Lesson Two - Marriage and Family

Corporal Punishment

News reports in June 2013 broke the sensational story of dozens of children being apprehended by Child and Family Services from a small Old Order Mennonite community in southern Manitoba. Several members of the community were charged by police with assault when they received reports that children had been disciplined using a leather strap, whip, and cattle prod (Hitchen 2013). At one point, all the children except for one 17 year old had be apprehended by authorities (CBC News 2013). The 1892 law that permits the use of corporal punishment for children in Canada was upheld by a Supreme Court ruling in 2004 within certain restrictions, but corporal punishment remains a controversial issue in Canada (CBC News 2004).

Physical  abuse of children may come in the form of beating, kicking, throwing, choking, hitting with objects, burning, or other methods. Injury inflicted by such behaviour is considered abuse even if the parent or caregiver did not intend to harm the child. Other types of physical contact that are characterized as discipline (spanking, for example) are not considered abuse as long as no injury results. The Supreme Court ruling stated that teachers and parents can use reasonable corrective force against children between the ages of 2 and 12 years old as long as the force is “minor” and of “a transitory and trifling nature” (CBC News 2004). The court ruled that it was unacceptable to strike a child with an object, like a strap or whip, and striking a child in the head was also unacceptable.

This issue is rather controversial among modern-day Canadians. While some parents feel that physical discipline, or corporal punishment, is an effective way to respond to bad behaviour, others feel that it is a form of abuse. According to a 2005 study of mothers with preschoolers in Manitoba and Ontario, 70 percent of respondents reported using corporal punishment. One-third of them used it at least once a week. A poll conducted by the Globe and Mail in 2007 found that 78 percent of Canadian parents with children under 18 believed that parents do not discipline their children enough and another 42 percent believed spanking benefited child development (Pearce 2012).

However, studies have shown that spanking is not an effective form of punishment and may lead to aggression by the victim, particularly in those who are spanked at a young age (Berlin 2009). A meta-analysis of research conducted over two decades published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal found that spanking was no better than other parenting methods at eliciting compliance in children and was in fact linked not only to increased levels of childhood aggression but also to long-term effects such as depression, emotional and behavioural problems, and drug and alcohol use in adulthood (Durrant and Ensom 2012). This research led the editor-in-chief of the journal to call for the repeal of the spanking law from the Criminal Code. “It is time for Canada to remove this anachronistic excuse for poor parenting from the statute book” (Fletcher 2012, p. 1339).