explorers throw their cereal on the floor, grab pots and pans from the cabinet to bang together, and pull apart the bed you just made, their brains are actually growing in healthy ways. The best response to help those brain synapses get wired just right is to show your baby how to pick the Cheerios up using the pincer grasp with forefinger and thumb, as that will help her hold her pencil properly when it’s time to learn to write. Bang along for a few minutes with your toddler, then show him how to restack the cookware in size order to fit back in the cupboard, and you’ve helped prepare him for math class. Give your preschooler an edge of the blanket, show him how to pull it up to the top of the bed, and you’ve given him a lesson in cooperative work that will serve him well through college and into the working world.
Employing healthy responses to early childhood behavior is so crucial to brain development, that the Harlem Children’s Zone in New York City devotes an entire component to discipline through a program called The Baby College, a free, nine-week course for parents of children through age 3 that helps them understand human brain development, child development, and specific health hazards like asthma and lead poisoning. Baby College Director Marilyn Joseph says that “discipline instead of punishment” is a key component of the program, which “helps parents learn non-physical ways to discipline our children.”
Joseph says “The Harlem Children’s Zone goal is to ensure children graduate from college and grow to be satisfied, self-sufficient adults. Toward that goal, we feel the earlier we work with children and families, the better the chances are that children will succeed in school. Since we believe corporal punishment can negatively impact a child’s development, we feel it is critical that we help caregivers improve their parenting skills as early as possible.”
Parents are encouraged to employ verbal warnings using age-appropriate language when they correct their children’s behavior. If the child’s behavior does not stop, then parents are asked to follow-up with a timeout of no more than one minute per year of the child’s life. After the timeout, Joseph suggests parents have an age-appropriate discussion with the child about their behavior and about their expectations for future improvement.
This conversation following a timeout might provide a rich opportunity for cognitive development, as well as social and emotional development. While reasoning with your child might take more time in the short-term, there are long-term benefits to discipline using language, instead of spanking.
According to Joe Brewster, MD, psychiatrist, and co-author with his wife, Michele Stephenson, of the forthcoming book American Promise: Raising Black Boys to Succeed in School and in Life, those benefits include improved communication skills and critical thinking skills, stronger bonding with the caretaker and stronger interpersonal relationships with others, and increased ability to think and express emotion in a complicated manner. While he and his wife have chosen not to spank their two sons as a way to discipline them, Brewster says he does understand the thinking of parents who do.
“I beat you because I love you.”
According to Brewster, some researchers suggest that “motivation to discipline African-American boys more harshly is an adaptation to slavery and post-slavery societal conditions. The failure of African-American men to be submissive to whites has been associated (and continues to be) with death or violent punishment. Unfortunately, these highly disciplined males tend to thrive and live within environments wherein external control of behavior is most prevalent, the military and the criminal justice system.”
Given the level of violence Black bodies experience in the public realm, many parents believe the short-term benefits of spanking in the home will prepare their children to survive everywhere else, from the schoolyard to the streets. They believe spanking will save their children’s lives.
“Physical punishment is action-oriented, which is one of the reasons that it is effective,” says Arthur L Whaley, PhD, DrPH, Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology at Texas Southern University. “Attempts to emulate the White community by using verbal reasoning are generally not effective and may be inappropriate for children. This is particularly the case when the American society is still very hostile against Black youth, as situations like cases of the Central Park Jogger, the Jena 6, and Trayvon Martin remind us. Action-oriented disciplinary strategies are necessary because the costs are too high for our children.”
Whaley believes that, when applied to correct a child’s dangerous behavior rather than to satisfy an adult’s frustration with that behavior, corporal punishment can have a positive outcome on Black children’s lives. “I was told over a decade ago that a book was written about the lives of Black males who were successful,” he says. “One of the things that they all acknowledged, according to second hand reports, was that receiving a spanking from their parent (mainly mothers) kept them on the straight and narrow.”
A Black Parenting Style?
Researchers have identified four major parenting styles: Authoritarian, Uninvolved, Permissive, and Authoritative. Brewster asserts that there is no one Black parenting style but adds that “there are a number of patterns of parenting that are more prevalent in African American families.”
Brewster goes on to say that, “All children seem to prosper, academically, financially and socio-emotionally when they are parented with an authoritative style. This style is one in which parents are more emotionally supportive while also being the most demanding. It is a parenting style that encourages dialogue between the parents and their offspring. It is also a style that African-American parents are reluctant to embrace with their boys. Only seven percent of African-American boys are parented in an authoritative fashion, a style that correlates with higher graduation rates, higher academic achievement and higher incomes.”
Massa’s Whipping – Mamma’s Whupping
Some African Americans scoff at the use of dialogue with young people, even teenagers, as “the way White folks raise their kids.” Indeed, when in the presence of other African Americans, some Black parents will perform a harsher approach to discipline for fear that they will be caught asking their child to perform a task – instead of telling them to do so. This tacit complicity in the harsher punishment of Black children, especially Black boys, is likely rooted in slavery.
Many scholars believe that older slaves would perform a similar kind of harsh discipline in the presence of a master or overseer. They assert that our cultural tradition of “getting the switch” and “whupping” a child derive from the tradition of whipping slaves. The thinking is that a loving slave adult telling a child to get the switch would do less harm than any White person telling that same child to get ready for the whip. These scholars suggest that Black caregivers would actively try to assume the role of disciplinarian to protect their children from the more severe physical punishment likely to come from an overseer or slave owner. Some scholars also assert that slave parents would perform the role of disciplinarian in an exaggerated, overly aggressive way to satisfy overseers and owners. One of these scholars is Dr. Stacey Patton, author of a memoir called That Mean Old Yesterday and founder of Spare the Kids, Inc.
Patton says she sees, “a clear link between the historical trauma of slavery and racial discrimination and the ways too many Black folks embrace violent childrearing practices today. The Civil War may have destroyed the institution of slavery, but the trauma still lives with us. Many of the most dysfunctional behaviors that far too many Blacks view as normative, from colorism to beating children, can be traced back to slavery and Jim Crow. Where else could it have all come from?”
Patton laments the fact that some African Americans still believe beating their children will keep them out of jail when, ironically enough, the ability to “fix your face” and “act right” in tense situations actually prepares children for adult experiences in harsh institutions like prisons.
“Black children don’t need whippings to add to their problems,” she says. “They live in a society that fundamentally hates them. When we beat our children we extend the master’s lash and we assist in their continued devaluation.”
Forward
Time for some new calculations: Intelligence is a better predictor of success in school and in a career than any other score. Five points can make a difference between being a semi-skilled worker or a skilled one, between being on a team of clerical workers or the administrator who manages them. Five points can make the difference between starting college and finishing it. Since talking to our children instead of hitting them gives them that edge, then let’s start a fresh narrative in our community, with voices that affirm and honor our beautiful brown babies.
New mother Nyisha (last name withheld) was raised in Trinidad and now lives in Brooklyn with her husband, who is half Senegalese and half Swiss/German. Together, Nyisha and her husband have decided they will not spank their 9 month old daughter, Sophia.
Nyisha says she “thought a lot” about how she and her husband would raise Sophia before she was even born. Nyisha herself was spanked as a child, as were all her friends. “That’s the way that we were all raised during that time,” she says. “Spanking wasn’t considered out of the norm.” Thinking about friends she had growing up, whose more adventurous personalities were crushed because their parents beat them, Nyisha says she and her husband decided they would command respect and make sure Sophia does the right thing without instilling her with dread or fear, an approach to parenting that, she acknowledges, “takes more creativity. It takes more time.”
But, for her, the extra work is worth it. Nyisha says her goal with Sophia is “building her” as a young girl, not “training her to follow orders rather than think independently.” Despite the challenges Nyisha says she knows Sophia will face as a Black girl in America, she wants her daughter to speak up for herself, to know that “no opportunity to communicate is detrimental.”
Deanna Morea agrees. A native of Ohio who is raising two boys ages 1 and 4 with her husband, who grew up in New Jersey, Morea says she believes spanking actually “promotes aggressiveness” instead of preventing it. Adding that she thinks boys are already naturally more aggressive than girls, Morea says she wants her sons to learn to think their way through any problem. “I don’t want them to think they have to fight their way through the world.”
About her older son, Morea says, “When he has had a tantrum I did feel proud that my attempt to calm the tantrum was the best way – even if I didn’t stop the tantrum. I try to hug him out of tantrums, and that’s usually how we end up.” Morea thinks her approach will enable a kind of fearlessness in both her sons that will serve them well in the future, a time when, she hopes, they will look back and “respect how they were raised.”
“I think our generation realizes that parenting out of fear is not what creates leaders,” she says. “Trying to get your child to do what you say is not what we’re working toward. The next Steve Jobs is not going to come from someone who was raised not to speak up, from someone who was raised not to think differently. I think people who are raised to speak up and voice their opinions are the people who become leaders in this world, leaders like Barack Obama.”