I tend to agree with shakran that if you can discipline without spanking you should.
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Originally Posted by astrahl
You have a warped view on abuse. I was spanked by my parents and it was HARDLY abuse...not even close. And that fact that you would "report" something like that is totally insulting.
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You are misrepresenting what shakran said. Your quoted "report" suggests that shakran specifically said that he would report someone for spanking their child. I haven't found such a post in this thread. He did make a distinction below which I agree with:
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Originally Posted by shakran
... And no, guys, I'm not talking spankings here. There's a big difference between spanking (I still don't like it) and throwing the kid into a fridge hard enough to dent it. That's child abuse, plain and simple, and if you think you have to abuse a kid in order to get the kid to behave right, then you desperately need therapy.
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There is a difference between spanking and throwing a kid into a fridge or beating a kid with a broom handle.
After college I worked in a mental hospital for children. It was a locked unit. Most of the kids were violent. Nearly all of them had been severely abused (more than a spanking). A lot of the staff (not the higher-ups) seemed to feel that all the kids needed was a good beating and they would be fine. The logic was:
"I was beaten as a child and I turned out fine. The same should work for these mentally ill kids."
Of course, many of the kids had been severely beaten, even tortured by their family members. They weren't on their way toward turning out fine. I imagine that if we correlated beatings with productive citizenship, we would find a negative correlation. (People who are beaten more or beaten at all may be less likely to be productive citizens).
More generally, I don't think that spanking versus not spanking makes much of a difference in a child's life. Spanking is a relatively small intervention, unlike the torture of the kids I worked with or beating your child with a broom handle. I think that as long as you are a "good-enough parent" (you provide a safe environment with food and shelter, you're kind, etc.), kids are going to turn out how they will turn out, regardless of how you treat them. (I'm arguing that there are good parents and bad parents, but great parenting makes no difference).