TRANSCRIPTION

Throughout the portfolio, I covered topics such as corporal punishment, children that have divorced parents, the eugenics movement, along with people in the LBGT+ community changing their sexual orientation when they become parents. Each one of these topics has resonated in my life. I began looking for my annotations from the topics that I was interested in, then picked the comments with the most discussion or relevance to the topic as a whole. 

I order the annotation by how passionate I was about the subject, the first topic is what I’m highly interested in and then goes down the line. For example, even though I care about the LBGT+ community and how parenthood affects their sexual orientation, I have a tender heart when it comes to children therefore the topics of corporal punishment and having the be the middle man to divorce parents peaks my interest more. The way it's organized will help my future self be engaged in the reading when looking back at this paper. 

When we recently talked about corporal punishment, which has become a heated topic. I was pleasantly surprised to see different points of view covered. In the first few weeks of class, we covered the fallacy argument of “ I turned out fine” which was enlightening to see that there was a paper written about when people say I got spanked when I was a child yet I turned out all right (Coulson, 2018). Another point that was interesting to me about learning about corporal punishment was how different countries enforced rules/ policies that prohibit their citizen from having the choice to use corporal punishment (Lansford, J.E., Godwin, J., Maria Uribe Tirado, L., Zelli, A., Al-Hassan, S.M., Bacchini, D., Silvia Bombi, A., Bornstein, M.H., Chang, L., Deater-Deckard, K., Di Giunta, L., Dodge, K.A., Malone, P.S., Oburu, P., Pastorelli, C., Skinner, A.T., Sorbring, E., Tapanya, S., & Peña Alampay, L., 2015). Before this class, I did not consider how different countries could have various views on corporal punishment vs alternative methods of discipline. 

During class, we read a paper that spoke about how the number of parents can affect a child’s life. The reading went in-depth in one section about how when two parents separate, officials, can ask the child whom they would like to stay with (Lansford et al., 2015). From personal experience, I know having parents split up, in general, is traumatic, parents say that the kids do not have to take a side yet that’s exactly what the court asks the child to do when in a custody situation. 

At the beginning of this class, we talked about eugenics and the right to procreate (Stanford University, 2016). Being brought up a Christian and remaining so the church preaches about pro-life, yet I see the situation it's a woman's choice to be able to determine what they want to do if they are pregnant.  "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life." John 3:16 KJV, God loves his people and will forgive all sins if one believes in him (King James Version Bible, 2021). Women already have enough choices revoked because of their gender, a man shouldn’t have the power to dictate what a woman can or can not do.

Throughout the semester we've mentioned the LBGT+ community as parents. We have read articles and journals to learn that this group of people are more likely to be in lower sociological status, yet they are more likely to adopt or foster children that are not the same race as themselves (Reczek, 2020)(Lavner, J. A., Waterman, J., & Peplau, L. A., 2012). 

Annotation 1

The first annotation that challenges my views about corporate punishment is in the reading “Individual, Family, and Culture Level Contributions to Child Physical Abuse and Neglect: A Longitudinal Study in Nine Countries”  in the Dev Psychopathol author manuscript, regarding a comment that Jeff Lankford made (Lansford et al., 2015). A summarized version of what he wrote is mentioned the differences between the Convention on Rights of the Child (CRC) and the United States’ definition of corporal punishment. He thought the CRC had a better and clearer definition of abuse (Lansford et al., 2015). I responded to Jeff by saying “ I agree with you, the CRC definition is clear cut while the American definition of corporal punishment and physical abuse is blurred.”

Addendum 1

When looking back at the comment I made I stand by what I said, from the class discussion along with listening to the other students who had the readings about corporal punishment my initial analysis seems to be correct. In class on November 30, we broke out into small groups to discuss the reading specifically looking at a child’s physical abuse and neglect. On the worksheet, we had a question that said “ which definition best matches your definition of child abuse” when looking at the UN and US government definitions of child abuse and neglect. Once we all responded with how we felt about it, we had a mini discussion on what we wrote down. I was mildly surprised that half my group sided with the UN definition. Those who chose the UN definition said something along the lines of it's never right to purposely hit a child. While myself and others pointed out that it’s not that simple especially in America. Previously in the reading, the text refers to child abuse as a “culture of honor” (Lansford et al., 2015). Many were brought up being disciplined by corporal punishment and don’t know anything different. Another point that was brought in the main discussion was America does not have harsh punishments or laws compared to other countries when it comes to corporal punishment. 

If I were to change my initial comment I would add while the American definition of corporal punishment and physical abuse is blurred, it could be possible because the US laws, in general, are complicated. Whether the not the US adopted the UN ideal of corporal punishment the fact still remains that America has federal and state laws, that are ignored/ not enforced by the public so what would make this different than those. Having those extra sentences provide more context to the situation. 

A question that would be interesting to learn about is when did the use of corporal punishment correlate to being a bad or good parent to their child? From listening to my parents and grandparents’ upbringing, it was the norm to be spanked with a hand, switch, or anything