…a single person isn’t statistically significant enough for anybody to conduct scientific research. And thats kinda key to the whole discussion. How many parents do believe this? Who is advocating for this?
The first three websites I visited on Google, NONE of them mentioned it was to prevent later sexually manipulation or abuse. I’m sure if I dug a bit deeper, some would pop up.
The OP is based on, essentially, a strawman. It presented a premise that they asserted to be true, then challenged the board to provide evidence to support the premise they essentially just made up.
We should either be allowed to challenge the premise in that thread, or the thread should be moved to a more appropriate forum so the premise can be debated.
One of the issues I’ve heard with horse meat is that horses are often given medication that is unsuitable for animals intended for human consumption. Jonathan Swift did not consider this.
But I see a distinction between:
Are there studies on X?
We should all X and here’s why.
Government policy on X
What do you think about X? / Should we X?
I read this article about X
People who X are poopheads
where if placed in the appropriate category/topic or whatever we’re calling the bins these days, I’d prefer the responses in that thread be tailored to FQ/GD/etc.
According to the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, one in 10 children will be victims of sexual abuse before the age of 18. As a parent, that statistic is terrifying — especially as you’re about to send your baby out “into the world” for the first time. But rather than become consumed by fear, my husband and I focused on safety and education.
We have always talked to my son about the parts of his body using proper names, and reinforced the message that when it comes to his body, he is the boss. My son understands that if he needs help cleaning himself in the tub, we will ask before washing him. And he knows that his doctor may need to examine parts of his body during checkups, but likewise, she will ask him first. We let him know that he doesn’t have to give hugs and kisses to people if he doesn’t want to, and that includes mum and dad. We’ve also discussed the importance of privacy, and the idea that certain parts of his body shouldn’t be seen or touched by other people. There is no awkward sit-down or big Power Point presentation here. The focus is on guidance, and getting the message across in a way that isn’t scary.
It then goes on to discuss other reasons, e.g. respecting others’ bodies. Obviously important IMO but not what the OP asked about. And also possibly not the subject of any studies.
Or, the OP is based on a topic you are not knowledgeable about and nobody is forcing you to participate. That’s why I don’t respond to the vast majority of FQ threads.
…yeah, but that really doesn’t back up the OP’s premise. Its an anecdote on why a mum was motivated to do something, later in the post she says:
So what she wanted to accomplish was to teach her son how to navigate relationships, to respect other people, and to become a respectful adult. Which is pretty much what the other cites I provided also said. I’m pretty comfortable now that the entire premise that the original thread is based on is nonsense. Thanks for providing additional evidence.
Well, I didn’t participate in that thread, so thanks for informing me that nobody is forcing me to participate, but I already know that, thanks.
And the assertion that the OP is based on a “topic that I’m not knowledgeable about” is incorrect.
And thus is confirmed to be a parenting strategy to reduce abuse of the child. The existence of other motivations doesn’t negate this. Other motivations being more important to many or even all parents doesn’t negate this. The strategy exists; anyone who doesn’t already know that from casual news exposure and who inexplicably can’t confirm it in 30 seconds* would be threadshitting by arguing otherwise in that thread.
*Punching
protect kids from abuse consent hugging
into Google provides ample results.
That doesn’t mean there are studies. What few papers I found adjacent to the request mentioned little research outside a few specific areas, like adults in medical setting.
…I haven’t argued that in some instances it may well be a parenting strategy to reduce abuse of the child. Of course that happens. But it’s a holistic strategy. As in the primary goal is to make their kids better people. It really isn’t anything more than that.
Except they aren’t just “other motivations.” They are the motivations.
“Casual news exposure” is exactly the reason why the premise of the OP should be allowed to be challenged.
Because “casual news exposure” often leads to bullshit ideas.
It presents extremely targeted results that, in the case of this search, presented many websites or stories that either were focused on sexual abuse in general and presented “make hugging consensual” as one of many different things you could do, or news articles that started with a narrative and then found people that agreed with the premise and quoted them. The problem with overly targeted searches is that you end up largely with “casual news exposure”. That isn’t a good thing.
After all of the moderation in the original thread, after everything was edited and the thread put back on track by the moderators, the OP posted this:
This gives the game away. The OP is insistent they are just asking questions. Insistent that this question is important. Insistent that no nuance is required. They just had to share that with everyone.
The demand for “enlightenment” here, IMHO, is disingenuous. If this really is the case:
then the OP would be open to the responses that they received in that thread that didn’t narrowly answer the exact question posed in the OP, but gave more context and enlightenment on the strategy.
…the OP said “I asked a very open-ended question. What are the goals of people using this parenting strategy and is this strategy accomplishing those goals?”
Answering that question doesn’t require “published science.” Not when the apparent purpose of the thread was:
I bet you love the trope in courtroom dramas where the lawyer asks a “factual question” designed to mislead the jury without adequate context and insists that the witness only be allowed to answer yes or no.
The original post did not. The poster returned later, after all the moderation, and opened things up, as sometimes happens when the original post, as written, results in unsatisfactory responses.
The premise that it seems to me that you’re assuming is that the sole purpose of this strategy is to prevent child sexual abuse.
And I agree with others here that this isn’t the sole, or even the main, purpose of the strategy; though there may be some using it who do think of it that way. What it seems to me is the main purpose of the strategy is to teach that everyone is deserving of respect: including the child, but also including everybody else.
If the children were being taught that while they don’t have to hug anybody they don’t want to they’re entitled to hug anyone else even if that person doesn’t want, then of course that wouldn’t be so. But as I understand it this isn’t what’s being taught – what’s being taught is that both/all partners to the hug should be willing. This isn’t entirely or even primarily about sex; nobody’s saying a child shouldn’t have to hug Grandma only if Grandma is a sexual predator. It’s about teaching respect in general.
Moderators, could I say that in the thread in question, and go on from there to what sort of study would have to be designed, and also why any study showing only the effect on sexual predation would be insufficient to answer the question of whether “this strategy works”?
But what is negated is any assumption that, if the strategy doesn’t work to prevent childhood sexual abuse, it therefore doesn’t work at all and shouldn’t be used.
If you’re asking what the goals are, isn’t it appropriate for people to answer that the goals are much wider than only preventing childhood sexual abuse, and that therefore studies considering those wider goals would be needed before the strategy could be declared not to be working?
And as a wider question: moderators, is it acceptable in FQ to respond that a question cannot be given a factual answer in the form in which it’s been asked, because any such answer would be seriously misleading?
There obviously was. The OP was loaded with the assumption that parenting strategies in general should only be based on empirical evidence; and specifically that teaching bodily autonomy and consent should be justified by empirical studies of abuse outcomes.
so it seems to me that pointing out that there could be positive effects in other areas than childhood sexual abuse directly addresses that part of the question.
In addition, I’m still asking whether saying that answers to a FQ in the form in which it was asked would be misleading is forbidden; though I don’t expect there’s been time for an answer to that.
I’m actually objecting on different grounds: that even if empirical studies of abuse outcomes exist and show no benefit, they’d be insufficient to show that the strategy doesn’t work, as it would also be necessary to do studies of whether the strategy worked in other areas. And the OP did specifically ask about the strategy working.
But I think that what you’re saying does also address the issue, because it points out an additional area in which the strategy could be working, whether or not it has an effect on whether the child is sexually abused or commits sexual abuse.
The relevant passages have already been quoted above. I’m obviously not the only one to interpret them in this way. And if there’s any ambiguity, I think it was removed by OP’s subsequent reporting of every post that questioned what we saw as an incorrect embedded premise.
On thing to also consider here, is that for many people a request for empirical study evidence about [whatever] will be viewed as inherently a challenge to the validity of [whatever], not “just a question”. No need to word it as a challenge, they’ll see it as baked in. The adversarial mindset has been drilled in deep.