AUGSBURG FACULTY PUBLISH NEW BOOKS FOR KIDS, PARENTS
Dr. Christina Erickson’s book Spanked: How Hitting Our Children is Harming Ourselves was recently published by Oxford University Press.
Spanked: How Hitting Our Children is Harming Ourselves is a historical and cultural analysis of the long-accepted practice of hitting children for learning and obedience. The book begins with understanding who spanks and how the practice of using a hand to hit the buttocks of children evolved. Erickson explores the cultural factors from historical magazine articles and parenting books to contemporary beliefs that support this type of discipline. Spanking’s connections to a variety of topics are clarified, including the feelings of parents, perceptions of children, potential child abuse, school corporal punishment, attachment and bonding, the legal language that allows hitting of one’s children but not others, and international perspectives on physical punishment.
The book invites an exploration of who we are as parents, and as a society, and what family leadership really means. Book group questions for families, professionals, and organizations lend the book useful for conversation and dialogue in libraries, living rooms, offices, and classrooms. Dr. Erickson gives readers an open platform to discuss respectfully what we are really communicating when we spank children.
The book gives parents, health care providers, educators, social workers, faith leaders, and anyone interested in power and family dynamics a platform to respectfully discuss what spanking communicates to children.
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Besides reading Dr. Erickson’s book, families and children may be interested in another book recently published by an Augsburg University professor:
Matt Maruggi, associate professor of religion and previous co-director of Augsburg’s Interfaith Scholars program, is the co-author of “Religion Around the World: A Curious Kid’s Guide to the World’s Great Faiths.” The book aims to make the world’s major faiths accessible to kids ages 8–12, sharing the complexities of different religious traditions in language young people can understand. Maruggi calls it a “gorgeous, content-heavy picture book,” with sections on Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, as well as Native American traditions, Sikhism, Taosim, shamanism, secular humanism, interfaith families, and interfaith cooperation.
Maruggi and his co-authors Sonja Hagander and Megan Borgert-Spaniol interviewed children from different traditions about the most meaningful aspects of their faith traditions. The book highlights their perspectives as well as famous individuals (like Dorothy Day and Muhammad Ali) and organizations (like Sewa International and Bread for the World) whose religious convictions are visible in public life.