Well, actually you think that its ok to hit children.
So maybe you didn’t turn out as “ok” as you think you did.
Care to explain how non-traumatic physical discipline is wrong?
Where in my post did I condone beating children?
If you put something in quotes, it has to be something I actually typed or said.
My parents spanked, not hit, me and I turned out fine. They always explained why and never did it in anger if they were still angry they made the other parent do it. They also used a ping pong paddle so my small five year old brain wouldn’t connect there hands with pain
Lots of kids nowadays could use a good spank. Doesn’t help that majority of parents nowadays are morons and don’t know how to say no to a kid, and then wonder why their kid is a rebellious, mouthy brat. Discipline isn’t abuse. People who don’t know the difference or see no difference are idiots.
Children need discipline. They need boundries. They need to be taught right from wrong. They need to understand WHY rules exist.
“Don’t do it or daddy will hit you” is not effective for long term discipline. The vast majority of research on the topic shows this.
35 developed nations have banned corporal punishment at home.
Okay I was hit. Hard, for discipline. Mostly around the head. I do believe in on the hand with the hard, or on the butt.
Kids need something as a reminder that behavior is unacceptable. But it needs to be a last resort. Right now I see kids out of control, running the house because the parents have nothing they can do that society believes is acceptable.Exactly…like if what a kid does now could get them deservedly hit by someone else when they are older (i.e. Using extremely disrespectful language towards someone, taunting/bullying etc) then they should get spanked for that type of behavior when they are younger so they’d know the repercussions of their actions
Here is an overview of many studies- The American Psychological Association: The case against spanking. Physical discipline is slowly declining as some studies reveal lasting harms for children.
CCN: Spanking the Grey Matter out of out Kids: Talks about several studies, this one in particular has a slightly broader view on hitting kids- “Exposing children to HCP (harsh corporal punishment) may have detrimental effects on trajectories of brain development,“ one 2009 study concluded.Harsh corporal punishment in the study was defined as at least one spanking a month for more than three years, frequently (Though not always) with objects such as a belt or paddle.
Research on Spanking takes the broadest (and most common) definition for spanking, defining it as- “hitting a child on the bottom with an open hand” . He concluded that not only was it INEFFECTIVE, but it also was harmful to the MENTAL HEALTH of the child, and also increased the risk of delinquency in the future.
In a new study published in Pediatrics, researchers at Tulane University provide the strongest evidence yet that children’s short-term response to spanking may make them act out more in the long run. Of the nearly 2,500 youngsters in the study, those who were spanked more frequently at age 3 were much more likely to be aggressive by age 5.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) does not endorse spanking under any circumstance. It’s a form of punishment that becomes less effective with repeated use, according to the AAP; it also makes discipline more difficult as the child outgrows it.
Spanking is NOT EFFECTIVE. It is HARMFUL. If you want to teach your children right from wrong, HITTING THEM is not the way to do that. We have studies on this.
Yes, if your child does something that warrants discipline (bullying, using inappropriate or offensive language, breaking an important rule) then discipline the. But not all discipline has to involve physically striking a child.
I was spanked. I turned out all right despite being spanked, not because of. I was the lucky grandchild. My cousins were literally beaten with a belt. I was just slapped with an open hand.
My parents never hit me and I was WAY more likely to listen to them than my abusive grandmother because when they got angry, I knew that my punishment was deserved (unlike my grandma’s rules of “don’t walk too loudly”) and would be longer lasting, be it time out, taking away a privilege, or just bring upset with me (literally all my dad had to do as a kid to make me burst into tears and apologize was tell me how disappointed he was).
If spanking is not abuse, where is the line drawn, and how is an abused child supposed to know when that line is being crossed? Abusive parents don’t label themselves as abusive.
Even if spanking were 100% effective at making a child obedient, and even if obedience were so important that it was okay to use physical force to demand it, spanking would not guarantee that a child will be well behaved because there’s no way to control why their parents spank. What if a parent is okay with their child bullying their autistic or gay classmate but spank their child for “backtalk”? Even if there are “right” reasons to spank, there’s no way to guarantee that every parent will spank for the “right” reasons.
As a preschool teacher, I have to set and enforce boundaries for those kids whose parents don’t bother to do so and for those whose parents hit them instead of setting and enforcing boundaries. There’s a lot of overlap on that Venn diagram, but there’s also “overly permissive parent who thinks boundaries are as bad as hitting and therefore has a hellion child”. Guess what? I don’t hit my preschoolers–hell, I rarely have to raise my voice more than a normal speaking tone, or lift my eyebrow more than a centimeter, to get fifteen five-year-olds instantly attentive and behaving appropriately. If you can’t do that without hitting someone who hasn’t mastered perspective-taking, you absolutely should not be a parent. At all. Scoop out your reproductive organs and burn them. Because if you have to hit children to discipline them, you’re an abuser.
I’ma just let y’all know that if you look hard enough on either side of this argument, you can find research to support, or not support, it… as with most psychology-related topics. It’s also based on race. Most studies have a majority of (if not, all) white participants. There’s a clear difference in how most black kids are raised as compared to whites. That’s another reason that psychological studies are not necessarily accurate, many people don’t look at the make-up of the sample and/or consider racial, SES discrepancies.
Would you do that for me please? Show me some studies that say that spanking is effective and non-damaging. I’d like to see them.
And like, I’m going to be real here, if you think that it’s NOT ok to hit rich white kids, but it IS ok to hit poor black kids…..I’m going to have to disagree with you pretty damn firmly.
One thing I keep noticing from people who are pro-spanking is the idea that “I was spanked and I turned out fine!” So let’s talk about that for a minute.
Yup, you turned out fine. On average, people who received adequate love and discipline, regardless of the form that takes, turn out fine. We all bear the scars of our childhood but most of us grow up into reasonable well-adapted adults.
But the thing is, you can only know the trajectory of your life as it happened. By default, I can’t know how I would have turned out if I hadn’t been spanked. I’m not privy to that information, and until we discover whether or not there are alternate universes and can do cross-dimensional longitudinal studies (which would be so badass!) I can’t conclusively prove that I, personally, would have fared better had my parents not spanked me.
I can’t know what I don’t know.
That’s why research is so important. I can’t study a child who has been exposed to a spanking and non-spanking childhood simultaneously, since that would screw up the data and then you’re actually studying “Effects of erratic parenting” rather than “Effects of spanking vs non-spanking.” What I can do is study two groups, spanking vs non-spanking, on a diverse population with diverse parenting styles, and figure out which group on average does better.
Over and over and over, replicated by agency after agency, children who were not spanked have better outcomes.
I’m sorry, guys, but saying “I was spanked and turned out fine!” is just not a good argument for spanking. Because you’re taking your personal experience and saying that you, alone, can disprove a huge and diverse amount of data. Besides the fact that you’re a datum point of one, which is not useful, humans are profoundly bad at scientific objectivity. We have this tendency to remember things that agree with our perceptions, and ignore things that don’t. It’s so common that there’s a term for it–confirmation bias. Your brain will literally ignore anything that doesn’t support what you already think.
So you’re more likely to remember when you were spanked and it made you stop doing whatever it is your parented wanted you to stop doing. You aren’t going to remember the times that spanking made you afraid of your parent (or how, years later, that fear of your parent, which you can’t remember the cause of, meant that you didn’t confide in them, didn’t ask them for help, or withheld information from them). You won’t remember how, when your parent started spanking you at 4, you started getting into more fights at preschool. You won’t remember how being spanked taught you not that what you did was wrong, but how you shouldn’t do it around your parent, or your parent would hit you.
I’m not angry at you for thinking this. This is literally a thing that literally everyone’s brain does, and it’s very hard to stop doing. What I am unhappy about is how fandomsandfeminism gave you a really excellent meta-analysis of excellent peer-reviewed research, and you ignored it, on purpose, because it didn’t conform with what you thought. That is very frustrating.
(Were you having a hard time reading it? I understand, research is often written in a way that makes it difficult for laypeople to read. I’d be happy to help you if you need it, it took me a couple years to get a handle on research.)
You’re trying to use your own experience, one that is not supported by research, and argue that it’s not only acceptable but right for parents to use physical pain as punishment. This is not an okay thing to do.
“Care to explain how non-traumatic physical discipline is wrong?”
Because, on top of all the other reasons listed above, you never know if it’s going to be traumatic to the kid or not.
(I realize what I’m about to say is my own experience, and anecdotes != data, but I feel the need to give a point that I don’t see others saying.)
I was spanked, not hit, never in anger, and it was explained to me exactly what was going to happen, and why.
I was still TOTALLY traumatized & even humiliated by the entire experience, and even the most casual friendly swat on the ass now as an adult will TOTALLY FUCK ME UP and leave me balled up on the floor, crying. It is the strongest and most potent trigger I have. Even writing this is making me anxious.
Spanking made me feel COMPLETELY worthless (? IDK what the right word is here, but just the most terrible awful one could feel, with the most pain and shame with it) as a person (and that I deserved it (because I must have, because why would my parents do something that was wrong for me, right?), and that it was the only way to become a societally acceptable (read: “good”) person), AND taught me that I deserved physical violence for my transgressions.
Also, spanking taught me to self-injure, and, moreover, that I DESERVED to self-injure. (When I was a teenager and I did wrong and after my father had announced “you better behave because you’re too old for me to spank now”, I figured I better spank myself instead because I deserved it & how was I going to get any better as a person if I didn’t get hit?, but I couldn’t really spank myself (the physical logistics were pretty impossible), so I started hitting myself in the head instead, and that’s how I started doing self injury.) I struggle with self-injury to this day because of getting spanked.
“ when you were spanked and it made you stop doing whatever it is your parented wanted you to stop doing.” To be fair, I NEVER remember that happening. I remember me not wanting to have done what I did in the first place (but I couldn’t help it because of my mental illnesses), and I remember being terrified I was going to do something again in the future (once again, because of my mental illnesses). I remember a lot of fear and anxiety as a kid (that I didn’t realize was abnormal… I thought everyone felt that way), because my parents seemingly thought that I could and should control my behavior, and I just simply couldn’t, and I wanted to with ALL my heart and I tried as hard as I could but it never worked out.
You never know what’s going to be traumatic to a kid.
The best description of why you shouldn’t spank your kids I ever heard was the following [poorly paraphrased]: “If they’re old enough to understand what’s going on with the spanking & why, they’re old enough to understand a verbal admonishment and a discussion on why it was wrong and why it needs to not happen again. If they’re not old enough to understand that discussion, then they’re not old enough to understand what’s happening with the spanking & how it goes along with what they did.” So, either way, spanking your kids doesn’t work.
But, yes, you have NO IDEA what could traumatize your kids. Not to mention spanking teaches kids that hitting people/physical violence is ok. (People spank their kids, and then wonder why their kids are hitting their siblings or the other kids. Where do you think they learned it from?) Best to opt for non-violent methods.
Edit: BTW, I still have to struggle with urges to hit my friends and partners to punish them for their “bad behavior” when they’re doing something that makes me uncomfortable or hurts me. I did it all the time (playful but painful hits on the arm that blurred the lines between ok fun and not ok abuse) with the guy I lost my virginity to, and he was the first to point out “hey, this isn’t ok” and I never considered it until he pointed it out.
So, yeah.
Reblogging mainly for the last part especially the “If they understand reason, use it; if they don’t understand reason, spanking’s not going to help much,” argument. My own anecdata is that I recall being spanked only once – and I can’t recall what for.
Mooncustafer 