Spanking your child as punishment- Ethical or not? - General

[QUOTE=DJrorok;35956610]i was spanked and was raised up in a middle class family with manners and very well rounded. it didn't teach me to hate or fear my parents it taught me not to do those things. my dad would give me a warning. i most of the time already knew to stop but if i kept going then he would take off his belt and smack me. it taught me and is a way to create respect not hatred or fear.[/QUOTE] Have you done any thinking to ensure that this not an ex post reasoning to justify abuse? It is important to realize that children are quite susceptible to conditions like Stockholm syndrome, especially considering that a child is entirely dependent upon their parents for survival. You might be completely right in your assertion, in which case it wouldn't hurt to eliminate instinctual survival mechanisms as a reason for your belief. [quote]The victim identifies with the "victim" in the abuser. Explanation: This represents the projection of the victim's own victim status onto the abuser. It enables the victim to feel sympathetic and caring towards the abuser. The victim believes s/he deserved the abuser's violence. Explanation: This represents an attempt to feel that s/he controls when and whether the violence/abuse is done and thus permits him/her to believe s/he can stop the abuse. The victim rationalises the abuser's violence against him/her. Explanation: An attempt to maintain a bond with the abuser (and thus hope of survival) in the face of behaviour (abuse) that would otherwise destroy that bond (hope). Victim uses abuser-as-victim explanation to account for the abuse. Explanation: This represents an effort to see the abuser in a positive light so as to maintain the bond (since the bond provides the victim with the only hope of surviving). The victim feels hatred for that part of him/her which the abuser said led to the abuse. Explanation: To improve chances of survival, the victim internalises the abuser's perspective, including the reasons given for the abuse.[/quote] [url]http://www.secasa.com.au/index.php/workers/21/54/5[/url]

[QUOTE=xXDictatorXx;35956270]I think this kind of punishment is not acceptable. I don't feel I have been harmed by being smacked on occasion when I was a kid and I have a really great relationship with my family, but when parents punish their kids so harshly over stupid things like this it's really wrong.[/QUOTE] That may well be true, but try to understand that even if you specifically, in your one case, don't have any problems with it, the act itself still encourages a certain mindset in a child (the idea that 'bad' actions lead to pain, rather than just the idea that 'bad' actions are bad and thus shouldn't be done). This is agreed with by professional psychologists as well.

I remember being spanked a few times as a kid. But I never remember what for. Can't have been that effective.

[QUOTE=Kenneth;36019551]I remember being spanked a few times as a kid. But I never remember what for. Can't have been that effective.[/QUOTE] Pretty much every pediatric psychological authority agrees that spanking and otherwise any physical punishment instills only the fear of retribution and pain. It does very little to actually discourage misbehavior. If a child thinks he can misbehave without being hurt, he will.

My personal experience tells me no, it does not work. A lady I work with spanked her kids, they were always incredibly grumpy and gave her the same level of respect you'd expect them to give the dog shit they just stepped in. They really hated her and to this day they get along like crap. Now, I'm not suggesting this was entirely due to the spanking, but it certainly did nothing to help.

I recommend that people watch this series if they want a whole lot of evidence against spanking and other types of child abuse. [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbiq2-ukfhM[/media] It is also pretty important to not judge the topic by your perception of your life, especially when there are huge logical implications about the conclusions. If it becomes apparent that your parents purposely abused you, lowered your IQ, caused emotional issues that are likely to plague you your whole life, and so on, that they can't be considered good people. [QUOTE=Lankist;36021839]Pretty much every pediatric psychological authority agrees that spanking and otherwise any physical punishment instills only the fear of retribution and pain. It does very little to actually discourage misbehavior. If a child thinks he can misbehave without being hurt, he will.[/QUOTE] [url=http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1926222,00.htm]To go further with your case, it also is correlated with a lower IQ[/url]. It wouldn't be too far of a stretch to up the claim that it causes a lower IQ, though it would be pretty difficult to empirically verify. It is also good to point out that the manner a child is beat will affect how they handle it. Some will take out their feelings by aggression against objects. Others might repress the feelings, causing quite a bit of an anxiety. I was certainly in the second camp. The combination of getting hit regularly by my grandmother and getting scream at by my drunk father and the indifference of my mother about these issues has made me a master at repression.

I think it's very wrong, considering I feel it as a way to let out your anger on a smaller being.

I was spanked and I don't have severe emotional and psychological trauma but when I think back to it, there were much better alternatives. When I misbehaved (and I did it a lot), I would get my ear pulled. That was horribly painful and it felt like my ears were going to be ripped out but I got my ears pulled multiple times as a child, meaning I didn't learn a damn thing. In my case, corporal punishment shouldn't be done because it's ineffective. Taking away my playstation on the other hand, that was very effective

The 2.8 lower IQ quoted in that article for the "older kids" is lower than the margin of error on a standard IQ test... and the 5 point difference is very close. Certain IQ test have a margin of error even higher than 5.

I only remember being spanked maybe 3 times in my life with a wooden spoon, one time I said bitch when I was 5 or 6 and maybe a few times because I would hit my sister. I am not a violent person, but like you know how kids get with siblings and they might hit them or something, but we're good now. I understood why I was being spanked, and that if I ever did something bad, or was about to, I would know what punishment I would get and it would deter me from doing anything bad.

I was spanked as a child, but only very sparingly. It taught me to do the right thing and respect people. Spanking stopped after I was around six, and even then I have probably only been spanked around 5 times in my entire life. My parents are wonderful people and I am a successful person with a good job and good friends with amazing parents. If spanking is used as the "ultimate punishment" for something done wrong, then it is much more effective than using it a lot as children would get conditioned very easily. My parents exhausted all other options before spanking, so when I knew a spanking was coming, I knew that I messed up bad and I learned from the experience.

I see it that if you need to beat your child to make them learn something, you're doing something wrong.

I think spanking can be appropriate, but only in certain circumstances, and it depends on the child. A rude unruly child might prefer a spanking over sitting in the corner. And it might promote their negative behavior, especially if they are violent. However, spanking, can be an effective measure as I experienced as I grew up. [img]http://cdn.leasticoulddo.com/comics/20090802.gif[/img] I think that shows how alternative methods can be effective though.

I believe that spanking is a viable way of punishment for your kids. Not like an abusive parent that will BEAT THE LIVING SHIT out of their kids but just like a small tap. We're animals and grounding just doesn't cut it. I mean growing up I didn't give a shit about getting grounded haha! I mean I'd still repeat the same thing even if I was grounded but when my dad or mom spanked me for it I knew never to do it again. Same thing with other animals. For example.. When kittens play and such and bite on their mom they get feed back from the mom snapping at them showing that they aren't supposed to do what ever they just did. I think it works on a lower level of mental processing.

Well, I think verbal methods can be just as effective, not that I'm against hitting (not beating) in a fitting situation. Here's a related anecdote. My father grew up in the 50s. He told me when he messed up, if caught by his father, he would receive a lecture by a dissapointed father. If caught by his mother, he would get a smack. If I recall correctly, he dreaded the lectures more, because of the fact that he dissapointed his Dad. The smacks would be done with quick. He was more if a lecturer. However, he would my ear or sideburn, that kind of minor pain. He never beat me or really hurt me.

[QUOTE=Scarabix;35807182]I think sometimes you have no choice but slap the little fucker in the face and tell him to go to bed. But the use of objects, such as shoes or paddles or belts, let alone specifically spanking your kid's bare ass is pretty insane, and will cause more trauma than necessary.[/QUOTE] but sometimes you just gotta get your point accross yeh? stop them from doing again whatever they were doing wrong?

I'll explain the way I was raised. My parents would always go through a few steps. The first was the hint. After that was the menacing talk, because the talking was much scarier than some psycho bitch screaming at me. Only after that came the smack and it would only be one. After that, my parents would always JUSTIFY why they did it. No grounding or getting the shit beat out of me. Just a last resort that made me realise when I took something too far.

I've had spankings before and I learned my lesson. My mom hated spanking me because it would hurt me and my dad would usually get angry more easily than my mom, but he usually hated doing it too. I've come to figure out that with most parents it hurts them more than it hurts you. My parents left each other and me and my sister stayed with my mom. Because of the emotional trauma the divorce had on me my mom and neither my dad when I stayed with him spanked me for a long while. They wouldn't spank me over something the first time I did it, if I did it a lot over a week, then they might have come to that decision. Because by then they have already done everything else, timeouts, groundings and the like. I think the fact that your parents can give your school principal the right to spanking you with a paddle, is downright unacceptable.

Spanking is a bad idea because it can breed resentment and disassociation from the child to the parents. It also induces the mindset in the adult that (whether they notice or not) that they are more likely to resort to physical violence and abuse due to the spanking lowering their natural inhibitors.

I think at this point we've had enough people state their anecdotes of "I was spanked and I'm fine", so from now on please stop posting those. If you have some source material to back up that claim then feel free to post it and make an argument, but these anecdotes are getting us nowhere.

[QUOTE=Mechwarrior;36043391]I believe that spanking is a viable way of punishment for your kids. Not like an abusive parent that will BEAT THE LIVING SHIT out of their kids but just like a small tap. We're animals and grounding just doesn't cut it. I mean growing up I didn't give a shit about getting grounded haha! I mean I'd still repeat the same thing even if I was grounded but when my dad or mom spanked me for it I knew never to do it again. Same thing with other animals. For example.. When kittens play and such and bite on their mom they get feed back from the mom snapping at them showing that they aren't supposed to do what ever they just did. I think it works on a lower level of mental processing.[/QUOTE] In which case the moral rule should be applicable to adults just as much if not more than children because adults have fully formed brains. If you make a mistake, someone ought to hit you. Tourturing prisoners is completely ethical. I mean really, if hitting a child for not grasping concepts due to their inherent undeveloped brain structure is legitimate, then clearly hitting and adult for concepts they do understand should be encouraged even more. [editline]23rd May 2012[/editline] [QUOTE=Megafan;36056146]I think at this point we've had enough people state their anecdotes of "I was spanked and I'm fine", so from now on please stop posting those. If you have some source material to back up that claim then feel free to post it and make an argument, but these anecdotes are getting us nowhere.[/QUOTE] Thank you for pointing this out. As I stated in another post, there is a Stockholm syndrome associated with kids that are spanked, which introduces an irrational bias. There is also a lot of cognitive dissonance going on. Children are taught the concept that someone who hurts others is bad. When the people that the child is completely dependent on hurts them, the child cannot come to the conclusion that their caregivers are bad as there are far too many negative implications for that conclusion. So they have to rationalize that spanking is good and that their caregivers are good for abusing them.

[QUOTE=Pepin;36071813] Thank you for pointing this out. As I stated in another post, there is a Stockholm syndrome associated with kids that are spanked, which introduces an irrational bias. There is also a lot of cognitive dissonance going on. Children are taught the concept that someone who hurts others is bad. When the people that the child is completely dependent on hurts them, the child cannot come to the conclusion that their caregivers are bad as there are far too many negative implications for that conclusion. So they have to rationalize that spanking is good and that their caregivers are good for abusing them.[/QUOTE] I get that it's repetitive hearing the same thing over and over again, but you can't fairly dismiss everybody who was smacked occasionally as a kid and who considers their childhood happy as being repressed victims. My views based upon my childhood are through my own personal experiences and I am not trying to change anybody else's mind.

[QUOTE=xXDictatorXx;36075188]I get that it's repetitive hearing the same thing over and over again, but you can't fairly dismiss everybody who was smacked occasionally as a kid and who considers their childhood happy as being repressed victims. My views based upon my childhood are through my own personal experiences and I am not trying to change anybody else's mind.[/QUOTE] This is bad logic. Anecdotal evidence is inadmissible, no matter how many people corroborate the story. All of the actual, scientific study into the issue has come up with the exact opposite conclusions. Millions of people [I]can[/I] be wrong. In fact, large groups of people are wrong a lot more often than they're right.

[QUOTE=xXDictatorXx;36075188]I get that it's repetitive hearing the same thing over and over again, but you can't fairly dismiss everybody who was smacked occasionally as a kid and who considers their childhood happy as being repressed victims. My views based upon my childhood are through my own personal experiences and I am not trying to change anybody else's mind.[/QUOTE] And that is fine. However in the context of a debate, or really any argument trying to determine whether it's objectively negative or positive, those anecdotes have no place.

[QUOTE=Lankist;36076121]This is bad logic. Anecdotal evidence is inadmissible, no matter how many people corroborate the story. All of the actual, scientific study into the issue has come up with the exact opposite conclusions. Millions of people [I]can[/I] be wrong. In fact, large groups of people are wrong a lot more often than they're right.[/QUOTE] Once again, I am not claiming that smacking is overall good. I am saying that a blanket statement such as "every single child who was ever smacked is a victim of child abuse and is suffering from trauma" (I have seen this before) is ridiculous to me. [QUOTE=Megafan;36081133]And that is fine. However in the context of a debate, or really any argument trying to determine whether it's objectively negative or positive, those anecdotes have no place.[/QUOTE] Indeed, you have a point. I guess I just don't think it can be said whether it's positive or negative as there's so many different factors alongside it and it can differ from person to person.

I was spanked a couple times, but only when I was being a complete asshole. Some kids just need slapped, it has been effective for thousands of years, why stop now? [highlight](User was banned for this post ("This is not debating - read the rules sticky." - Megafan))[/highlight]

[QUOTE=Rad McCool;35805313]No. It's [B]never[/B] justifieable. If you need to actually physically hurt your kid, then you have since long completely failed as a parent. You don't fucking hurt children. How cowardly can you get? It's not needed anyway! In Sweden and a lot of other countries, any form of physical abuse is illegal. Yet we are not undisciplined in any way. What's your excuse?[/QUOTE] I was spanked as a child, up until about 14. All the fucking better for it. You're talking about child abuse cases, not disciplinary action. It taught me what I was doing was wrong and despite what these studies supposedly say, I learned what I did wrong and sure as hell didn't do it again. [highlight](User was banned for this post ("This is not debating - warned literally on the same page not to post anecdotes." - Megafan))[/highlight]

I think spankings are justified in moderation.

Would someone who supports spanking a child also support spanking the mentally ill, retarded, and the senile? Children have undeveloped brains that disallow them from being able to grasp many concepts fully formed and functioning human brains understand. Is there any real difference? Also, shouldn't this moral rule of spanking people for making mistakes be applied even more rigorously to those with cognitive competence? Like if your waiter makes a mistake you should be able to give them a warning, and if they make the mistake again you should be able to spank them.

No, I've been spanked, and sometimes my mom would go overboard and get out a plastic flyswatter. I would end up bruised for a day. It hurt so much, and it never did anything except build up resentment towards my mom. This is usually what happens to kids who are spanked. They might become depressed, or they might actually suffer real, lasting damage, physical and mental. [highlight](User was banned for this post ("Yet another anecdote, again this is not debating." - Megafan))[/highlight]