I totally agree with this. I’ve been subject to corporal punishment twice. I deserved it both times and damn well knew it at the time. Each event was significant enough that it crystallized in my head.
Also, neither time was painful at all. The most awful thing about it was the waiting. Both my mom (first time) and my grandad (second time) made me wait for punishment. Now that I’m older and have children, I imagine that they simply needed the time to cool down so they didn’t outright beat me. But at the time, waiting for them to execute the punishment was excruciating and seemed a form of punishment in and of itself.
The second most terrible thing about it was the humiliation. Knowing that you’ve done something horribly wrong and being embarrassed about it is one thing. But knowing you’ve done something horribly wrong, wanting to atone and being made to drop trou is another level of humuliation entirely. Plus, since the punishment was from two different people and it happened so seldom, I had no idea how much it was going to hurt.
I’ve never spanked either of my kids. My 20-month-old wouldn’t understand it and my 5-year old hasn’t needed it yet. And I don’t plan to do so. But, given that I’ve broken every single promise I made to myself as a parent about feeding, sleeping and the like, I’m never going to say never.
With both of my kids, we had heard the old adage that if they’re tantrumming, a quick smack on the behind would get their attention and break the cycle.
This turned out to be a complete failure. To break the cycle, the kid HAS TO NOTICE. A smack on the behind didn’t have ANY effect on them. I think for physical punishment to have been noticed, I’d have had to truly brutalize them (as in, throw across the room, closed fist, baseball bat, or whatever). Needless to say, I wasn’t eager to try that theory out!
We did, however, institute a policy where if they did something truly dangerous, they got spanked. It took perhaps two attempts per kid of dashing out into traffic, before they quit doing that. Ditto attempting to stick a hand into the flame on the gas stove. Though in that case, the bloodcurdling scream I emitted as I grabbed that hand - didn’t know I could move that fast! - and snatched it away from the stove, may have had more to do with the tears than the very swift up-ending and smack on the rear.
Of course I have never spanked a child. The “I think spanking has uncomfortable sexual connotations,” was a passing thought, not part of my argument. I don’t want to hijack the thread. My actual argument against spanking was stated in post 24 and was as follows:
It’s been my opinion that hitting children is more likely to make them angry and violent than to make them well behaved.
There’s not much real support for spanking, and a quite a bit of support against it. The Western Medical establishment seems to be rather against it. Quoting from the article:
"The Canadian Pediatrics Society policy on corporal punishment states “The Psychosocial Paediatrics Committee of the Canadian Paediatric Society has carefully reviewed the available research in the controversial area of disciplinary spanking (7-15)… The research that is available supports the position that spanking and other forms of physical punishment are associated with negative child outcomes. The Canadian Paediatric Society, therefore, recommends that physicians strongly discourage disciplinary spanking and all other forms of physical punishment”.[55]
In the United Kingdom, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and the Royal College of Psychiatrists have both called for a complete ban on all corporal punishment, stating “We believe it is both wrong and impracticable to seek to define acceptable forms of corporal punishment of children. Such an exercise is unjust. Hitting children is a lesson in bad behaviour”.[56] and that “it is never appropriate to hit or beat children”.[57]
The Australian Psychological Society holds that physical punishment of children should not be used as it has very limited capacity to deter unwanted behavior, does not teach alternative desirable behavior, often promotes further undesirable behaviors such as defiance and attachment to “delinquent” peer groups, and encourages an acceptance of aggression and violence as acceptable responses to conflicts and problems.[58]
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) in an official policy statement[54] (reaffirmed in 2004) states that “Corporal punishment is of limited effectiveness and has potentially deleterious side effects.” The AAP recommends that parents be “encouraged and assisted in the development of methods other than spanking for managing undesired behavior”. In particular, the AAP believes that any corporal punishment methods other than open-hand spanking on the buttocks or extremities “are unacceptable” and “should never be used”. The policy statement points out, summarizing several studies, that “The more children are spanked, the more anger they report as adults, the more likely they are to spank their own children, the more likely they are to approve of hitting a spouse, and the more marital conflict they experience as adults.”[49] Spanking has been associated with higher rates of physical aggression, more substance abuse, and increased risk of crime and violence when used with older children and adolescents.[50]"
So in summary, corporal punishment isn’t more effective than other forms of discipline, and it can seriously fuck your kid up mentally. So don’t do it.
I’ve raised one to adulthood and I have a six year old now and I’ve managed to only hit the oldest a few times. Little brat ran faster than me.
Actually I had a friend who had a child before my oldest was born, and he was such a little hellion her “last resort” of hitting didn’t work and she had to ask herself what do you do when even hitting doesn’t work. I never got to that point with either of my girls and can’t imagine a point where I’d need to hit them to punish them. Maybe I’m just lucky.
I have, however, lost control and smacked the oldest, but I feel this was poor judgment on my part. It corrected the bad behavior but I could have done it just as effectively without hitting.
Good to see a reasoned discussion here… in my world (academe), people tend to be extreme about this. Usually when the topic comes up I clam up, because if I even suggest that anything beyond raising your voice to a child, people want to label you as an abuser.
Like many of you, I think it should be rare, and depends on the kid. Some kids don’t respond to it at all. Then it’s ineffective. Other kids respond, and in that case, sparing use might be necessary.
I got “whuppin’s” as a kid, maybe about a dozen times. It never hurt beyond the moment, but the prelude and aftermath was a psychological mindfuck. Usually I would get some warning that I was on thin ice, and then that thing you didn’t do in the morning would be discovered, and then Dad would send you upstairs… shiiiiiit! It worked with me. Not so much with my sister who just seemed to take ‘em as needed. We both outgrew them; I think I caught my last whuppin’ around 13 or so. My sister and I are both well adjusted individuals, never in trouble with the law, etc. We get along with our parents great.
As a parent, I’ll say this: I will not exclude any tools to keep my kids safe and teach them right from wrong. I’ve only smacked my son on the butt or the hand a few times, and he was hysterical from shock when it happened. I didn’t like how I felt about it in the moment but it was for things like not listening to a direct command. Which could have been running out in the street or something along those lines.
My wife is much more lax with discipline so I tend to do more of the corrective stuff, which I hope will shift. My kids aren’t scared of me, and we play around fine, but they know the tone of my you-better-get-it-together talk. Usually that works. But if stoves get touched, matches get lit, or doors get opened to the outside, there’s going to be an immediate smack and stern words.
The only whuppin’ from my father I ever remember getting (and I don’t remember it completely, despite having a good memory for these kinds of things) was when I did the retching thing on some brocolli at the kitchen table. (I like it now, but as a kid? I only liked the “tree” part!) Dinner time was the one time you didn’t want to fuck around with my father, obviously.
I wasn’t sent up upstairs. I was dragged up there. And that is how the story ends for me!
But my siblings remember the rest. See, that’s the advantage of siblings. They serve as memory back-up so that you don’t conclude the weird stuff that happened during your childhood were simply the subjects of dreams.
But like I said, that’s the only whuppin’ I ever got, at least by my ole man. My mother might have slapped the belt around on a couple of occassions, but never just on me (my twin sister was always there to take some of it). I can look back at those times and laugh. I guess fathers are just more scary or something. I don’t know.
I grew up in the UK. I was smacked/spanked. I got the slipper at school.
I have lived for the past 11.5 years in Sweden, where all forms of corporal punishment have been illegal since the 70s (IIRC).
In my opinion, there’s no real difference between how “naughty” kids are. They’re as bad as each other. Parents of very young children do seem to struggle more to control them in Sweden, mainly as the idea of what treating a kid badly is means that even raising your voice at a kid in private raises eyebrows and gets disapproving stares.
But frankly, it really doesn’t seem to have made much of a difference.
Yeah, I can’t imagine spanking working in that context. If a kid is already emotionally out of control, doing something to raise the emotional temperature is only going to make it worse. My approach to tantrums was implacable impassivity. Nothing would happen or change until they got themselves under control. Until I’d just quietly wait them out. My kids quickly learned that pitching a fit was boring and counterproductive.
Same for me - slipper only once though but I still remember it vividly. It was more the fact it was done in front of the whole school during dinner that made it bad, rather than the slipper itself (no worse than a football on the leg during cold playtime).
My daughter (coincidently bring brought up in a certain West Midlands town that **amanset **should know well ;)) is never spanked. We’ve found the naughty step and a stern voice, plus withdrawal of treats, just as effective. In fact, a light tap on the hand produces just as many tears as a full-on spanking would… it’s the symbolism of the punishment that does the job, rather than the physical pain.
Another vote for this. In our family’s case I spanked my daughter exactly one time, when she was maybe four years old, and she instantly stopped being a brat. (Which she had been pretty much constantly for a week.) It was almost a “Miracle Worker” moment that rewired her brain.
OTOH, if someone is hitting their kids every week, then non-violent discipline would probably be just as effective. Our daughter was/is a gem, but I know there are children who are in near constant state of destructive rebellion. I feel for those parents but don’t think you can “beat it out” of the kids. Time and love are the only answers.
Sometimes I’ll think about corporal punishment in the animal world and use that as a guide. For cats, dogs, bears, (and presumably other species) the usual parental guidance is calm re-direction. Horrible behavior might warrant a swat or a light nip. But a parent shouldn’t be regularly attacking its offspring or with any real viciousness.
As many have said, the basic nature of the individual child makes a big difference. With my first child, I would say, “(Don’t) do that, or I will be VERY angry.” She would immediately obey. Second child would give me a look that said, “Oh, well, I guess you’re going to be angry. Deal with it.” We had to get creative, and be very persistent. There were occasional smacks, but very few.
FWIW here is my experience. I was spanked, not severely, but often enough as a child. It didn’t really work because the main reason for it was that my brother and I talked too much (we shared a room) on Sunday mornings and woke our parents who wanted to sleep in. It kept on happening, so it clearly didn’t work.
When I had kids, the oldest was a girl and very well behaved. I think we spanked her only once and I’ll never forget the shocked look on her face. These people I look to for everything are HURTING me! When her brother arrived 17 months later, he was a handful and we spanked him. Not hard, but too often. My wife and I had a talk about it and decided that since spanking didn’t work, we would try not spanking. Well, as sure as I am sitting here typing this, I tell you his behavior improved. Very quickly, very obviously. We never spanked him again. When the third, a boy, arrived 6 years later, we never spanked him. Ever. He was always well behaved.
The $64 billion question is, what if it hadn’t worked? We don’t know, it never came up. All I can say is YMMV.
I agree that spanking etc has it’s uses. But it’s hard for me to get past my own background. When I hear ‘spanking’ I think multiple times per day, like I experienced. Spanking your kid few times per year, or just a few times in an entire childhood? Barely qualifies as using ‘corporal punishment’ in my book!
In my experience raising Sophie, I can’t remember actually spanking her, but I’m sure I did once. She’s not a kid who requires it, and I do an excellent Dad Voice (it even scares the dogs) which suffices for most mid-major sins.
I do remember smacking her hand, saying “Don’t you even think about it!” once. God, I’m such a cliche.