French MPs vote to ban physical abuse of children. - Sensationalist Headlines

I believe the answer has little to do with morality, and more to do with a "monopoly of violence". I don't think it has anything to do with authority either. Unlike with those other examples, small children don't really have any personal power. Here is an example: If you slap a 6 year old who refuses to clean their room and is being stuborn, the kid can't really do anything to you. Now take that example kid about 10 years later. Suppose he is much bigger; maybe he plays quarterback. Once again, he refuses to clean his room and is being stubborn. If you slap him, he may beat you up in return.

If you "turned out fine" that's great for you, but you're a sample size of one Actual research generally shows physical punishment to be a negative. To show I'm not unreasonable, here is an article that addresses a lot of the problems this research has had over the years. Even then: Gershoff says that in spite of the lingering controversy, the safest approach parents can take is not to spank their kids. “Studies continue to find that spanking predicts negative behavior changes—there are no studies showing that kids improve,”

Everyone here who keep downplaying spanking as "not physical abuse" are completely missing the point. There's no minimum metric in Joules/m^2 applied to the body that distinguishes between "abuse" and "not abuse". The abuse stems from psychological, rather than physical, consequences. I accidentally broke my arm as a kid, twice. It hurt a lot in the moment, yet I wasn't traumatized for it. It makes for a nice conversation piece and I sometimes joke about it. If my parents had broken my bones in the same way, though? I'd most likely be scarred for life and sure as hell wouldn't speak of the event so lightly. The abuse, and its psychological consequences, comes from the child being helpless and having their bodily safety violated and threatened by the very persons who are supposed to protect them. It's a break of trust, no matter how mildly painful it is, and so I'm not surprised to see studies indicate it promotes negative behaviour down the line.

How is shouting in the same list with slapping or twisting? I remember getting hit a few times, but the spanking thing is something alien to me and I don't understand how any adult could do the spanking thing with a serious face. Spanking is just ridiculous and embarrassing for the both parties involved. Now generally, every time physical abuse happens, a physical assault happens, and that's a crime. And it should be a crime, but where families tend to protect criminals because well, they're family. It's some sort of a legal grey area in the sense that it happens quite a lot to different extend, but I believe one could defend using physical force in raising a child. It's not something very easily written out and defined in some legislature though. It might get weird. At the end of the day though, a decent person can be forged using various methods, which may or may not involve using literal physical force of a certain amount of energy in a certain time and place.

There's a pretty clear different between breaking bones and a slap on the butt. When I got spanked as a kid I never thought "my mom has betrayed me." All I could think about was the thing I did wrong and either regret or anger that I got caught. That was because the spanking had a reason behind it, not just an out of the blue whacking. I knew I had screwed up and I was getting punished for it. Sometimes if all of us got in trouble I opted to go first just to get it over with. I sure as hell didn't enjoy it, but it has never gotten in between me and my relationship with my mother. IMO, physical punishment should be used as a last resort, when you've already talked with the child, and they're unrepentant and keep doing it. If you do it right after they bad deed, and they're ignorant to the fact it's wrong, they, feel like they're getting punished for no reason,. Or in some cases they feel like they're being punished for something they can't really help.

wait since when were the protests/riots in france a right wing thing?

The survivorship bias is strong in this thread

My parents only did this to me, their first-born, when I was very young -- and only cause their own parents had done it, and it had worked out okay. However, the moment they realized it was going to have zero effect on a child as difficult as me, they thankfully dropped that shit like a rock instead of doubling down like actual bad parents do. And, once I got the official high-functioning autism diagnosis at age 8, they knew they had made the right decision.

You obviously had your head kicked in far too hard.

Absolutely every single study on spanking/striking children has shown that it is, all other issues aside, not effective at discipline. There's no reason to defend it, it doesn't even work.

Oh man, i wish i was in your place. My dad loved smacking the shit out of me.

Studies have consistently shown over the last few decades that even so much as spanking your kids has a very real and detrimental effect on their mental health and growth in maturity. Some studies have even shown consistent differences in IQ between children who have been spanked and those that haven't. The difference may be small, but its real, and some take it more severely than others. Don't abuse your kids. Sometimes they do stupid shit that is unacceptable, but by hitting them you're just being a lazy parent, at their cost.

The problem with these studies is they A.) Usually focus only on instances of severe or regular physical punishment, not occasional spankings and B.) don't factor in the socioeconomic status of the parents, which could easily factor in to the low IQ you mentioned as parents of lower economic standing tend to spank their kids more, most likely as a result of lacking the money to use removal of material rewards and punishments (eg taking away a kids xbox/toys to punish them) which are much more prevalent in high economic status families.

My dad tried to spank me once, so right when his hand was coming down I farted really loud It caught him off guard and he just started laughing at how absurd the situation was. My parents never tried it again

Do we have any studies that show beating kids is a good thing.

One could argue that life and growing up is partly painful, and while generally we try to avoid and minimize any pain in our lives, it's important to learn that there's still going to be pain. Keep that in mind when you quickly slap your young child on the hand when he's reaching for hot potatoes not ready to be served yet or sth., as you explain the risk of burning a finger. I'm not saying that ever happened to me, and I'm not saying that beating kids is what we should do, but I'm still not sure if it's a good idea to ban the use of any amount of physical force in any context or situation, not to mention how to even enforce or define criminal use in written law. It's a physical world and we're not untouchable. We're basically being touched, groped and pinched throughout our entire lives, with grandmothers being so happy to see their grandchildren they almost snap their cheek skin off. However, regardless of the amount and type of physical affection a child gets, the most important thing is that they feel safe.

We used to get smacked as kids. Normally a quick swipe to the legs or something. Not very often, and not for any old transgression. I doubt my parents would do it if they had kids these days, but I think if your parents were a certain age it was fairly normal. And I don't hold any ill-will against them for it, we've mostly turned out as well rounded individuals.

Your last line there kinda contradicts your whole point. Being intentionally hurt by a PARENT is going to revoke that feeling of being safe COMPLETELY

Not necessarily was my point.

If you have to get physical to get your point across, you failed as a parent, as an authority figure and as a human being.

My parents spanked me once at a red light. Dad noticed I was all giddy, told me not to think of crossing before green light. Numerous times. I didnt comply and basically went under a car. By pure miracle he grabbed me by my head and pulled out at the last second, then spanked me. Since then when he is very serious I always listened to him. I was about 3-4.

If anyone's willing to write down, in words, in a reproducible manner, what constitutes as "spanking" that is not physical abuse, be my guest. Oh, and no usage of subjective words such as "light" and "heavy" and "soft", because what you consider a "light tap", an abuser might interpret that as a slap that knocks out just one tooth instead of three. You'll see that you start writing things such as "no drawn blood", "no bruises", "no permanent scars". And you'll probably decide "maybe I shouldn't write that at all". Laws about this should not be open to interpretation.

Oh no fuck that. It makes my blood boil when my GF recalls her dad spanking her with a wooden coathanger when she was like 6. That shit is domestic violence

my parents smacked me as a child and here i am, posting on fucking facepunch. dont smack your children.

Just because you were badly abused doesn't mean that spanking is not abuse. It's obviously not on the same magnitude but striking of any kind is still abuse.

Who the fuck uses a fucking coathanger. That shit is monstrous. Fucking hell.

Didn't say it's not. Read my post again. But there's clearly lots of different factors and, as you said yourself, magnitude.

Each child needs to be approached differently and I'm sure some kids are a lot more responsive to very light physical punishment like a slap on the wrist than others, but I don't exactly trust the average stressed out and confused parent to figure that out so banning it for the sake of avoiding as many fuckups as possible is for the best.

I just got few moths ago pulled from my hair and i would consider it fair punishment for what i did but if it leaves bruises or more severe damage its wrong in my opinion

It just made me scared and alone. I still find it really hard to love my parents and keep in touch.