Dendaan Ke Atas Kanak-Kanak

Abstract

Parents may use power-assertion and love-withdrawal strategies to control children's deviant behaviour. This paper focusses only on the use of power-assertion. Furthermore it is limited to the physical punishment techniques within this strategy. This paper reveals that there is a range of physical punishment techniques starting from very mild reprimand to shouting, pinching, flicking, smacking, flogging and outright physical torturing. It then reports a three-part survey on the extent Malaysian parents employ physical punishment techniques of shouting, pinching, flicking, smacking and flogging. In the first part, 29 male and 67 female university students were requested to assess retrospectively whether in their young days they had ever been shouted at, pinched, flicked, smacked and flogged. In the second part, 12 male and seven female young unmarried college-trained teachers were requested to make similar assessments. The results of both parts were interpreted to indicate that young children were frequently being shouted at. flogged and pinched rather than being flicked and smacked. Since most of the subjects involved in the first and second parts described above seem to be from lower middle class homes, the third part of this survey addresses directly a group of 21 male and eight female young lower middle class parents. They were requested to ascertain the extent they actually shouted at, pinched, flicked, smacked and flogged their children. The result reveals that parents preferred to shout at, flog and pinch more than o flick their children. They did not prefer to smack their children. The results of all parts of this survey, in combination, were interpreted to indicate that Malaysian parents from lower middle class homes prefer to employ physical punishment techniques of shouting, flogging and pinching to control children's deviant behaviour. Consequently, the discussion focusses on the effectiveness of physical punishments to suppress deviant behaviour. It offers a few alternative techniques which are found to be beneficial for use with children and adolescent of different ages. Finally the discussion also touches on various modifications of physical punishment techniques which have been discovered to provide beneficial effects on children's social and moral development. Hopefully parents who could not avoid using physical punishments might adapt these modified techniques.