Spanking (as discipline, not BDSM)

Only on TFP would I need that clarifications...but I digress.

I originally wrote this as an exercise to to clarify and organize some thought I've had whirling around my head for a while now. Unlike other times, I've actually finished this and it seems to be mostly coherent, so I appended a bit to the end added a poll and provided it here for discussion. I feel that there is enough here for people to respond to without going through the tedium of formulating specific questions for people to answer, hopefully the mods will agree.

Being the parent of a young child, I find myself awash in literature telling me what to do, or more colorfully that no matter what I do, it's wrong (though I thought that was the kids' job). I personally prefer the 'trust your gut' type of manual to child rearing. People have been raising happy an successful kids a long time before anyone even knew or cared what a child psychologist is - not that I'm an ardent defender of 'traditional' wisdom, which can be and is often quite wrong.

Which brings me to spanking. I don't think it will be controversial to say that throughout the history of the (at least the western) world spanking has been widely applied as an effective parenting technique. In recent years their has been some blow-back against spanking as harmful, which may well be true. I've seen it written/said that modern psychology clearly demonstrates this to be so.

I'm honestly on the fence about this, I'm not opposed to spanking in principle. Myself and most of my friends were spanked regularly for our transgressions as children and seem to have no suffered any lasting harm from it. Not that it means there wasn't and I freely admit I would not accept that kind of testimonial evidence from another person and so I am trying to be skeptical of my own experience in the same way.

I'm also aware of the emotional aversion to violence which may be affecting perceptions about the nature of spanking. This kind of baggage is new to humanity and to be perfectly honest I've never been particularly impressed with it. Violence is a tool and like any other tool it can be used for good or ill. Nevertheless, I think the trending toward pacifism is probably a good thing, particularly since violence is a tool particularly prone to misuse and abuse in the hands of ordinary human beings.

At this point it occurs to me that, for a person who has claimed not to be a 'defender of traditional wisdom,' I've set myself up to be exactly that. It just seems to me that we shouldn't be throwing out thousands of years of parenting experience without a good reason and I have yet to see the good reasons themselves, merely the claim that they exist. Of course, if someone can provide those I would appreciate it.

Something I have seen, because I went looking for relevant literature this morning, is this paper: Do nonphysical punishments reduce antisocial behavior more than spanking? a comparison using the strongest previous causal evidence against spanking

I'd like to highlight some parts of the conclusion from this paper:

Barring problems with one of their key assumptions (that the paper they're addressing actually is the strongest causal evidence) it seems like they're justifiably saying that spanking has not yet been proved to be more harmful as discipline than any other types that are used as supplements to or replacements of spanking. And while their may be good reasons to not spank the harm caused by spanking itself is not one of them. In light of that, it seems that calls to ban spanking are not necessarily justified.

For the time being (at least for the sake of this discussion and to conclude) I find myself in the position of believing that spanking is as effective and no more harmful than other forms of child discipline and because we have to discipline our kids should be a viable option for parents. Though, admittedly, I'm still not sold on it either.

 

I don't think spanking harms children. My father whacked my backside with a paddle plenty of times when I was a child and it never harmed me.

He always made it perfectly clear that said punishment was the consequence of something I did that was inappropriate, disrespectful, unsafe, etc.

Going with popular old school extremes, it's different than slapping the kid in the face or locking them in a spartan room and denying them a meal.

Not going to get into the parenting debate, though. People often tell me you can't treat children like Privates in the military. Show me the results.

Anyway, I think the hard part about deciding how to parent these days is that society has changed a whole lot and children really haven't.

 

I agree with Snowy that Time Out's can be as much for the parent as for the child. Sometimes you need that cool down time as much as the child. Whether or not Time Outs work to develop discipline in a child is up for debate IMO. My admittedly limited experience is that it depends very much on the personality of the child.

As far as spanking goes, I think it can be utilized (sparingly) as an effective parenting tool, but there is such a stigma against it these days that its less and less likely to be used. I've always thought I would use it when I had children, but then I had a little girl...

I agree with this statement wholeheartedly.

 

Well, help me refine it then. I think the "rules" for parents have changed a lot in the US in the last 50 years.

 

I never spanked my daughter when she was little but found I behaved differently with my son. Maybe it was the stress of the situation I'd come to find myself in. An out of work, verbally abusive alcoholic husband, 2 little ones trying my nerves in different ways, I don't know, but I often found myself chasing my toddler son down the hallway with a plastic spoon in my hand. Catching up to him would result in a swift and terrible swat with the spoon across his diapered butt. Admittedly, I left a nice welt on his back upper thigh, on occasion. Accidentally, of course. I would always be left highly ashamed of myself.

However, I never spanked or used violence as a conscious or intentional method of discipline. I don't believe violence teaches children anything other than the fact that violence can be used as method to get your way. In the overall, I spent most of my time protecting them from the real battle going on in the household.

I usually found that if my children were acting up, the remedy was engagement. My engagement. We'd all sit down and color or take a drive to the park. Children often misbehave to get their parents' attention. If they get adequate positive attention, maybe they are less likely to seek it in negative ways.

 

Though the words are often used interchangeably, the semantic clarification you've provided is a useful and appreciated one, thank you. [Perhaps the mods could make the swap in the title for me (discipline -> punishment), though that kind of mucks up the non-BDSM clarification] It's probably also useful to point out that I'm not talking about spanking as an exclusion to other more circumstantially appropriate forms of punishment but as an additional point on the scale of consequences. I'm looking for the most charitable understanding you can provide because, let's be honest, nobody should support the less charitable understandings. While people may employ spanking lazily, to make up for their own disciplinary inconsistencies with severity for example, that isn't really what I'm trying to address. I could describe these game boy wielding, cell phone chatting time-outs as 'wimpy' parenting, but that wouldn't really be fair what you were talking about by time outs, don't you think? Similarly this all, of course, depends on the child in question. My own son is generally so well behaved it's almost disconcerting (if he were old enough to be 'up to something' you'd be certain he was) so this doesn't really come up*.

I could say the same thing about grounding, or time outs or withholding of privileges. How do you keep the child from equating isolation or deprivation with love? It applies equally to any negative consequence you'd care to impose on your children. The key (I think) is in the explanation. Punishment without clarity and communication is at best useless (and very likely worse).
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*For the sake of full disclosure: One time, for reasons not entirely clear to me, when I took a toy he was abusing from him he bit me hard. I, in a very reactionary way, swatted him away and caught him on the back of the leg. I honestly don't think I've ever felt more terrible about anything I've ever done to a person.

 

I agree with spanking but I also agree that its situational. And its also dependent upon the child. When I was growing I deserved many of the spankings I was given. Why? Because I was a stubborn little firecracker with a mouth that puts sailors to shame AND timeouts were useless. My younger sister rarely, if ever, got spanked because conversations with mom and TO's worked for her. Thats why my mom was awesome. She did what worked for her and her kids.

Now my father? What a dick. He was a beater. He beat for anything. Dishes werent done? Beating. Lint ball on the carpet when he came home from work? Beating. Even divorce and nearly being court marshaled for beating me didnt help him. My dad followed the child rearing playbook instilled in him by my grandfather - you beat and you beat and eventually your children will turn into wonderful adults. It wasnt until he found God and a third wife that he became a better father.

Do you see the difference? I shouldnt have to ask which type of punishment worked for my sister and I. Do what works for you and your child Hektore. Child psychologists, friends and family, and parenting books only have generalized suggestions. And to be honest I stopped listening to all of it. When the time comes to discipline my little girl I will do what works for us. If she turns out to be as stubborn as I was she may need a spanking (or two). Good luck.

 

I agree with explaining why said discipline is taking place. TO's, spankings, groundings, or anything for that matter without open communication rarely works the way you want it to. My mom always explained why we were being disciplined. My dad never did. Thats why I never questions my mothers love. For a long time I thought my father hated me.
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If removing something desirable doesnt work then what? What happens when EVERYTHING is taken away from a child and it still doesnt work. What happens when being grounded for a whole summer still doesnt work. Call the psychologist? Its time for a spanking. An explanation should also accompany why.

 

You seem to be assuming that physical punishment is somehow inherently worse than the non-physical (can we call the psychological?) punishments. I simply disagree. My justification for this is entirely first person subjective, as I think this is ultimately where the root of the disagreement is going to lie. My parents did more trauma to me by taking my books than they ever did with a belt or paddle. If I were ever faced with the proposition of lashes or caning vs. even minimal jail time, I would take the corporal punishment 100 times out of 100.

As for teaching kids about using violence, I suppose this is related to your views on pacifism and violence in general. I think that there are legitimate uses for violence. Self-defense is perhaps the least controversial example, though I would also lump in the defense of others with this, making it slightly more controversial. We live in a violent world and as a responsible parent you have to talk to your kids about violence and that conversation should also include your own views. You also have to equip them with the ability to go out and educate themselves and responsibly develop their own viewpoint.

As for a complete how-to? I have no idea. The first lesson of parenting is that you won't have all the answers, but it's still your problem to solve.

 

Reread my post. Its clear I meant that if nothing has been working and you havent tried spanking then try it. I never once said to use violence as a primary tool.

 

Taking something from someone who doesn't want you to take it is hurting them. Shunning[isolating] someone (even temporarily) is hurting them. That it hurts them is exactly the reason why you do it. Anger, however, is the wrong reason for it. The goal for all punishments is to be corrective, not retributive (arising from anger). Sometimes hurting others is okay, it's a question of why you do it, a question of circumstance. Perhaps that's part of the disagreement, I don't think that physical violence in this context (and certain others) necessarily arises from anger, while you seem to indicate that it does.

Sometimes violence is used merely as a corrective. I do not see why the explanation of how and why to use violence is any more difficult than the explanation of how and why of the other ways of inflicting harm, unless you assume that physical violence is somehow inherently worse than emotional violence. Not to say that any of those conversations with our children are going to be easy to have, they aren't. Nevertheless, they are conversations we must have.

 

As the father of two boys (now young men who I could not be more proud of) I have to admit that technically I have spanked them. However, it was more of a swat on the butt to grab their attention/accentuate the discipline. It was a rare occurrence but it did happen. I cannot recall ever spanking either more than once at a time, never on a bare bottom and never with anything other than the palm of my hand. A quick smack on the ass and their focus was all mine. So I voted for Approve. However, I disapprove of a parent wailing on a child, smacking a bare ass or using anything other than their hand (hairbrush, belt, yardstick, etc.)