Quote:
Originally posted by ARTelevision
sapiens,
you have just proven (inadvertently, I'm guessing) that - at most - corporal punishment is not predictive of anything in particular and therefore, not deleterious.
To follow up on your statement:
I would say that the response given by the successful individual would, on average, be more reliable. Successful individuals rarely blame their upbringing for their problems - coincidentally, they don't have as many, do they?
Unsuccessful people, on average, seem to blame everything - including the facts (or delusions) of their upbringing - for their problems - of which they typically have quite a lot.
Rather than tie up the discussion with a neat equation, you have in fact, clouded it with issues that are quite disparate.
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From what I said, you can choose to take the thread to the issue of whether or not unsuccessful people make internal versus external attributions about their failure. However, the fact that some people turn out fine when they are beaten and some people do not is not the same thing and does not cloud the issue of whether or not corporal punishment is an effective means of behavioral modification. A discussion of attributions we make about control over success and failure is a separate issue which I didn't bring up. (
ARTelevision: I do think that it is an interesting issue that could merit some discussion).
I certainly don't think that anyone will tie up the discussion of corporal punishment with "a neat equation." It's a complicated issue. It wouldn't be an interesting discussion topic if it could be tied up with a "neat equation."
I think that there are individual differences between people in the effectiveness of corporal punishment in modifying behavior. I have worked with kids that appear to be reinforced by corporal punishment. They provoke people until they get it and they love the people who give it to them. For those kinds of kids, corporal punishment is not going to decrease the bad behavior. It may instead increase it. I have also worked with kids who decrease the bad behavior immediately when punished physically. In their case, it seems like punishment works. The danger of punishment for many of these kids is a danger of punishment in general. Punishment often reinforces a fear of the punisher. This can teach the child to avoid performing the behavior in front of the punisher, to avoid getting caught, but it does not provide the child with an appropriate behavioral alternative. (This type of effect seems to be the most prevalent in the empirical literature).
An important and related issue is that "corporal punishment" encompasses a lot of different parenting strategies (as
BoCo suggested). Even "spanking" may encompass a lot of different behaviors. Beating a child severely with a belt or beating them until they bruise are qualitatively different from a few spanks on the bottom. So, people who say that they benefitted from corporal punishment may be speaking about an experience entirely different from a child who was beaten with a belt, or cut with a knife, or burned with a cigarette, etc (I've seen worse). Because corporal punishment is such a general term, I wouldn't expect it to be predictive of anything. If we were more specific about types corporal punishment, we might find some statistically significant predictors.
A common argument for corporal punishment is "I was beaten and I turned out fine. So, corporal punishment must be ok." The argument on the other side is, of course, "I was beaten and I'm now really messed up." Making a causal claim about corporal punishment being responsible for you turning out fine is just as flawed as making a causal claim about corporal punishment ruining your life. The individuals may be talking about qualitatively different experiences. Plus, there are many factors which influence the development of children into well adjusted adults. Can someone really know that corporal punishment was the one factor, the holy grail of parenting, responsible for their good (or bad) adjustment as adults?
A separate issue that bothers be a lot when I see it in the developmental literature is whether or not beating kids causes kids to grow up and beat their own kids (the cycle of violence argument). (Here, I am talking about something different from mild, corrective corporal punishment). Could it be possible that parents beat their kids not because of the their social history (because they were beaten), but instead because of something innate in them? Maybe in some cases the genes that code for the behavioral tendency to use corporal punishment are the same genes that code for pain in the ass kids who need a little corporal punishment every once in a while (and who respond positively to that punishment).
Generally, I think that positive reinforcement is more effective than punishment in modifying the behavior of a child. Hopefully, you can plan ahead and reinforce the positive behavior so that you will never have to punish the negative behavior. Unfortunately, we don't live in a perfect world and all of us aren't perfect parents. There are always times when a child does something so costly, so dangerous to themselves, that an immediate response with punishment may be the most effective. In these cases, I think that it is important for parents to "debrief" their children. Explain to them what they did wrong, why it was wrong, what they should have done, how they can perform the appropriate behavior in the future, and that the parent loves the child. Parenting is hard. It requires a lot of thought and a lot of foresight.
Corporal punishment is not a "neat" concept. Parenting is not a "neat" issue. I certainly did not provide a "neat" equation to explain all of the issues. I don't think that anyone can.
ARTelevision: Thank you for the thought provoking comments. More generally, I appreciate the thought-provoking discussion from everyone.