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EDITOR’S NOTE — April 28, 2021:

Dear Madame Noire readers,

The body of this article has been deleted and here’s why.

Over the past decade, public discourse around corporal punishment, particularly in Black communities, has shifted dramatically. And this article, written over a decade ago, an article which encouraged parents to spank their children “out of love,” or to get them to “respect authority,” would not have been published today.

We know that hitting Black children has not caused a decrease in state-sanctioned violence and murder of Black people. Hitting Black children—as a way of getting them to “respect authority”—will not save them from becoming the next Daunte Wright, Tamir Rice, Andrew Brown Jr., Breonna Taylor, Atatiana Jefferson, Ma’Khia Bryant, Rekia Boyd, Mike Brown, Sean Bell, Tarika Wilson, Trayvon Martin, Jonathan Ferrell, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, Wendall Allen, John Crawford, Ezell Ford, Eric Garner, Kimani Gray, Amadou Diallo, nor any other Black people killed at least once every 28 hours in the United States.

Hitting Black children is not a healthy expression of love.

As NewsOne previously reported, there have been many studies done that show the long-standing emotional and psychological effects of corporal punishment/abuse. Take this study conducted by psychologist Elizabeth Thompson Gershoff, PhD, of the National Center for Children in Poverty at Columbia University:

“While conducting the meta-analysis, which included 62 years of collected data, Gershoff looked for associations between parental use of corporal punishment and 11 child behaviors and experiences, including several in childhood (immediate compliance, moral internalization, quality of relationship with parent, and physical abuse from that parent), three in both childhood and adulthood (mental health, aggression, and criminal or antisocial behavior) and one in adulthood alone (abuse of own children or spouse). “Gershoff also found “strong associations” between corporal punishment and all eleven child behaviors and experiences. Ten of the associations were negative such as with increased child aggression and antisocial behavior. The single desirable association was between corporal punishment and increased immediate compliance on the part of the child.”

 

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Dr. Stacey Patton, an award-winning author, journalist, professor, and child advocate, writes extensively about this topic. Shining a harsh but necessary light on the roots of physical violence against children, she encourages people to decolonize their parenting.

Though it has been over a decade since Madame Noire published the author of the original article’s opinion, we deeply apologize to our readers. And we promise to do our best to always lead with love, dignity, and respect, especially when it comes to discussing how we raise, love, and care for Black children.

To learn more about healthy ways to parent children, please visit: Sparethekids.com.

PLEASE READ: 8 Reasons Not To Spank Your Kids

 

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