three elements that distinguishes physical abuse from corporal punishment

Corporal punishment and parental physical abuse often co-occur during upbringing, making it difficult to differentiate their selective impacts on psychological functioning. 703-309 (1) (West 2009). Dodge and Doriane Lambelet Coleman with a county CPS frontline investigator, Durham County, N.C. (Feb. 16, 2009) (on file with L & CP); interview by Kenneth A. Nevertheless, a careful analysis of the relevant cases shows that, in general, courts consider many of the same factors as CPS does, including the degree and severity of the childs injury, the childs real and developmental age, the manner of discipline, and whether a pattern of abuse (chronicity) is present. Force is reasonable in nature and moderate in degree if it does not cause or risk causing functional impairment. Discerning functional impairment is easiest in circumstances where children are old enough to express their concerns, or else to exhibit failures or inabilities in the exercise of their daily activities. Basing decisionmaking about the reasonableness of corporal punishment on a combination of parental-autonomy norms and scientific evidence about harm, as this functional-impairment test would do, is not new. The line between reasonable corporal punishment and abuse will never be exact. For example, New York explicitly includes excessive corporal punishment within its statutory-neglect definition.33 Thus, it defines an abused child as one who suffers physical injury by other than accidental means which causes or creates a substantial risk of death, or serious or protracted disfigurement, or protracted impairment of physical or emotional health or protracted loss or impairment of the function of bodily organ.34 And it classifies as neglected a child whose physical condition has been impaired or harmed, but not injured seriously enough to create a substantial risk of death or protracted disfigurement or impairment.35 Other states adopting this approach have done so either informally or by administrative regulation. Of course, children sometimes lie or fail to communicate clearly, and so clinical judgment by a skilled professional may be particularly helpful to this process. Ann. Although it would be simpler if detrimental corporal-punishment behaviors could be defined by specific behaviors, research studies indicate that the behavior itself is less prognostic than the behavior in its context. Would you like email updates of new search results? All Rights Reserved, Victims of Child Abuse, Domestic Violence, Elder Abuse, Rape, Robbery, Assault, and Violent Death, A Manual for Clergy and Congregations, Special Edition for Military Chaplains, Section I: Child Abuse and Neglect, Effects of Child Abuse on Children: Abuse General, Effects of Child Abuse on Children: Child Sexual Abuse, Injuries to Children: Physical and Sexual Abuse, Effects of Child Abuse on Adults: Childhood Abuse, Effects of Child Abuse on Adults: Childhood Sexual Abuse, Child Physical Abuse and Corporal Punishment, Nationwide Crisis Line and Hotline Directory. Parents sometimes defend their corporal-punishment practices based on the family norm they experienced growing up, even in the face of a contemporary societal prohibition.221 Defining a parental practice as reasonable based on cultural normativeness is complicated by these varying norms. This in turn demands that the parents be given a wide sphere of discretion.129 Although the United States Supreme Court has never had occasion to rule on whether corporal punishment is included among parents federal constitutional rights, this disciplinary option is well-established under state law.130 Specifically, states have long provided parents with an exception to tort- and criminal-law prohibitions against physical assaults when they can establish a disciplinary motive for the assault and when the assault itself is reasonable.131 Twentieth-century case law is thus replete with holdings like this one: A parent has the right to punish a child within the bounds of moderation and reason, so long as he or she does it for the welfare of the child.132 The states approach has its origins in the Colonial period, [when] [corporal] punishment was thought to be a desirable and necessary instrument of restraint upon sin and immorality, as well as having a regenerative effect on the childs character.133 This view derived in turn from traditional English doctrine, which holds that a parent may lawfully correct his child, being under age, in a reasonable manner, for this is for the benefit of his education.134 Modern maltreatment law has adopted this common-law exception.135, In general, parental autonomy is viewed as being good for society, good for parents, and good for children. Clipboard, Search History, and several other advanced features are temporarily unavailable. Parental autonomy norms, in particular, are widely held beliefs about the primacy of parents and parental decisionmaking as against the state and decisions it might make in regards to the child. Dwyer James G. Parental Entitlement and Corporal Punishment. On average, 17% of children experienced severe physical punishment (being hit on the head, face or ears or hit hard and repeatedly) but in some countries this figure exceeds 40%. Although these three areas of law have some different objectives and concerns, there is merit to a jurisdictions considering adoption of a single unified rule, as doing so would send a consistent message to the relevant legal actorsincluding parents, CPS, and judgesabout the states position on corporal punishment. Rev. The risk of being physically punished is similar for boys and girls, and for children from wealthy and poor households. Corporal-punishment exceptions to child-abuse provisions should be made to track the common-law privilege; that is, the exception should be available for discipline only, and then only for force that is reasonable.196 The two-pronged standard makes better policy sense than approaches that focus or appear to focus only on the reasonableness of the force used because it is the most accurate and thus most helpful statement of the applicable law, and because it emphasizes (or brings into the equation) the oft-forgotten threshold condition for the privilege: that it is ultimately in the childs interest that the force be used.197 Conversely, this standard makes clear that the privilege does not apply in circumstances that are not in the childs interests, for example, when a parent lashes out maliciously or without motive or reason. and transmitted securely. Explains how Federal and State laws define Accessibility WebThe book is divided into three sections that examine the use of corporal punishment by American parents. For example, the Connecticut Court of Appeals recognized that a criminal statute granting parents a privilege to use reasonable physical force to correct their child demonstrate[d] the public recognition of the parental right to punish children for their own welfare and thus expressed the states policy of allowing reasonable corporal punishment. Lovan C. v. Dept of Children and Families, 860 A.2d 1283, 1288 (Conn. App. Epub 2021 May 3. Moreover, intervention in the family itself causes or risks harm to children and families and thus ought to be avoided unless supported by reliable indicia that intervention will do more good than harm.192. This difficulty stems both from the relatively mundane problem of how textually to craft the definitions so that they capture all and only what we want them to capture, and from the related (but infinitely more complex) problem of how to resolve the ideological tensions at play in this area. MeSH Corporal punishment is a violation of childrens rights to respect for physical integrity and human dignity, health, development, education and freedom from torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. 232.68 (West 2006). It should not, however, permit classification as abuse of incidents and injuries that do not cause such impairments. In: Eisenberg Nancy., editor. Meyer David D. The Constitutionalization of Family Law. They are often willing to view physical discipline, even physical discipline that causes minor physical injury to the child, as reasonable, provided the parents disciplinary act was a legitimate attempt to correct the childs misbehavior.117 If the evidence suggests that a parent was instead acting viciously out of anger or cruelty, however, courts are not willing to afford parents the same discretion.118 Many courts that do not explicitly evaluate the necessity of the disciplinary act still take into account the parents motivation by considering whether the parent employed physical discipline in a manner indicative of her desire to help, not harm, the child.119 Specifically, courts consider whether the parent-administered discipline in a controlled manner, whether the parent was angry when he or she administered the discipline, and whether any evidence suggests a malicious intent.120, Finally, when evaluating whether a finding of abuse is warranted, courts commonly refer to a parents right to administer reasonable physical discipline.121 The courts explicit recognition of this right as part of an attempt to draw the line between physical abuse and reasonable physical discipline suggests thatunlike some CPS agencies and professionals, who view their role primarily as saving children from their parents122courts are focused either on simultaneously protecting children and preserving parents disciplinary autonomy, or, in some cases, primarily on the latter.123. A large body of researchshows links between corporal punishment and a wide range of negative outcomes, both immediate and long-term: There is some evidence of a doseresponse relationship, with studies finding that the association with child aggression and lower achievement in mathematics and reading ability became stronger as the frequency of corporal punishment increased. Wald Michael. Corporal punishment is likely to lead to functional impairment to the extent that the child (even a toddler or infant) experiences and interprets the parents actions as rejecting, hateful, or threatening. v. Dept of Health and Rehab. Parents rights and family privacy may be considered as essential factors to be balanced against harm to the child or as relatively insignificant in light of the agencys mandate to focus on child welfare.60 Parents motivation is more or less relevant to agencies or social workers depending on the extent to which they believe the inquiry should focus entirely on medical harm to the child; when motivation matters in the analysis, parents may be permitted to cause more harm than they would when it is not a consideration.61 Relatedly, CPS professionals may consider the familys ethnic or cultural background, as in assessing whether a particular form of corporal punishment is normative in the familys community.62 As with parental motivation, however, those who focus primarily on medical harm to the child will tend to discount or ignore diversity of parenting practices.63, The factors that a particular CPS social worker or agency considers in drawing the line between reasonable corporal punishment and abuse, and the weight the factors are given, depend on two circumstances: the extent to which the agency or social worker is administratively (by regulation, policy, or protocol) constrained and the decisionmakers own community norms, disciplinary training, and personal ideology. 1 Punishment, like spanking, is meant to inflict physical pain and suffering. The legal actors responsible for determining where and how to draw the line between reasonable and unlawful corporal punishmentCPS agents and courtsare influenced by one of two paradigms, or by a more or less ad hoc combination. For example, some jurisdictions with both extensive non-conforming immigrant communities and the political will and resources to work to reconcile those practices with broader community norms and applicable law have incorporated sensitivity to cultural difference in their CPS protocols and have trained their professionals accordingly. Again, this has been left mostly unresolved, either purposefully or by default. Rather, we encourage their treatment as potentially contributing to rather than as automatically dispositive of the line between reasonable corporal punishment and abuse. 12-18-103(2)(A)(vii)(a)(d) (2009). Dimensional and categorical corporal punishment scores were associated significantly with half of the criterion measures. Normativeness is already central to how reporters, CPS, and judges decide reasonableness; such actors are more likely to view what is unusual to or different for them (based on community culture or personal orientation) as abuseindeed, in some jurisdictions, it may be the predominant criterion.216 Abnormality is also an empirical criterion, in that norms are defined by the rate of use in a particular culture or society.217 Using empirical data as a check on personal views or current practices can reduce the incidence of ad hoc know it when you see it fact-finding, and thus standardize what is and is not considered normative, at least within individual communities or jurisdictions.218 Entirely apart from its usefulness to reduce ad hoc fact-finding, this particular use of scientific evidence is important because what is normative in terms of corporal punishment is rapidly shifting, and as a result, practitioners may not be as aware of actual current normative practice as they believe they are. Unauthorized use of these marks is strictly prohibited. Doing so, however, is antithetical to the purposes of the exception. First, it is the reality on the ground that parental-autonomy norms interact and even sometimes compete with medical and social-science perspectives as the line is drawn in individual cases between reasonable corporal punishment and maltreatment. Although no adverse effect on the infant may be apparent immediately, recent medical research has shown that the long-term consequences can be devastating due to an infants unique and fragile anatomy.158 Infants are born with weak neck muscles that cannot hold up a large head, which is prone to jostle back and forth uncontrollably while being shaken. sharing sensitive information, make sure youre on a federal Corporal punishment sets clear boundaries and motivates children to behave in school. When a parent meets this burden, the state is required to prove that the assault was not privileged or excused. Parents employ different corporal-punishment practices across the world. Corporal punishment is the intentional use of physical force to cause bodily pain or discomfort as a penalty for unacceptable behaviour. direct physical harm, sometimes resulting in severe damage, long-term disability or death; mental ill-health, including behavioural and anxiety disorders, depression, hopelessness, low self-esteem, self-harm and suicide attempts, alcohol and drug dependency, hostility and emotional instability, which continue into adulthood; impaired cognitive and socio-emotional development, specifically emotion regulation and conflict solving skills; damage to education, including school dropout and lower academic and occupational success; poor moral internalization and increased antisocial behaviour; adult perpetration of violent, antisocial and criminal behaviour; indirect physical harm due to overloaded biological systems, including developing cancer, alcohol-related problems, migraine, cardiovascular disease, arthritis and obesity that continue into adulthood; increased acceptance and use of other forms of violence; and. We adopt this approach for two reasons. Cultural Differences in the Effects of Physical Punishment, in. Coleman Doriane Lambelet. The model corporal-punishment provision concluding this section demonstrates how the recommendations can work together to provide the relevant legal actors with a systematic approach to drawing the line between reasonable corporal punishment and abuse that reconciles parental-autonomy norms and scientific evidence. The article discusses what is legally considered abuse, spanking as a form of discipline, and more. (Note: the reference here has been to Christian scholarship. This approach best reflects what history and social science tells us is good for children: a child-rearing model that recognizes and establishes parents as the childrens first[,] best caretakers10 and that intervenes in the family only when necessary to protect the child from harm that would be greater than that inevitably caused by the states own intervention.11 This approach also reflects appropriate respect for parents traditional role and the rights and responsibilities paradigm that has long governed American law in this area. Information Privacy in Cyberspace Transactions. WebCorporal punishment includes the use of physical force with either the parents hand or an instrument as a way of disciplining a child for what the parent considers to be inappropriate Jaffee Sara R, et al. This includes but is not limited to freedom from corporal punishment, involuntary seclusion and any physical or chemical restraint not required to treat the resident's medical symptoms. Relevant and reliable scientific evidence should take primacy over personal opinions, whatever their basis. Underlying mechanisms for racial disparities in parent-child physical and psychological aggression and child abuse risk. Physical abuse option 3 Psychometric Evidence for Indirect Assessment of Child Abuse Risk in Child Welfare-Involved Mothers. Annual Risk of Death Resulting From Short Falls Among Young Children: Less Than I in I Million. This standardas opposed to a weaker or stronger. This discretion is attributable both to the broad and imprecise language found in most statutory definitions of physical abuse and to the fact that judges are free either to be guided by92 or to disregard unreasonable agency interpretations of that language.93 Ultimately, because of this broad discretion, but also probably because of their different disciplinary orientation, judges have developed their own approaches to drawing the line between reasonable physical discipline and unlawful physical abuse. The second prong of our proposed two-pronged corporal punishment requires an evaluation of the reasonableness of the force used. On hitting children: a review of corporal punishment in the United States. Strong Parents, Safe Kids: Discipline and Parenting Styles Corporal punishment encompasses all types of physical punishment, including spanking, slapping, pinching, pulling, twisting, and hitting with an object. It also may include forcing a child to consume unpleasant substances such as soap, hot sauce, or hot pepper. What Is the Link Between Corporal Punishment and Child Physical Abuse? This, in turn, raises the question whether our approach is realistic given the systems already-limited human and financial resources. In some countries, almost all students report being physically punished by school staff. The requirement of a disciplinary motive is inherent in the allowance, see. A nonaccidental physical assault on a child is child abuse unless it is privileged or excused. 58 For example, evidence of chronicity, the use of an object such as a belt or a switch, the childs fear of the parent or anxiety about the safety of the home, or an injury in a location other than the buttocks (harm to the head or neck is particularly provocative in this regard) may cause CPS to classify as abuse a bruise lasting for more than twenty-four hours, even if that same agency would normally decline to intervene based on the injury alone.59, Finally, in the evaluation of individual incidents and injuries, CPS may consider parents rights and family privacy, including parents motivation for using corporal punishment and parents ethnic or cultural background. She attributed this to the election of judges based on the electorates ideological views and to judges subsequent preoccupation with reelection. Among the acts that constitute abuse with a showing of physical injury are [t]hrowing, kicking, burning, biting, or cutting a child; [s]triking a child with a closed fist; [s]haking a child; or [s]triking a child on the face or head.28 Similarly, Floridas statute provides that abuse is any willful act or threatened act that results in any physical injury or harm that causes or is likely to cause the childs physical, mental, or emotional health to be significantly impaired.29 It then enumerates injuries that can harm a childs health or welfare. The elimination of violence against children is called for in several targets of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development but most explicitly in Target 16.2: end abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence against and torture of children. Others reflect a rejection of existing practices or the development of alternatives that better conform to the premises underlying the corporal-punishment exception and the scientific evidence that supports the resolution of individual cases. Coleman Doriane Lambelet. Although the phrase, Spare the rod and spoil the child, is not a Biblical text, there is no doubt that it reflects the meaning of two or three of the strongest Biblical Proverbs on child rearing. All Biblical scholars, including fundamental Christian teachers, know that, on the surface, at least, there are apparent contradictions between various sections and books of scripture. official website and that any information you provide is encrypted WebIn this Article, I argue that this thick conception of parental rights shields significant intrafamilial harms, specifically parental corporal punishment. The three legal institutions responsible for where and how the states draw the line between reasonable corporal punishment and abuse are the state legislatures, which announce and define allowances and prohibitions in the first instance; CPS agencies and professionals, also known as departments of social services or DSS, which administer the legislative mandates and thus most directly engage families and children; and the courts, which are charged with interpreting legislation in the last instance, and which thus act as a check on decisions made by CPS. Epub 2017 Feb 27. In this society and according to the law, the decision about the acceptability of this parental behavior rests with the parent under the principle of parental autonomy to the extent that the consequences, on average, do not exceed the threshold that would lead to functional impairment. Other non-physical forms of punishment can be cruel and degrading, and thus also incompatible with the Convention, and often accompany and overlap with physical punishment. 1 . The PubMed wordmark and PubMed logo are registered trademarks of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The state, on the other hand, could more easily marshal this evidence given its expertise; furthermore, the evidence would mostly be reusable in its other and future cases. It includes all types of physical and/or emotional ill-treatment, sexual abuse, neglect, negligence and commercial or other exploitation, which results in actual or potential harm to the childs health, survival, development or dignity in the context of a relationship of responsibility, trust or power. The Great Smoky Mountains Study of Youth Functional Impairment and Serious Emotional Disturbance. An official website of the United States government. With these empirical controls in place, the impact of corporal punishment on American children can now be estimated with greater confidence. Florida family-court judge Cindy Lederman has suggested that judges tendency to focus on physical harm is due at least in part to the fact that most are neither trained to appreciate the correlation between physical injury and emotional and developmental welfare nor provided by litigants with evidence-based science that would permit them to evaluate claims of this sort. The first of these paradigms reflects parental-autonomy norms, and the second, scientific knowledge about the circumstances that cause children harm. Ann. Several states require not only a finding of physical injury but also a determination that the injury harms the child or impairs the health of the child.20 On the other hand, in Arkansas, certain intentional or knowing acts constitute abuse whether or not the child sustains physical injury. For example, North Carolinas CPS agencies employ a decision tree that requires classifying as neglect by inappropriate discipline any instance of corporal punishment that transgresses the agencies reasonableness criteria but that does not meet its abuse standards.36, Statutory definitions of physical abuse appearing in state family- or juvenile-court codes commonly except reasonable measures of physical discipline administered by parents.37 This exception reflects the longstanding common-law privilege of discipline, which provides that [a] parent is privileged to apply such reasonable force or to impose such reasonable confinement upon his child as he reasonably believes to be necessary for its proper control, training, or education.38, Twenty-one states, along with the District of Columbia, except reasonable physical discipline from their statutory definitions of physical abuse. These considerations may be in direct contravention of the protocols, or they may simply supplement formal assessment criteria as social workers exercise their remaining discretion. )13 Correspondingly, we encourage adoption of functional impairment as the standard for evaluating the reasonableness of the force used and thus for drawing the line between reasonable corporal punishment and abuse. The following resources present research and literature differentiating among physical discipline, corporal punishment, and physical child abuse. Again, functional impairment refers to short-term, long-term, or permanent impairment of emotional or physical functioning.212 Scientific evidence about which parenting behaviors lead to functional impairment supports the formal incorporation of several factors into this aspect of the reasonableness inquiry: the severity of the physical injury that results from parental conduct; whether the parents conduct is normative; the proportionality of the conduct in relation to the childs transgression; the manner in which the punishment is administered, which includes consideration of the location of the childs injuries and whether any objects were used; chronicity, meaning the frequency of the corporal punishment; and transparency and consistency, or whether the child knows the rules that will result in punishment and whether the parent administers those rules non-arbitrarily.213 Aside from the severity criterion, all of the factors force examination of the context in which the corporal punishment occurs and of the childs reaction to that context.214 Depending upon the circumstances, any one of these factors alone or two or more factors in combination might suffice to characterize parental conduct as unreasonable. Applied to corporal punishment, if the consequences for the child include functional impairment, then the parental actions are serious enough to be characterized as physical abuse. The Evidence Base for Shaken Baby Syndrome: Meaning of Signature Must be Made Explicit. Many states have exceptions for corporal punishment written into theirchild abuse laws. Ann. Lansford Jennifer E, et al. Coleman Doriane Lambelet. For example, a one-time incident in which a parent strikes a child so hard that a bone breaks will be severe enough on its own to cause or risk causing functional impairment, so there would be no need to establish the existence or weight of the remaining factors. These findings support efforts to dissuade reliance on corporal punishment to manage child behavior. The issues of discipline and punishment always arise in any consideration of child physical abuse because this is the primary justification given as reason to beat, burn or cut a child. The Seattle Compromise: Multicultural Sensitivity and Americanization. [7] Since Blackstones time, the parental discipline privilege has condoned parental assault on children in the name of discipline. Even if the right were based in the Federal Constitution, however, community norms would likely continue to govern its scope. When a parent does so, the state has the specific burden of disproving the parents claim. Spare the Kids: Because Disciplining Children Doesn't Have to Hurt A parent who does not have a reasonable disciplinary motive for his or her conduct but who does not cause his or her child more than minimal harm will not be charged with child abuse. Although the law today generally recognizes claims for emotional harm, its traditional concerns about frivolous and fraudulent claims and about how to limit liability in such a way that the outcome is fair also to the defendant continue to affect their viability and usefulness.

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