Beating the devil out of them - Corporal punishment in American families

324 Pages·1994·44.763 MB·English

by  Murray A. Straus

Beating the Devil
Out of Them

Beating the Devil
Out of Them
Corporal Punishment in
American Families
Murray A. Straus
with Denise A. Donnelly
Lexington Books
An Irnprint of The Free Press
New York London Toronto Sydney Tokyo Singapore
Three chapters are revisions of previously published papers and are reprinted with permission:
Straus, Murray A. 1991. "Discipline and Deviance: Physical Punishment of Children and Vi-
olence and Other Crime in Adulthood." SocialProblems, 38, 101-23. (Chapter 7 and Ap-
pendix A)
Straus, Murray A. 1994. "Corporal Punishment of Children and Depression and Suicide in
Adulthood." In Joan McCord, editor, Coercion and Punishment inLong-Term Perspective.
New York: Cambridge University Press. (Chapter 6)
Straus, Murray A. and Denise A. DonneUy. 1993. "Corporal Punishment of Teen Age Chil-
dren in the United States." Youth andSociety 24:419-442. (Chapter 3)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Straus, Murray A. (Murray Arnold)
Beating the devil out of them: corporal punishment in American families / Murray A. Straus
with Denise A. DonneUy.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-02-931730-4
1. Corporal punishment-United States. 2. Child abuse-United States. 3. Discipline of chil-
dren-United States. I. DonneUy, Denise A. II. Title.
HQ770A.S77 1994
306.874-dc20 93-48219
CIP
Copyright «:> 1994 by Lexington Books
AlIrights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmined in any form or by
any means, eleetronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any informa-
tion storage and retrieval system, without permission inwriting from the Publisher:.
Lexington Books
An Imprint ofThe Free Press
ADivision of Simon & Schuster Inc.
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, N.Y. 10020
Printed inthe United States of America
printing number
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
To Dorothy
Chapter Co-Authors
Denise A.Donnelly, Chapters 3 and 8
Mary M. Moynihan, Chapter 4
Holley S.Gimpel, Chapter 9
Carrie L.yodanis, Chapter 5
Contents
Preface tX
Acknowledgments xv
PARTI
SPANKING- THE VIRTUOUS VIOLENCE
1 The Conspiracy of Silence 3
What IsCorporal Punishment? 4
The Importance of Corporal Punishment 9
AConspiracy ofSilence 10
Child-Rearing AdviceBooks 14
Planofthe Book 16
2 Everyone Does It, But Less Now 19
The Virtuous Violence 19
Attitudes Toward Corporal Punishment 20
How Much Corporal Punishment? 22
Corporal Punishment InTwo Nationally Representative
Samples 22
Trends 25
DifferencesBetweenBoysand Girls 29
Cultural Discontinuity in Corporal Punishment 31
Conclusions 32
3 Hitting Adolescents 35
Two Measures of Corporal Punishment 36
How Many AreHit and How Often? 37
The SocialContext ofHitting Adolescents 39
Conclusions 47