Manda JO:
I’m not a professional but I am intelligent and observant and have watched changes in society since the introduction of the anti-spanking movement all the way to the current morass of Children’s Rights laws. I actually have weeded out various influences created by advanced technology and certain changes in society and compared various accepted business practices from the pre-no spanking days to those accepted today.
My results? I consider those who believe that a hand should never be laid on a child are nuts, wimps, potentially bad parents and drastically misled by society mass media hysteria.
Reasons?
Children I know who have become adults under the no spanking rule are, upon approach, basically pleasant and conform to societies rules and regulations. However, they are poor lower level workers, usually irritated that they cannot get their own way or convinced that they know best. They make poor managers, being interested in promotion at almost any cost, not very sympathetic to their workers needs, and far to willing to bend the rules to meet quotas. They make poor bosses, for the same reasons, plus being interested mainly in personal power and personal gain at almost any cost.
They tend to be possession oriented – expensive televisions, stereos, cars packed full of equipment, cell phones, expensive play toys, expensive homes and they loose contact with people not as well off as they.
Men and women alike who own or run small businesses tend to become ‘ruthless’, developing a hard to describe attitude that is essentially cold and hard. (Curiously enough, it shows up in the way they look. The men tend to all wear the same style of hair cut and their faces all tend to have the same friendly-don’t-shit-me look, and they don’t appear compassionate or sympathetic. The women are the same. Older women, however, tend to get short haircuts. These women are not those one would go to for sympathy.)
Since the 70s, the saying of a good days work for a good days pay has become a joke. More and more companies have younger executives from the ‘new’ era who are not interested in employee loyalty but only in production and costs. The new saying is ‘if you don’t do it as we want it, we’ll get someone who will.’ Never before has laying off a few thousand long term employees actually generated an increase in the price of a companies stock, which encourages other ‘new era’ bosses in slow companies to do the same.
The guys who invented a video game killing cops are ‘new age’ and when they were asked about their responsibility in releasing such a game that might encourage children to be crooks and killers, they scoffed at the concept and said it was only a game. Of course, by then it was common knowledge that such games influenced kids. These guys, however, were well on the way to making millions and took no responsibility for anything kids might do because of their game.
I’ve seen the surge of hackers who take great delight in deliberately wrecking computer systems because they can, whether or not doing so might cause harm to people or even death. They were never taught a social conscience.
I’ve watched the increase of juvenile delinquency, the upswing of child molestation claims being used as weapons by kids who were never molested. I seen the respect for the law drop sharply in our kids and the respect for adults drop just as fast. There have been more cases of wanton vandalism than I recall happening because the kids know that no harm will come to them.
When I was a kid, abandoned houses could remain intact for ages, maybe used as a secret hide out by kids, but never wrecked just to wreck something. Now I have observed that abandoned buildings get vandalized and wrecked within short order.
I have friends who have children and they don’t hit them and I certainly would because they demand to get their own way and time outs, rationalizing, explanations and all of that crap does not seem to work the older they get.
If a kid talked back to a Teacher in school, the teacher grabbed his arm and hauled him to the principal, who called his folks. When he got home, he probably got a spanking and he did not talk back again. Now days, a teacher may not touch a kid because the new era parents have passed no hit laws. A kid can smack a teacher and get by with minor punishment, knowing that no one will smack him back. (I had a shop teacher who had a little philosophy. Get along with him and he got along with you. If you smacked or shoved him, he’d deck you and drag you to the office. Those few who tested his philosophy did it only once.)
I know some teachers today. I would not want their job. Discipline has been taken out of their hands by you litigious, no-spank, no touch folks. That makes their job so much harder.
Now, in some States it’s illegal to paddle you own kids. You can be arrested for doing so and there have been many false accusations made by kids when they’re pissed at mom or dad to get mom or dad shoved in the can for the night. One man, demanding the his teenaged daughter not go out that night, found her not willing to obey him. She was going out no matter what he said and she colorfully told him so. So he slapped her face. She called the cops, who said he could not hit her. He went to jail.
So, all of you sweet, loving, rational and civilized folks who don’t believe in any form of physical punishment, do the research yourself. The current mess in the schools comes from people like you and your willingness to sue the crap out of any teacher touching your darling little beast. The coldness of corporate America is the result of new era people taking over who are used to getting their own way.
Even animals in nature discipline their young with mild pain if they are bad.
I was spanked as a child. I was never beaten, bruised nor tossed around. I never had my hair pulled, got violently shaken or knocked across the room. I learned a whole lot of things, enforced the sting of a slap that I’ve carried through into adult life. I know I could not release a game that might convince a few kids that killing cops is fun. I could not lay off 1500 people just to get the company stock up a few points because I’d consider those people, their families, wonder who might be struggling with medical costs and who might go under without a weekly check.
I certainly could not hack into a medical computer and screw it up, knowing that people might suffer or die nor could I release a virus into the net knowing that I could cause millions in damages. A lot of kids today think that doing so is fun because responsibility was never reinforced strictly into them.
Kids want something today and it seems like they get it. When I was in high school, the parking lot was filled with old, cherished first cars. Most were in various stages of decomposition, many were old but in good shape. Only the ‘rich kids’ had reasonably new ones. There were the occasional, much admired, motorcycles.
Now I drive by the school and the parking lot is filled with shiny, nearly new cars. Some are new. Most have those friggin’ window rattling stereos in them that cost about 4 grand. Custom motorcycles are dotted here and there along with the occasional expensive import. There doesn’t seem to be a rolling wreck among them. (I ignore the occasional battered pick up truck but even that is being replaced by new ones, sitting like 4 inches from the ground and absolutely not meant to carry anything in the bed.)
Lastly, I was crawling through the local shopping mall a few days ago when some young punk, probably all of 16, dressed in the usual baggy crap, stepped off of the curb, looking right at me. I slammed on the brakes and yelled at the little shit. He went into his ‘anger dance’ – you know, arms all over the place like a rapper, hands in all sorts of twisty signs, jumping around and calling me names, baggy pants fluttering and generally looking like a jerk.
Then he bounced up and kicked my car and threatened me, so I got out and charged the little shit. I was going to kick his ass, but he took off and I’m not all that fast anymore. He stopped about a block away to swear at me more and I returned to my car – and actually got some applause from the interested adult bystanders.
There was a time when no kid would do that to an adult, but then, there was a time when kids knew that they could not get away with pulling a bunch of crap.
Maybe I should loose a few pounds. I might be faster on my feet if it happens again.
As I have noted, in my research I have found that the weight of the evidence supports that spanking is at best no more effective than other methods of punishment, and often detrimental. I’m going to put my money where my mouth is, and post some studies. Sure, you can find some that support spanking, but as a general rule, even when corrected for social status, degree of punishment, parental relationship, etc., spanking does not end up looking like a big winner. I’ve done more reading than these I have quoted, certainly; as I mentioned, my mother taught psych and child psych, so I’ve had a library full of books on child-rearing to read, not to mention to empirical first-hand evidence of the fine job Mom did on me myself and my bro’. 
But this is the stuff I could find offhand online.