How parents are breaking the cycle of corporal punishment
New book by Sask. author argues it's time to end childhood corporal punishment in Canada
The painful memory still lingers with Ailsa Watkinson.
“As a kid in school, we all got the strap,” she said in an interview at her home in Saskatoon.
“I got the strap once quite brutally in Grade 9 … it was horrific. I had bruises up and down my arms. And so I always thought there's something dreadfully wrong here.”
She learned teachers had the right to strike their students.
“I went to university and pledged I was going to get back at this horrible principal who did this to me,” she said.
Watkinson’s new book, released Jan. 20, is a sort of culmination of her career in human rights. Spare the Child: Ending Childhood Corporal Punishment is published by University of Regina Press.
It’s a cultural and legal history of corporal punishment, a topic she has examined for decades, including the 2004 Supreme Court of Canada case that banned corporal punishment in schools but not at home.
Section 43 of the Criminal Code of Canada permits parents to use minor corrective force against their children for the purpose of discipline if they're over two years old and not teenagers.
Watkinson, a grandmother and professor emerita of social work at the University of Regina, also examines society's shifting attitudes toward corporal punishment.
Father's advice
How different generations approach parenting is s subject Regina father Peter Brass explores in Indigenous Dads, a documentary he directed about raising Indigenous children.
His own father is a residential school survivor and “carried that kind of corporal punishment idea with him in his child rearing,” Brass told CBC Blue Sky host Nichole Huck.
Brass said he was spanked “a couple times” as a child, but noticed his father’s views had shifted when he became a grandparent. Brass recalled his father’s advice in a moment of frustration with his son.
“I was being a dad in front of my dad and he stopped me and was like, ‘You shouldn't talk to him like that. He's tender,'” Brass said.
“He referred to my son as tender. I think he was referring to him as a child, not just my son … I think that evolution is based on regret. He regretted having reacted knee-jerk in situations.”
Watkinson said "there’s a large body of evidence" showing corporal punishment's negative effects on children that may not manifest immediately, including physical injuries, long-term trauma and mental health issues, increased aggression and relationship difficulty.
Bible belt
Corporal punishment may have fallen out of favour in mainstream society, but some cultural and faith-based groups still consider it a parent’s right to hit their child, Watkinson said.
She sat in the courtroom during recent trials of men who used to run a private Christian school in Saskatoon and who are charged with or convicted of assault for hitting teenage students with a wooden paddle as punishment.
"It's part of the culture war because when you look at those who support as opposed to those who find it abhorrent, it's along ideological and political lines, and Legacy Christian [Academy] is a prime example of it," Watkinson said.
Marina Iyeme-Eteng is originally from Nigeria. She now lives in Saskatoon, where she is raising two children and works as a family life coach. The strong religious undercurrents in Nigerian culture “made it widely acceptable for parents to be able to spank,” Iyeme-Eteng told CBC’s Blue Sky.
“There were no restrictions,” she said. “There was no guidance for how far was too far … If you don't discipline, then the child becomes an abomination to the parent.”
She said faith-based justification for hitting children is misguided.
“I believe in the Bible, but I find that some of those scriptures have been taken out of context where the rod that we're referring to has now been likened to a physical rod that should be used to hit [instead of] the rod of a shepherd,” Iyeme-Eteng said.
“It’s supposed to be a tool for guidance and direction and safety, and not physical spanking.”
She said corporal punishment can be confusing for children.
"I was spanked as a kid for things that I didn't understand,” she said, adding that it’s important for parents “to provide guidance and direction without necessarily resorting to physical violence or force.”
Corporal punishment teaches children to fear their parents when they should be learning positive values, Brass said.
“I'm constantly trying to take care of this little version of myself that I see in them," he said. "It's just this kind of weird cycle of care and love … that would crush me, if my kids were afraid of me.”
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