Poll: Your view on parents spanking their children?
- Thread starter Hunter65416
- Start date
Quite frankly, I'm not going to hit my kids. It just won't happen. Was I spanked? Eeyup. Doesn't mean I'll translate it to my own kin. Doesn't mean that those who do smack their kids are less than me, either. However you choose to raise your child (and stay outside the realm of child abuse) is a decision and practice that I have no right to barge-in on.
I've read through this thread but contributed little so far. Unlike many of you here I am not either someone who doesn't have kids so argues from a moral or philosophical point of view but no personal experience of parenting, or a parent who has already chosen a method so will defend whichever way they decided to go because parents struggle to be objective when people suggest they haven't done the right thing.
I have two infant children aged 1 and 2 and they are at the age where I need to make these sort of decisions, and this thread has got me thinking really hard about what to do - I bet you'd never believe someone would actually say this but you random strangers arguing on the internet are causing me to seriously challenge my beliefs. I've thought about little else for the last couple of days since I first saw this thread, and have considered much of what you guys have said. So here goes: (spoilered for brevity)
Writing this has been very good for me to organise my thoughts, but i don't really have a conclusion. I ticked the 'last resort' option on the poll, but I really can't imagine what that would be.
I am not an angry person. In 32 years, I have never lost my temper, I've never done anything in a fit of rage and regretted it later. I have probably the perfect temperament to be able to dish out a spanking and not have it become a beating. Only once have I been physical with either of my kids and that was when my eldest son was interacting with his newborn sister and started to hit her. I reacted quickly and picked him up very firmly, shouted at him, and plonked him down unceremoniously in another room. He was terrified. I was too. The size and strength differential between me and him was frightening. I am about 6ft, 95kgs, fit and very strong, ex-rugby player, he was a 15 month old baby who weighed about 12 kilos and barely enough strength to keep himself upright.
He never hit her again, but turns out the kid is a really empathetic child and doesn't want to hit anyone. Is that because he is physically intimidated by me? or because he has my calm demeanor in his genes? or because he lives in a house where Mum and Dad love each other and don't fight? I couldn't prove anything either way.
I have two infant children aged 1 and 2 and they are at the age where I need to make these sort of decisions, and this thread has got me thinking really hard about what to do - I bet you'd never believe someone would actually say this but you random strangers arguing on the internet are causing me to seriously challenge my beliefs. I've thought about little else for the last couple of days since I first saw this thread, and have considered much of what you guys have said. So here goes: (spoilered for brevity)
I've seen this cited a few times: http://www.webmd.com/parenting/news/20090924/kids-who-get-spanked-may-have-lower-iqs, and think it is bullshit science. There is no way to separate nature from nurture. Someone performs badly on an IQ test because of genetics, environment, stress levels, white male bias to IQ tests. For lots of reasons. You cannot possibly account for all of these variables.
"Even after accounting for factors that could influence IQ scores, such as parental education and socioeconomic status, spanking appeared to have a negative impact on intelligence"
Not adjusted for parent's IQ? assigning a value to parent's education doesn't necessarily have any correlation with the IQ they have passed on in their genes. If Dr Straus, PhD, (a vocal opponent of the practice) has found a way to clinically prove which components of nature and nurture go into how a child scores on an IQ test, than he has solved one of the greatest arguments ever that thousands of scientists before him couldn't.
And this one: http://www.pediatricsdigest.mobi/content/113/5/1321.short "Conclusion. Among white non-Hispanic children but not among black and Hispanic children, spanking frequency before age 2 is significantly and positively associated with child behavior problems at school age. These findings are consistent with those reported in studies of children older than 2 years but extend these findings to children who are spanked beginning at a relatively early age."
Surely this proves that there is more at play than just the spanking issue?? Clearly race, soci-economic status and other variables are involved here
To quote someone much smarter than me: (http://cjb.sagepub.com/content/38/8/818.abstract)
"A large amount of selection bias exists, indicating that child and family characteristics of those subjected to corporal punishment are substantially different from characteristics of those not punished, and (b) when children exposed to corporal punishment (vs. those who are not) are matched on their propensities of being punished, the relationship between punishment and subsequent aggression and delinquency become statistically nonsignificant and substantively small."
I've read as much as I can in a bid to make an informed decision about this and my only conclusion is that any individual is the sum of nature and nurture so you cannot definitively say whether spanking made them better or worse. Was Anders Breivik was a monster because he was smacked, or because he was not smacked enough?
"Even after accounting for factors that could influence IQ scores, such as parental education and socioeconomic status, spanking appeared to have a negative impact on intelligence"
Not adjusted for parent's IQ? assigning a value to parent's education doesn't necessarily have any correlation with the IQ they have passed on in their genes. If Dr Straus, PhD, (a vocal opponent of the practice) has found a way to clinically prove which components of nature and nurture go into how a child scores on an IQ test, than he has solved one of the greatest arguments ever that thousands of scientists before him couldn't.
And this one: http://www.pediatricsdigest.mobi/content/113/5/1321.short "Conclusion. Among white non-Hispanic children but not among black and Hispanic children, spanking frequency before age 2 is significantly and positively associated with child behavior problems at school age. These findings are consistent with those reported in studies of children older than 2 years but extend these findings to children who are spanked beginning at a relatively early age."
Surely this proves that there is more at play than just the spanking issue?? Clearly race, soci-economic status and other variables are involved here
To quote someone much smarter than me: (http://cjb.sagepub.com/content/38/8/818.abstract)
"A large amount of selection bias exists, indicating that child and family characteristics of those subjected to corporal punishment are substantially different from characteristics of those not punished, and (b) when children exposed to corporal punishment (vs. those who are not) are matched on their propensities of being punished, the relationship between punishment and subsequent aggression and delinquency become statistically nonsignificant and substantively small."
I've read as much as I can in a bid to make an informed decision about this and my only conclusion is that any individual is the sum of nature and nurture so you cannot definitively say whether spanking made them better or worse. Was Anders Breivik was a monster because he was smacked, or because he was not smacked enough?
This has been discussed a little bit as well. Many of you may not realise that New Zealand has one of the highest rates of physical child abuse in the development world. We also have one of the worst rates of child death by maltreatment within the family.
(http://www.everychildcounts.org.nz/resources/child-abuse/). The law to outlaw all smacking is an attempt to remove the defence that the abuser was just discipling his child and went to far. As far as I am aware it was been policed pretty well so far.
Cops aren't breaking down the door of peoples houses because a child was given a slap on the wrist, they government are using legislation to try and institute social change. Much in the same way as banning smoking doesn't need a policemen at every pub to enforce it - once you have cultural change it becomes unacceptable and people just don't do it. Will it work? Time will tell
(http://www.everychildcounts.org.nz/resources/child-abuse/). The law to outlaw all smacking is an attempt to remove the defence that the abuser was just discipling his child and went to far. As far as I am aware it was been policed pretty well so far.
Cops aren't breaking down the door of peoples houses because a child was given a slap on the wrist, they government are using legislation to try and institute social change. Much in the same way as banning smoking doesn't need a policemen at every pub to enforce it - once you have cultural change it becomes unacceptable and people just don't do it. Will it work? Time will tell
Technically this may be right, but practically that is not what anyone here is arguing. You can take any form of punishment to it's extremes and say it is horrific and inhumane. This evening I didn't give my son a chocolate. I have been using a small chocolate as a reward system to get my son to eat his vegetables. Tonight he didn't do it, so he didn't get a chocolate. So my punishment was withholding food from a child. Starving children to death is horrific and inhumane.
Withholding chocolate =/= starving child to death
Grounding =/= false imprisonment
Removing toys =/= theft
Smacking =/= abuse (or punching kids in the face, or whatever unnecessarily emotive language has been used so far)
Withholding chocolate =/= starving child to death
Grounding =/= false imprisonment
Removing toys =/= theft
Smacking =/= abuse (or punching kids in the face, or whatever unnecessarily emotive language has been used so far)
This is a terrible argument. for anything. Comes up in the circumcision threads here often. Personally as a parent, anything I can do to make my kids life better than mine, I will do.
Since becoming a parent I have spent a lot of time evaluating the way I was raised and trying to decide which parts of my parent's parenting decisions I will emulate and which I will avoid. When I get unsolicited advice from my Dad about my babies it always starts with "well we did it this way when you were young, and you turned out OK", to which I counter: "yes dad, but when I was born they gave expectant mums thalidomide, you drove around in cars without seatbelts, child restraints, or drink driving laws, and asbestos ceilings were all the rage."
Since becoming a parent I have spent a lot of time evaluating the way I was raised and trying to decide which parts of my parent's parenting decisions I will emulate and which I will avoid. When I get unsolicited advice from my Dad about my babies it always starts with "well we did it this way when you were young, and you turned out OK", to which I counter: "yes dad, but when I was born they gave expectant mums thalidomide, you drove around in cars without seatbelts, child restraints, or drink driving laws, and asbestos ceilings were all the rage."
Someone said earlier, I wouldn't smack my girlfriend, for misbehaving, so why should it be OK to smack a child?
Girlfriend =/= your child.
I could list all the things you can do to your girlfriend that you are legally not allowed to do to a kid, and vise versa but it would be weird and creepy and you really should know that by now.
Let's just say if another person who wasn't my child woke me up 4 times a night screaming, scratched me, shat, pissed, and vomited on me, I can assure you I would not be making them scrambled eggs in the morning (only to most likely have it end up on the floor).
The relationship between a parent and child is unique, and not comparable to any other relationship. I mean any form of punishment would be weird if you tried it on an adult: I wish that when my wife is a ***** i could make her sit in the naughty corner until she apologizes...
Girlfriend =/= your child.
I could list all the things you can do to your girlfriend that you are legally not allowed to do to a kid, and vise versa but it would be weird and creepy and you really should know that by now.
Let's just say if another person who wasn't my child woke me up 4 times a night screaming, scratched me, shat, pissed, and vomited on me, I can assure you I would not be making them scrambled eggs in the morning (only to most likely have it end up on the floor).
The relationship between a parent and child is unique, and not comparable to any other relationship. I mean any form of punishment would be weird if you tried it on an adult: I wish that when my wife is a ***** i could make her sit in the naughty corner until she apologizes...
Writing this has been very good for me to organise my thoughts, but i don't really have a conclusion. I ticked the 'last resort' option on the poll, but I really can't imagine what that would be.
I am not an angry person. In 32 years, I have never lost my temper, I've never done anything in a fit of rage and regretted it later. I have probably the perfect temperament to be able to dish out a spanking and not have it become a beating. Only once have I been physical with either of my kids and that was when my eldest son was interacting with his newborn sister and started to hit her. I reacted quickly and picked him up very firmly, shouted at him, and plonked him down unceremoniously in another room. He was terrified. I was too. The size and strength differential between me and him was frightening. I am about 6ft, 95kgs, fit and very strong, ex-rugby player, he was a 15 month old baby who weighed about 12 kilos and barely enough strength to keep himself upright.
He never hit her again, but turns out the kid is a really empathetic child and doesn't want to hit anyone. Is that because he is physically intimidated by me? or because he has my calm demeanor in his genes? or because he lives in a house where Mum and Dad love each other and don't fight? I couldn't prove anything either way.
That's pretty much what I'm going to do. I know I got the belt when I was a kid and did the walk of punishment to get a stick for a switch, and my personal favorite is my dad putting his belt on the door knob that was in plain view as a warning. Nothing scarier man.Caramel Frappe said:
But if spanking doesn't work on my future kids, their stuff is gonna start being put into a locked room and privilages start going away.
Some children, especially those under 5 don't respond to time outs: they don't have the capacity to understand what they did wrong and why it was wrong. They haven't had the socialization to do so. I generally only had to sound disappointed in my daughter to get her to behave, but I have been around children that needed the occasional pop on the arse.
There are studies which indicate that below a certain age, children don't really have the psychological development to think about the consequences of their actions ("how might this action negatively affect other people," for example). Below this age, the specifics of which I have forgotten, it is apparently better for them to simply be taught clearly what sorts of actions are right and wrong, and instill in them the reasons for these rules as they grow.
I don't think it follows that physical punishment is necessarily a good way to do this, however. My parents did occasionally hit me when I was young, and my psychologist thinks I might have generalised anxiety disorder - though I can't exactly draw a causal link directly between those two things, I imagine they both grew out of a somewhat stressful home environment.
I don't think it follows that physical punishment is necessarily a good way to do this, however. My parents did occasionally hit me when I was young, and my psychologist thinks I might have generalised anxiety disorder - though I can't exactly draw a causal link directly between those two things, I imagine they both grew out of a somewhat stressful home environment.
I think its only good as an absolute last resort. I can count the amount of times I've been spanked on one hand, and I'd dare say I turned out to be an obedient, well behaved person...
Well considering it has been proven to be an inneffective punishment in comparison to non-violent methods I don't see why I would ever want to spank my child in the first place. Although, I don't have a child, I don't like children and I don't ever want to be a father so maybe that will change in time but I really doubt it.
