Corporal Punishment Creates Animal Abusers
May 4th 2008 06:11
I managed to catch a story on the late news a few nights ago about a carful of hoons that intentionally ran down a woman's dog and then shouted at her to "run bitch" and this prompted me to take a look at animal abuse among Generation Y.
So, animal cruelty is icky and generally unpleasant- agreed. It however does not stop there because I'm sure you've all heard that cruelty to animals if one of the indicators that someone is likely to grow up to be a murderer. Well if you hadn't heard that before you've heard it now. If you're curious as to what the other indicators are, I've found some of them for you*;
-being physically abused as a child
-being sexually abused as a child
-witnessing domestic violence
-coming from a socioeconomically disadvantaged family
-being male
-being an arsonist
-receiving poor/inadequate education
The presence of one or even all of these factors does not mean a person will automatically turn into a killer, it simply means there is a greater chance of that happening. However, I am not here to discuss taking human lives, I am here to talk about young people and harmed animals, so let's keep going.
As with all crimes, the question on everyone’s lips is why, and this this report (at the bottom of page 5) lists some of the reasons given when juvenile offenders where interviewed.
-To control an animal
-To retaliate against an animal
-Out of prejudice for a species/breed
-To express aggression through an animal (e.g. cruelty to create an aggressive guard dog)
-To shock people from amusement
-To retaliate against other people (i.e. to hurt other's animals for revenge)
Two responses that I found to be missing from this list are to gain pleasure from watching the animal suffer and curiosity as in, "if I twist its leg this way, what sound will the animal make?" It has been my experience that these two are the most common reasons for hurting an animal, so either the cases I've come across are rare, or the interviewees lied because they thought the truth would get them into more trouble.
The same report (bottom of page 7) also shows a direct correlation between corporal punishment and animal cruelty and animal cruelty and the acceptance of corporal punishment and domestic violence.
In other words, if a person was hit as a form of discipline in childhood, they are more likely to abuse animals and vice versa. If they abuse animals in their youth they are more like to think it is acceptable to spank a child as a form of punishment and think it is okay for a man to strike a woman.
All of this should really raise some eye brows in the direction of our parents because if you accept that there is no beast without cruelty, it seems like the disciplinarians in our family planted the seeds of antisocial behaviour long ago. Furthermore, with this in mind, how should we go on to raise generation Z and all the generations that follow? Well I'm not having children so that's that problem sorted.
So, animal cruelty is icky and generally unpleasant- agreed. It however does not stop there because I'm sure you've all heard that cruelty to animals if one of the indicators that someone is likely to grow up to be a murderer. Well if you hadn't heard that before you've heard it now. If you're curious as to what the other indicators are, I've found some of them for you*;
-being sexually abused as a child
-witnessing domestic violence
-coming from a socioeconomically disadvantaged family
-being male
-being an arsonist
-receiving poor/inadequate education
The presence of one or even all of these factors does not mean a person will automatically turn into a killer, it simply means there is a greater chance of that happening. However, I am not here to discuss taking human lives, I am here to talk about young people and harmed animals, so let's keep going.
As with all crimes, the question on everyone’s lips is why, and this this report (at the bottom of page 5) lists some of the reasons given when juvenile offenders where interviewed.
-To control an animal
-To retaliate against an animal
-Out of prejudice for a species/breed
-To express aggression through an animal (e.g. cruelty to create an aggressive guard dog)
-To shock people from amusement
-To retaliate against other people (i.e. to hurt other's animals for revenge)
The same report (bottom of page 7) also shows a direct correlation between corporal punishment and animal cruelty and animal cruelty and the acceptance of corporal punishment and domestic violence.
In other words, if a person was hit as a form of discipline in childhood, they are more likely to abuse animals and vice versa. If they abuse animals in their youth they are more like to think it is acceptable to spank a child as a form of punishment and think it is okay for a man to strike a woman.
All of this should really raise some eye brows in the direction of our parents because if you accept that there is no beast without cruelty, it seems like the disciplinarians in our family planted the seeds of antisocial behaviour long ago. Furthermore, with this in mind, how should we go on to raise generation Z and all the generations that follow? Well I'm not having children so that's that problem sorted.
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