So in your mind the two alternatives are being weak and over-indulgent with children, or spanking them. There’s no way to be strict without the threat of violence.
A famous cowhorse trainer from the 1960’s wrote a book in which he related how his cowboys would whip and spur all the colts they were training except one, the one that would snake his head around and bite the rider in the leg if he was spurred or whipped. From this he concluded that the main reason people hurt animals as a form of training or discipline is because the animals won’t hurt them back.
I think children are the same, in that respect. If your kid was capable of hurting you as bad as you hurt them, wouldn’t you think twice? And if you would, what does that say about hurting your children?
Of course there is a range of reactions to any situation, but there are kids who are not going to be corralled from aggressive and potentially physically violent acting out by their parents being “disappointed”, or giving them time outs or talking to them.
Taking spanking off the table as a form of physical discipline regardless of context and calling it as inappropriate in all scenarios is IMO a mistake when dealing with certain children and certain behaviors. Spanking IMO administered judiciously has a limited and effective place in the parental arsenal when dealing with certain situations.
Where is the conclusive evidence that spanking a child (not beating them or abusing them, but spanking them in a controlled manner on occasion) directly links to violence in our society? People keep saying crime rates are going down, like that somehow conclusively proves that not spanking your child is a mitigating factor in the decline of violence. Yet around 80% of parents still spank their children. In 1980 around 90% of parents reported spanking their children. Yet violent crime rate has decreased much more significantly than the percentage of parents who spank their children, down over 50%. And when discussing the drop in crime rates, experts don’t often cite a small decline in corporal punishment as a significant factor in crime rates.
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002-09-09-crime_x.htm
First of all, you really need to cite your sources here. You copied a whole paragraph from…somewhere…without telling us who wrote it or where it came from. Second, all this says is that spanking can work as well as other punishments in certain situations but can be harmful in others. If the question is whether parents should spank or not then “when done properly it’s not worse than other methods” isn’t really a ringing endorsement. If it isn’t actually better than other methods like taking away privileges, why go with spanking?
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Here’s your citation…Parents Should Not Be Spanking Their Kids, and Here's Why
As for your second question, the answer is simply that not all kids universally respond to the same forms of discipline. I don’t know how many times I have to repeat this, but if you have tried lectures or time outs and they work then good job, no need to spank. I don’t think spanking should be the first or only method of punishment a parent tries. But if an alternate method doesn’t work in some cases but spanking does, then a swat on the butt can do a child some good.
Part of the problem with some of these studies is that they don’t distinguish a light and controlled swat with a serious whack with a belt on bare skin. As noted in the above citation, the AAP lumps in the belts and wooden spoons with something as trivial as slapping the hand of a child who reaches for a hot stove. Anything that can be defined as physical contact is called a spanking.
This is where I do draw heavily on anecdotal evidence. I think most of us tend to raise our kids the way we were raised. If you only remember trauma and violence as a child, hopefully you change that cycle with your own kids, but I would hazard a guess that your spankings weren’t limited to the occasional swat or a hand slap. But I think the greatest support for anecdotal evidence of the impact of spanking is the fact that parents have been raising kids for thousands of years. Spankings have been used across time and accross cultures, and somehow we managed to avoid producing generation after generation of psychopaths and traumatized children.
But now parents, psychologists, and the government are looking to fix a system that generally wasn’t broken to begin with. And this isn’t limited to just spanking. All of a sudden the great debates rage over breast feeding, co-sleeping, crying it out, organic foods, and so on. It’s like there is a mission to determine the perfect and universal way to raise a child. Children aren’t universal, and despite all the variance in raising children, overall the next generation manages to grow and flourish, even if one child breast fed until she was 4, didn’t sleep in a bed with her parents, was raised by a single mother, or got a swat on the behind when she misbehaved.
Here’s your citation…Parents Should Not Be Spanking Their Kids, and Here's Why
As for your second question, the answer is simply that not all kids universally respond to the same forms of discipline. I don’t know how many times I have to repeat this, but if you have tried lectures or time outs and they work then good job, no need to spank. I don’t think spanking should be the first or only method of punishment a parent tries. But if an alternate method doesn’t work in some cases but spanking does, then a swat on the butt can do a child some good.
Part of the problem with some of these studies is that they don’t distinguish a light and controlled swat with a serious whack with a belt on bare skin. As noted in the above citation, the AAP lumps in the belts and wooden spoons with something as trivial as slapping the hand of a child who reaches for a hot stove. Anything that can be defined as physical contact is called a spanking.
This is where I do draw heavily on anecdotal evidence. I think most of us tend to raise our kids the way we were raised. If you only remember trauma and violence as a child, hopefully you change that cycle with your own kids, but I would hazard a guess that your spankings weren’t limited to the occasional swat or a hand slap. But I think the greatest support for anecdotal evidence of the impact of spanking is the fact that parents have been raising kids for thousands of years. Spankings have been used across time and accross cultures, and somehow we managed to avoid producing generation after generation of psychopaths and traumatized children.
But now parents, psychologists, and the government are looking to fix a system that generally wasn’t broken to begin with. And this isn’t limited to just spanking. All of a sudden the great debates rage over breast feeding, co-sleeping, crying it out, organic foods, and so on. It’s like there is a mission to determine the perfect and universal way to raise a child. Children aren’t universal, and despite all the variance in raising children, overall the next generation manages to grow and flourish, even if one child breast fed until she was 4, didn’t sleep in a bed with her parents, was raised by a single mother, or got a swat on the behind when she misbehaved.
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How do you know it wasn’t broken, though? If 80% of parents still spank, we have no idea what sort of adults we would produce if most kids weren’t spanked.
And–this is not directed at any poster here–I’ve noticed that often when folks proclaim that they were spanked as kids and turned out fine, I privately feel that that person is not quite up to the standard I hope to see my own kids reach…
Spanking should be the last resort, and it should be presented as the direct consequence of the child’s actions.
Oh, piffle. Charles Whitman was the child of Depression-era parents, too.
The old saw “My parents spanked me and I turned out okay” is one of the most obviously ridiculous logical errors I’ve ever heard that seems to be accepted as actually meaning anything. It’s ridiculous, and I don’t understand why people accept it.
My parents let me ride in the car without wearing a seat belt. I survived. Does that mean there’s no value in making your child wear a seat belt?
Many people have driven drunk and hurt nobody. Does that mean driving drunk isn’t all that bad?
My grandmother smoked for decades and died peacefully in her 90s of health problems unrelated to smoking. So is smoking not bad for you?
It’s not that spanking leads to violence, it’s that you’ve posited that a decline in spanking correlates with an increase in bad children who are uncontrolled and disrespectful, and who would (one would assume) be more likely to be bad people in general, which should be reflected in crime rates. In other words, if less spanking leads to more poorly raised children, we should see a rise in the crime rates as a consequence; what we see is a drop. I agree with you that correlation is tenuous, but this goes to a larger cultural argument about how society has supposedly declined over the last several decades, from a mythical high point in the 50s when people worked hard and children were respectful and America was prosperous (our own Starving Artist explicitly makes this argument).
No one has made that claim. I explicitly said that I wasn’t attributing the falling crime rate to less spanking. However, since you and **Magiver **have both made “these kids today” complaints, with **Magiver **specifically claiming that young people are more violent today than they were back in his day, it’s relevant to point out that the violent crime rate in the US was rising throughout the “good old days” but has been falling for the past 20 odd years.
If that’s true – and I don’t see a cite for those figures – then why do you blame a lack of spanking for “kids today [being] much more disrespectful and mindless of the consequences of their actions or unacceptable behavior than the kids growing up 30 years ago”? A lot of things have changed since the '80s, so if kids are much more disrespectful today (which I doubt) then it seems unlikely that the primary cause of this is a slight drop in the spanking rate.
I wish you’d bet money on that, because you’re wrong. I was only spanked once as a child, and my mother has often told the story of how she never tried it again because it was totally ineffective. I just glared at her and clearly had not learned a lesson. So she told me I couldn’t watch my favorite cartoon for an entire week, and THAT was the punishment that got through to me.
Oh yeah, and I turned out fine.
I am sorry, there are so many factors with child rearing that to come up with a definitive answer about the effects of spanking is absurd. On this study is projected the views of the participants, the views of the scientists, and the views of the readers.
You can just as easily destroy a child’s self worth, confidence and ability to mature while never touching them. What this study allows is some people the ability to feel superior in a false and pathetic way. And that is it.
Yes, you got one seat once that was ineffective, meaning corporal punishment didn’t work for you, so there wasn’t a point in continuing if other forms worked better. But we’re you seriously traumatized by that one slap. Has it shaped your psyche in a negative way?
If that’s true – and I don’t see a cite for those figures – then why do you blame a lack of spanking for “kids today [being] much more disrespectful and mindless of the consequences of their actions or unacceptable behavior than the kids growing up 30 years ago”? A lot of things have changed since the '80s, so if kids are much more disrespectful today (which I doubt) then it seems unlikely that the primary cause of this is a slight drop in the spanking rate.
There isn’t one cite for the sources because when I was researching the numbers they came up over and over again. But saying a kid is more disrespectful and less mindful of his parents or the consequences of his actions was never intended to make a leap to crime rates. Someone above said she didn’t spank her kids, but they mouthed off more. That’s more what I meant. A kid in the store the other day spit in his mother’s face and didn’t get any immediate negative reinforcement. Instead, he laughed, she said “no no” and they went on their way. If you want to bet, I would bet that on that encounter alone, that kid would spit in his mother’s face again. I spit in my day’s face once- just once. I got an immediate spanking, and you can bet your ass I never did it again. Spitting isn’t violent crime. Talking back and disobeying your parents isn’t violent crime. But I can walk into any store in any area or go online and see obnoxious little kids with no respect laughing at their parent’s empty threats or total lack of perceived threats when it comes to punishment. Literally everybody I know over the age of 30 is appalled by the level of disrespect we see in kids and their attitude toward misbehaving. I think THAT relates to a lack of effective discipline. Now some of that could be because parents aren’t disciplining their kids through any efforts, or some are using ineffective methods. And if spanking is found to be an effective method of discipline when other forms fail, then I see a place for it.
When my daughter was too young to understand the consequences of running out into traffic, she could much easier understand the seriousness of a spanking. Especially since it was a rare occurrence. I don’t really care what any study has to say about it.
Lastly, part of the problems with the studies that show the long term psychological consequences are done using less than ideal methodology. Obviously we can’t place a group of kids in a lab for a month and monitor how parents spank their children in a true double blind study. Most of these studies are conducted with no blinds, and the data relies on anecdote. Psychologists asked adults how often they were spanked, and the reflection of an adult as to how often or how hard he was spanked 30 years ago isn’t exactly empirical data. Or if you ask a parent to log their spanking, the study is already compromised because the subjects are aware of the topic, if not the hypothesis. So we can only hope the answers they give are true. And if asked to rank how hard you spank a child, one parent might say "Level 5, meaning a hard swat on a bare butt. Another parent may see 5 as a spanking with a belt that leaves a bruise. It’s incredibly subjective, which just begs for the results to be skewed, no matter what the results are. The worst is when a researcher only asks how often a parent Donald their kids. The parent might lie to fulfill a perception, or they could report 3 spankings that were done with belts, and the next parent could report 3 spankings done as a swat on the hand. The child who got beaten with a belt is going to have a much different reaction than a child who was swatted on the hand for putting it near the stove.
Here is a list of some studies conducted. Look at the sections in methodology. They are rarely able to do a controlled study, and especially those who rely on memory based anecdote are inherently flawed in trying to produce empirical data.
I have no idea. It’s impossible to know what, if any, lasting effect one incident in my childhood might have had. I don’t have an alternate version of my own life to compare it to. But it is not my position, nor do I think it is the position of anyone else in this thread, that a single spanking is guaranteed to permanently traumatize a child.
If they came up over and over again it should be easy to provide a cite.
If, as you claimed, 80% of parents today spank their children then what does that tell us about the effectiveness of spanking when it comes to controlling disrespect and misbehavior?
Your own cite said that spanking is, when done well, only as effective as other forms of punishment, and when done badly is harmful to children.
OK, lets look at your statistics. Graduation rates have risen yet in cities like NY 80% of the graduates are illiterate. Talk to any recruiter for a factory job and they will tell you the newly minted graduate can’t do basic math. Not calculus, not trigonometry, not algebra… basic math.
My parents were average citizens by any metric of their generation. With their HS education my mother was able to balance a checkbook and put together a budget. I guess that makes her smarter then every single member of Congress because they can’t even agree on when to put out a pretend budget. My father built his first house from scratch. He had no formal carpentry skills and this was done at a time when banks would not loan money out against a hole in the ground. He put together a financial plan sufficiently detailed enough that they accepted it. He wasn’t an accountant. This is what a HS education prepared them for. The diploma meant something. There was no grading curve. If you got an “A” you really got an “A”. You’d be hard pressed to find a kid today who can make change from a simple purchase.
So while your statistics paint a lovely picture they don’t explain the violence we see today or why schools are now a police state where even a picture of a knife invites a suspension. We went from a generation that carried knives and guns to school to a generation we actively fear will bring knives and guns to school.
From the same source as Magiver’s 80% quote: Yale will train US Special Forces in interrogation techniques using immigrants as guinea pigs. The only site I could find backing up the Russia Times source is Stormfront. Notably, I couldn’t find the CBS 2 story that apparently reports exactly that.
You mean this story.
or are you referring to the Yale story.