Spare the Rod: Why Are More American Children Victims and Perpetrators of Violence Than Those of Any Other Developed Country?

Abstract

Children are perhaps the last of the great demographic groups that our society has finally begun to recognize as being systematically discriminated against, and in some ways even persecuted—though I should add that the battle for recognition of that fact is still an ongoing struggle that is far from won. That we have been simultaneously and disproportionately punitive toward and neglectful of our own children is still only minimally recognized and mostly denied. This chapter can be read as one extended argument for the proposition that while we have already identified a number of categories that needed to be addressed in order to bring to an end the discrimination that occurs against blacks and other minority groups, and we now need to add age—specifically, young age: childhood, adolescence and young adulthood—to the list as the next category we need to include. This whole chapter will illustrate my belief that one cannot understand or undo any one of a number of patterns of discrimination perpetrated against minorities and children without understanding the interaction between them, and the ways in which they reinforce each other. Thus, my theoretical model here is interactionist, not reductionist. Rather than attempting to reduce all discrimination to the one form that will explain all the others, I attempt to show how they all interact with and reinforce each other. In doing so, I hope to make it clear why it is so unfortunate that we have not yet, as a nation, recognized that our treatment of children and youth is just as urgently in need of fundamental reform as is our treatment of the other demographic groups to be mentioned—minorities, the poor, and those defined by their sexual identity or orientation. This chapter is devoted to data and arguments in support of that proposition. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)