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RESEARCH AND CHILDREN:Spain |
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Children's voices on physical and humiliating punishment
The following description of research into the experiences of corporal punishment by children in Spain is taken from the International Save the Children Alliance's global submission to the UN Study on Violence, Ending Physical and Humiliating Punishment of Children - Making it Happen, available at: http://www.rb.se/eng/Programme/Exploitationandabuse/Corporalpunishment/1415+Publications.htm
In 2004 Save the Children developed a national child consultation in co-ordination with the National Childhood Platform and Spanish Social Welfare Ministry. The results of this consultation were disseminated for the celebration of 20 November 2004 and will be published this year [2005]. This national consultation involved 119 children, 62% boys and 37.4% girls, from two different regions of the country: Madrid and Castilla Leon. These children participated in Save the Children educative activities and filled in a questionnaire regarding physical and humiliating punishment and proposals for the National Strategy of the Spanish Social Welfare Ministry on Childhood. Children were from 7 to 15 years old, although 43% of them were 11 and 12 years old and 36% were between 13 and 15 years old.... Forty-six percent of children said that it is never necessary to hit a child to educate him or her and 41% of them said it was necessary only sometimes. Only 4% of children said that it is necessary to hit children many times. When we asked if it is necessary to shout at a child to correct their behaviour, only 21% said that it is never necessary to shout, while 68% think it is necessary sometimes and 2% think it is necessary many times. Almost half of the children thought that mothers (47%) and fathers (46%) have the right to hit and shout at their child, while 14% felt that grandparents have this right and 17% brothers and sisters. Only 5% of children thought teachers have the right to hit and shout at a child.
Feelings produced by physical and humiliating punishment in children were reported as follows:
- pain (61%)
- sadness (60%)
- anger (39%)
- fear (37%)
- guilt (32%)
- loneliness (12%)
- indifference (11%).
Eighty percent of children thought that although parents hit and shout at children, they love them.
We gave children different situations describing different types of punishment, asking them how harmful it is for the children to receive these punishments. The most severely harmful form of punishment was seen to be parents not giving food to the child (3.54%), the second most harmful was physical punishment (2.79%) and the least harmful were forms of punishment without violence, such as forbidding children to do things.
We asked children how their parents react when they do something wrong and the most common reactions were reported as trying to keep calm (66%) and leaving the child alone to think about what he or she has done (54%). When we asked how their parents punish them after these situations, the most common forms of punishment were reported as: forbidding the child something they like (2.31%), talking and giving them advice (2.16%), losing control and shouting (2.03%), saying to the children how disappointed they are with them (1.71%), smacking the child (1.60%), and shouting and saying that they are going to smack them (1.46%).
When we asked children about their parents' reactions when they have been angry with them and lose control, both mother and father, the most common answer was that they ask for forgiveness and give time to be calm and be able to talk in the right way (67.9% mothers, 55.7% fathers), but 45% of children stated that their parents don't ask for forgiveness and avoid them until the children ask for forgiveness.
Save the Children also collected children voices in the activities with children developed as part of the 'Educate, do not punish' campaign with Madrid Community Child Ombudsmen in 2001. These are some of the children's sentences:
"I liked very much my rights. The one I like the most is not to get raps with knuckles from my parents when I am a bad or a good boy depending who says so, me or my parents." Boy, 12 years old
"My parents feel, like me, lost many times, the only thing I can't understand is why they refuse to talk about it with me." Girl, 11 years old
"It hurts your feelings and your personality." Girl, 11 years old
"It makes you not like the way you are." Boy, 10 years old
"I don't understand why they are spanking me, but I do what they tell me so I don't get the spanking." Boy, 11 years old
"If they hit me, I learn to hit." Girl, 12 years old
"If they tell us something and make the opposite, then we don't know what is right or wrong." Boy, 12 years old
"When they spank us, we cannot explain ourselves, and express our feelings." Girl, 11 years old
"Instead of protecting the children, they are spanked, and then we have less rights that we should have." Girl, 11 years old
The following data are taken from the research 'What do boys and girls think about their families?' developed by the Spanish Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs in 1995.
- Boys and girls experience physical and humiliating punishment as a day-to-day fact: "The thing I dislike most about my family is when my parents hit me and tell me off."
- Boys and girls experience physical and humiliating punishment as something bad: "I don't like either that my dad pulls my ears because they become reddish."
- Boys and girls justify the use of physical and humiliating punishment by their parents by attributing it to their "bad" behaviour, even though they of course do not like to be subjected to it: "I don't like it when they get angry at me, but they punish me because it is best for me."
- Some boys and girls relate physical and humiliating punishment with alcoholism: "...but in my family, when my father gets drunk, he also gets very nervous."
Reported in International Save the Children Alliance, 2005, Ending Physical and Humiliating Punishment of Children - Making it Happen: Global Submission to the UN Study on Violence against Children, Save the Children Sweden
International Save the Children report available at: http://www.rb.se/eng/Programme/Exploitationandabuse/Corporalpunishment/1415+Publications.htm