Corporal Punishment, Children’s Rights, Reproductive Autonomy, and Family Policy

Riane Eisler, an Austrian-born American systems scientist, futurist, attorney, and human rights advocate, is renowned for her influential work on cultural transformation and gender equity. Best known for “The Chalice and the Blade,” she introduced the partnership versus dominator models of social organization. She has received many honours, including the Republic of Austria’s Cross of Honour for Science and Art, the Nuclear Peace Leadership Award, earlier awarded to the Dalai Lama, the Center for Compassion Humanitarian Award, the Humanist Pioneer Award, and induction into the California Hall of Fame. She is President of the Center for Partnership Systems and Editor-in-Chief of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Partnership Studies at the University of Minnesota. The three books of hers of note that could be highlighted are The Chalice and the Blade, now in its 57th U.S. printing with 30 foreign editions, The Real Wealth of Nations, and Nurturing Our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Shape Our Brains, Lives, and Future (Oxford University Press, 2019). These contributions amount to a second series with Eisler.

In this interview, Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Riane Eisler discuss corporal punishment, children’s rights, religious authority, child marriage, reproductive autonomy, and prevention-focused family policy. Eisler argues that ratification of international treaties must be matched by enforcement, institutional reform, and cultural change. Their exchange examines authoritarian religion, gender hierarchy, school discipline, wanted pregnancies, sexuality education, and the Children’s Bill of Rights, emphasizing how safer environments and informed parenthood can reduce preventable harm to children and families.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: There is something related that we have not covered directly: corporal punishment. I do not want to single out religious institutions because corporal punishment and institutional abuse have also occurred in secular schools, state systems, political movements, and other organizations.

If the goal is to provide children, who are among the most dependent and vulnerable members of society, with an environment free from physical and emotional violence, how do we build educational systems that protect them as effectively as possible?

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child regards corporal punishment and other cruel or degrading forms of punishment as forms of violence against children and has called for their elimination in schools and other settings.

I am not arguing for some impossible heaven on Earth. I am arguing for better standards, safeguards, accountability, and educational practices that substantially reduce preventable harm without requiring anything utopian.

Riane Eisler: We have moved, at least in some countries, toward better standards. Consider, for example, the treatment of people with serious mental illness. I have sometimes thought of psychosis as, in part, an escape from the reality of domination, although that is my interpretation rather than a general clinical explanation of psychosis.

Historically, people with mental illnesses were sometimes chained, beaten, confined, or otherwise physically abused. Those practices are no longer accepted as legitimate standards of psychiatric care in many countries, even though abuses within mental-health systems have certainly not disappeared.

At the same time, there are still communities in which accusations of witchcraft lead to violence against children. That is one reason children need explicit protections such as a Children’s Bill of Rights and, of course, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

But ratification by itself does not guarantee compliance. The Convention has 196 States Parties, making it the most widely ratified human rights treaty, while the United States remains the only UN member state that has not ratified it. Serious violations of children’s rights still occur in countries that have ratified the Convention. Ratification establishes legal obligations and mechanisms for scrutiny, but implementation depends on domestic laws, institutions, resources, enforcement, and political commitment.

So ratifying the Convention is a beginning. In a better functioning international system, governments can be held more effectively to the commitments they have undertaken. But there remains a considerable gap between formal commitments and actual conditions for children.

Jacobsen: One argument, sometimes made somewhat facetiously, about the United States’ failure to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child is that ratification would intensify scrutiny of American laws that still permit marriage below the age of 18 in some jurisdictions.

Child marriage was legal in every U.S. state as recently as 2017, although a growing number of states and territories have since enacted laws setting 18 as the minimum marriage age without exceptions. The practice has disproportionately affected girls, and available historical data show that many minors who married were girls marrying adult men.

There have therefore been sustained efforts to eliminate child marriage across the United States.

Eisler: That practice reaches far back into societies organized around gender hierarchy and domination. Systems in which girls and women are expected to be uneducated, economically dependent, sexually controlled, or subordinate depend in part on socializing those roles from an early age.

But I would not reduce the United States’ non-ratification of the Convention to child-marriage laws alone. There are other areas in which American law and practice have conflicted with international children’s-rights standards. Corporal punishment in schools is one example.

Jacobsen: Yes. Corporal punishment remains legally permissible in public schools in a number of U.S. states. Federal education data also show that it continues to be used. In the 2020–21 school year, approximately 19,400 K–12 public-school students received corporal punishment. More recent education literature identifies 18 states as permitting corporal punishment in public schools, with 15 explicitly allowing it. The traditional phrase associated with that attitude is “spare the rod and spoil the child.”

Eisler: Absolutely.

Jacobsen: So the practice can acquire what people experience as a transcendent justification: God commands discipline, therefore physical punishment appears morally authorized.

Eisler: And once something is believed to have been commanded by God, that gives it extraordinary authority within an authoritarian religious framework. Some religious traditions and institutions are highly authoritarian. I make an important distinction between authoritarian religious systems and other religious traditions.

Jacobsen: The Jains, for example, or many Buddhist traditions, would hardly fit comfortably into the same category.

Eisler: Yes.

Jacobsen: Buddhists are often associated with nonviolence. In terms of institutional leadership, however, many Buddhist traditions have also reproduced significant gender inequalities.

The Dalai Lama himself has sometimes used humour when discussing gender. He has said that a future Dalai Lama could be a woman. He repeats a joke that a female successor should be attractive.

Eisler: But prominent religious leaders do not necessarily challenge every harmful social norm. People who acquire fame and influence can also become constrained by prevailing expectations and institutions.

Jacobsen: Fame can be useful, but I have always been suspicious of it. It is temporary and can turn against someone very quickly.

The more interesting question is motivation. All of us have egotistical motives to some degree. The question is whether those motives are at least balanced by a sense of social responsibility and concern for something beyond one’s own status.

Eisler: I think intuition enters into this. We can sometimes sense that something in the social order is wrong before we have fully articulated why. The two hemispheres do show functional specialization. The hemispheres normally operate as highly integrated systems.

Jacobsen: You can sometimes feel that more strongly when you are young. Something simply seems off-kilter.

Eisler: Yes. Some people respond by working toward a better world. Others accept what is considered normal. But returning to children, the Children’s Bill of Rights is intended as one starting point for change.

Jacobsen: The Caring Family Policy Agenda, the document published by the Center for Partnership Studies in 2017. This is a very good section. It addresses safety, education, care, preschool, and related issues.

There is another point here that is subtle and rarely discussed. Outside of basic material and financial security, it may be one of the most consequential questions surrounding parenthood: Is this child wanted? Or, before attempting to have a child, are the prospective parents prepared to welcome and care for that child?

The document describes this as “Prevention First: Ensuring Every Child Is Wanted.” It advocates comprehensive sexuality and relationships education in public schools as a means of preventing unintended teenage pregnancies and helping ensure that children are born to parents prepared for the responsibilities of raising them.

To me, that is a fundamental point. If a pregnancy is unintended and the parents are unprepared or unwilling to raise a child, there can be serious consequences for the family and for the child’s well-being. That does not mean an unintended child will necessarily be neglected or unloved. It means that reproductive autonomy, contraception, sexuality education, and preparation for parenthood can reduce avoidable risks.

Imagine two young people with little sexuality education and inadequate knowledge or access to contraception. They have sex, an unintended pregnancy occurs. They are suddenly confronted with responsibilities for which they may be unprepared. In some cases, resentment, economic strain, or conflict can follow.

That is why the phrase “every child is wanted” is so important. It is understated, but it reaches something fundamental about prevention, caregiving, and children’s well-being.

Okay, time to go, thank you again, Riane.

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Scott Douglas Jacobsen is a Writer and Editor for The Good Men Project with more than 2,000 publications on the platform. He is the Founder and Publisher of In-Sight Publishing (ISBN: 978-1-0692343; 978-1-0673505) and Editor-in-Chief of In-Sight: Interviews (ISSN: 2369-6885). He writes for International Policy Digest (ISSN: 2332–9416), The Humanist (Print: ISSN, 0018-7399; Online: ISSN, 2163-3576), Basic Income Earth Network (UK Registered Charity 1177066), Humanist Perspectives (ISSN: 1719-6337), A Further Inquiry (SubStack), Vocal, Medium, The New Enlightenment Project, The Washington Outsider, rabble.ca, and other media. His bibliography index can be found via the Jacobsen Bank at In-Sight Publishing comprised of more than 10,000 articles, interviews, and republications, in more than 200 outlets. He has served in national and international leadership roles within humanist and media organizations, held several academic, media, and research institution fellowships, and currently serves on numerous international boards. He is a member in good standing in numerous media organizations, including the Canadian Association of Journalists, PEN Canada (CRA: 88916 2541 RR0001), and Reporters Without Borders (SIREN: 343 684 221/SIRET: 343 684 221 00041/EIN: 20-0708028), and others.