填空题

Violence in American families takes many forms. One prevalent form that we often (26) is the physical punishment of children. Perhaps 93 per cent of all parents beat their children in order to (27) them. Young children receive the most punishment, but studies reveal that about 50 per cent of high school (28) report experiencing or being threatened with physical punishment. Punishment of children varies from a light tap to a brutal beating, but (29) we have granted parents the right to use physical force against their children. A law passed in 1696, for example, called for the death (30) for a child of "sufficient understanding" over the age of sixteen who cursed or struck a parent or who was "stubborn and (31) " in refusing to obey a parent.
Most parents use physical punishment (32) that it will control the aggression in their children and make them (33) . In fact, violence—whether verbal or physical—sets children a poor example. An adult who yells at or slaps a child unwittingly supplies the child with a model for aggression. Studies have found that the frequent use of physical punishment for aggressive acts by a child (34) a marked increase in the child’s aggression. Perhaps not surprisingly, abusive parents are themselves likely to have been abused when they were children. The pattern of abuse is unwittingly (35) parent to child and thus from generation to generation.