It depends on who is doing the spanking, too, doesn't it?

My mother once shoved a whole bar of soap in my mouth for cursing at her. Also broke a "paddle board" over my butt while giving it to me good, and I still remember laughing out loud when it broke. I have no ill-feelings about any of this at all.

But once, my stepfather threw me up against the front door (I can't remember why), and I wanted him dead. I felt like he had no right, and had overstepped his place.

This statement has no bearing on what I said. You seem to have missed the implication of the claim.

Where? I may have missed the discussion. But it really seems to me at this point you're trying to pigeonhole the language of pain and harm.

I acknowledge the distinction, but I don't see it as being particularly relevant. Unless you're saying that you're suffering harm if you stomach growls a little bit.


This is a weird reading of the definition. But I would agree that abuse is not a purely objective standard, and so I don't know why that's an issue.

Define "violence."

You seem oddly stuck on this "mechanism of action" phrase. The context in which I understand that phrase doesn't apply here (biochemistry). This comparison is similarly strange. You're okay with stabbing needles into babies because that pain is somehow incidental to the desired outcome of providing medicine, but physical pain is also somehow not incidental to the desired outcome of behavioral change? I get that you're trying to say that "pain is the thing that causes the other thing" but then I go back to hunger. The pain of hunger leads to eating. You relieve the pain by eating. Pain is not some bizarre mechanism of action.

I've read what you wrote in #205, and I don't think it's as cogent as you think it is, nor do I think it makes the point that I think you're trying to make.

There are also experts in nutrition who were very sure that they're right, but are being proven wrong with more rigorous understandings. And for something as complex and with as many moving parts as raising children, it's far from clear that consensus of experts in the face of very "hard science" to conduct gives sufficient reason to draw a hard line one way or the other.

The most appropriate conclusion that I think can be drawn is that if spanking is in your usual repertoire of disciplining actions, you're probably doing it too often. I don't think there's really good evidence in the studies to say that you should never ever ever use physical forms of discipline.

This is the only part of your post that I'm going to address because I think you still might have a misunderstanding here. I think the rest of it with all the definitional stuff is just grasping at straws at this point.

I use the term "mechanism of action" because that's what they call "the thing that causes the other thing" in biochemistry. The medicine does have a mechanism of action; It is not pain. The pain in and of itself does not cause the positive change. In other words, pain is not "the thing that causes the other thing".

However, when it comes to spanking, "pain is the thing that causes the other thing". I used the term "mechanism of action" again interlaced with the medicine example in an attempt to clarify the dichotomy between spanking and immunization.

You've lost sight of what spanking really is. It is violence. When we attach special labels to things this happens sometimes. You're trying to rationalize something that is incompatible with your values by scrambling to fit definitions to your needs. But they won't fit. So you're stuck in this loop of cognitive dissonance.

When we arrive here we find many things are the way they are not necessarily because they are naturalistic, but because that is the way people before us have made it. It's easy to forget that.
Pain is naturalistic- an unfortnuate intrinsic side effect of life at times, while discipline is a human construct. We live with pain because we must. We do not have to live with pain because of human intention.



This is the last I will say on this matter. All of these posts are pretty time consuming. Hopefully this talk prevents some from intentionally inflicting pain on their children.

I'm plain wrong?

What does this supposed research (about spanking) say about outliers and about children who don't belong within 1 standard deviation of the mean?

I'd imagine it would, rightfully, caution against widespread generalisation...

I don't know of any research that has found spanking to be a positive, quite the contrary pretty much all research indicates it has negative impact on development.

A quick google scholar search should will show that: https://scholar.google.no/scholar?hl...spanking&btnG=

Now it's not like they've done a bunch of double blind studies and spanked an experimental group while sparing a control group and reared both to adulthood. Because ethics. So the causation claims is definitely a result of analysis and conjecture.

But then again, the people who would attack the research results on those grounds probably aren't lining up to claim that epidemiology is a hoax and that Ebola is good for a country, and that discipline uses pretty much the same techniques.

Suffice to say, the lack of evidence supporting positive results of spanking children is fairly staggering.

The studies (at least in my cursory review of them) are not very effective in discerning situational application of different disciplinary methods. And that's where I think the problem with the research lies.

If you treat spanking as a binary yes/no, I would agree that the evidence points towards no. But if you think of a more graded scale of application, where spanking falls into something like a "rarely" category, then I think the conversation is much more nuanced and informative. Here's an article that touches on this a bit:

https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi...66&context=lcp

Incidentally, "room isolation" is considered by some to be abusive because it's seen as something like "locking the kid in the closet" or whatever.

My point here is that blanket prohibition based on the available evidence is an unsound conclusion. It's becoming more and more socially normative to be anti-spanking, which has an impact on that perspective (see research on cultural impact on spanking outcomes). But I would still maintain that there are times that you may need to be able to be able to assert that higher level of authority, and that there's a lot more context than just the binary question of spanking.

I'll note that we're also living in a world where some parents have CPS called on them because they let their child explore their own neighborhood (white affluent neighborhoods that are extremely safe). So there are other issues with parenting these days. But that's a whole separate conversation.

Not all pain is harm (notice your language switch) and temporary pain is not the greatest of enemies of children's development.

Bah, youtube videos. What does it say?

Sure, but this is not the bar you have to reach in order to ban something, that there is a better alternative. Also, I don't assume that parents who spank their children aren't doing so out of compassion.

Here is the legal definition of "child abuse or neglect:"

I don't believe that spanking is equivalent to serious physical or emotional harm.

It might be helpful to calibrate the conversation here. A lot of Christians (my own parents included) use(d) spanking due to the advice of Focus on the Family (an evangelical Christian organization). Here is the model of spanking they recommend:

To me, while this is probably not best practices for parenting, I would not consider a parent following this advice to be acting maliciously towards or abusing their children. Nor would I consider this a sign of a lack of compassion. I would be surprised if following this advice caused a parent to do serious emotional harm to their child.

Also, slavery is obviously well above the threshold of harm where it should be banned even if it is a traditional or common social practice.

Well, my country is a good example then, because physically hurting your child is counted as abuse and is illegal. I personally don't see any issues with that, because pretty much the best case you can make from the research is that in some cases the person might not be negatively affected.

The premise of the article seems off and not very versed in legal thinking. You could apply the same line of thinking to assault. Obviously making assault a crime is there because of the net positive effect to society and to overall protect citizens. That you could conjure evidence or thought experiments of a case where assault was good or made no difference is irrelevant to that.

I would also question the "establishes authority" argument. Authority is the right to hold power, and inflicting physical pain to establish the right to hold power is probably something most people would question in most other contexts.

First off appealing to the authority of the law is not a sufficient argument when the law is unjust. The nazis would point to the nuremburg laws. Let me be clear, I AM NOT EQUATING ANTI SEMITISM TO SPANKING. I'm just using this as a clear example of appealing to authority of law even though the law is garbage.

I said I wasnt going to discuss this any further. But WOW.

I was not aware of the legal definition. Based on the evidence, I think you could make a compelling case for prosecution against someone who spanks a child.

Although I doubt that would happen, because like you said it's tradition, and a lot of lay people are still ok with it even though the experts and evidence recommend agaisnt it. It has a lot of inertia. Kinda like global warming used to.

Eventually this will be corrected. Along with a lot of other things regarding the justice system. I've wanted to write about this specifically for some of Masque's posts in SMP. I will say that I do not think spankers should be punished in the traditional sense of the word.


It's sad to see a religion based on teachings of Christ, who advocated for love, compassion and passivism, hijacked and used as authority to convince people to carry out acts of violence.

I'm very sorry you had to go through that. Perhaps you've supressed the horror you experienced the first time you received a spanking. Do you remember crying? Trying to avoid it? Do you remember what you were thinking at the time?

What an awful way to learn this is how humans can treat others. Unlike the pain experienced from touching a hot stove..... To have that pain inflicted upon you by the people who are supposed to care for you the most. And for reasons other than protecting you from imminent death. Truly terrible.

A lot of people suppress these types of memories and the feelings they evoke. They're wedged deep down in there and you don't even realize that they are manifesting as problematic behavior still to this day.

It's hard to accept you've been a victim of abuse because you love your parents and you don't want to admit they were abusive. Or you have trouble admitting that you were once weak and defensless. Maybe you've even spanked your own children and it's easier to deny the abuse than to experience the guilt.

You can still love your parents even though they abused you. You can find forgiveness if you have abused others. They didn't know any better. At the time they thought they were doing the right thing. Same for you.

Yes, but it does help establish what we are talking about.

Sure, I remember crying, more from shame and being upset that my parents were displeased with me, or guilt that I did something wrong than from the actual pain of being spanked. I see no good reason to think that I suppressed any horror from these experiences - assuming that I have seems more likely a result of you projecting your own values or attitudes onto me. In fact, when I got too old to be spanked and was punished instead by being grounded, I remember sometimes feeling that I preferred spanking because even though it was painful and humiliating, at least it was over quickly.

You're ascribing feelings and attitudes to me I don't have. This is a mawkish form of sympathy, where you claim to feel sorry for me for things I don't myself feel badly about.

Who knows, but introspectively I'll say that I am not a violent or aggressive person.

I am curious, do you hold your view with enough certainty that you would say that I must be wrong about suffering serious emotional or physical harm from being spanked as a child, even though my own evaluation of my experience is that I did not?

It's true, I do love my parents. Based on their behavior towards me and my siblings, I also have no doubt that they loved and cared for us. While I think it is possible to love someone and still abuse them, I was not seriously harmed either physically or emotionally from being spanked as a child and so do not think that I was abused. I understand that you have a different definition of "abuse" but that shouldn't affect the facts about what happened.

I also don't really have a problem admitting that I was weak and defenseless (and I don't have any children of my own). I mean, my parents had many crazy ideas, some of which were quite harmful towards me and my siblings. Like all parents, they made mistakes that still impacts our lives today. I just don't believe that spanking was one - or at least not a particularly serious one. When weighing up their raising of us, on balance I feel lucky to have had the parents I did, and I would not have wanted the government to have constrained how they parented us more than it already did.

Part of why I'm pushing back here is because child abuse is illegal, and parents who abuse their children should have them taken away. But there are many things that when generalized might have some amount of harm associated with them, but which doesn't warrant the state taking people's children away. For instance, apparently parental drinking is associated with adverse outcomes for children. But I would oppose banning parents from drinking alcohol on that basis alone. I would want to know the distribution of harm was, and how severe it was, and whether the negative effects associated with entering the foster care system would be worth this intervention. To me, the same considerations should apply to banning spanking.

OrP, I'm genuinely sorry these things have happened to you. I empathize with you. I don't mean to come off as mawkish.

Yes I hold my view with certainty that physically inflicting pain on children for the means of control is likley to cause serious emotional damage. Although I can understand that it might not have serious long lasting damage with you in particular.

I can't speak for certain about your current mental state.

Would you say you hold your view of certain draconian forms of punishment with enough certainty that you would say those who've endured those are wrong about not having experienced suffering serious emontial damage?

In a literal sense, no you do not.

Do you hold this view only towards physical pain, or would you say the same about other forms of negative reinforcements as a means of control - time out, taking away privileges, etc.?

I'm not sure I'm parsing your question here correctly, but yes, I tend to default to people's own self-understanding as provisionally correct unless I know them well and can make an independent judgement or their claims have a very low probability of being true. So if someone said they don't have serious emotional damage from a draconian form of punishment I would default to believing them unless I thought the level of punishment was so severe that it was very unlikely not to have damaged them (eg being locked in isolation for months or years).

I don't know what your country is a good example of. I'm not claiming that somehow the societal order implodes or something if spanking is declared illegal. I just find it unjustified by the evidence.

I find that equating "physical hurt" with "abuse" to problematic as a definition, and "illegal" has more to do with something else.

I don't think that's an accurate reading of the statements. In particular, there are explicit clauses for self-defense that would be considered "assault" if not for the mitigating circumstances. So I'm not sure what point is being made here.

I provided a link to the article so you can read the whole thing yourself. I'm not sure why you think other contexts are remotely similar to parenting in this way, but if you wanted to make such an argument you're welcome to it.

I don't hold the same view about spanking as I do other negative forms of reinforcement. That is to say I am not certain that they're likely to cause severe emotional damage when used in the typical fashion. I haven't really looked into that. I think it does for some children. What proceeds is just imo.

I have a problem with the general idea of punishments. I don't think they're an effective means of parenting. That might seem like a crazy idea to parents who are so used to a reward/punishment system. It really doesnt have to be that way for any child. It seems to me a lot of parents feel like they are more a part of the end result than they really are. Personally, I would never punish my children.

I think punishing children does more harm than good. It creates an owner/property dynamic, diminishes trust, and often has a backfire effect. From my experience it seems the children without that stringent form of parenting have a more enjoyable experience and turn out more responsible. They learn better how to self regulate.

If parents insist on parenting with punishments I think it should only be up to the point where the child has a working understanding of the world. That point will vary based on a number of things. I'd guess it's typically adolescence. At that point I think its fair for the parent to say "my way or the highway".

At that point, In any event besides the child physically hurting someone else or property (think non-agression principle then you should use minimum force necessary to stop it), the end result of refusal to abide by rules should not result in physical force.

How "likely" do you think it is that "typical" spanking will cause "severe emotional damage"?

I think this statement demonstrates that your position is much more ideologically driven than it is data driven. I'm not aware of any research on the topic that makes that strong of a claim.

I read the article and it has issues of its own, but it was your point I responded to. "Establishing authority" can't really be understood as anything but "establishing the right to hold power". I question that hitting someone is a good way to establish such a right. It would (perhaps somewhat ironically) be illegal in almost any other context.

When it comes to equating physical hurt / spanking to abuse, the vast majority of research is on my side:
a) Compared to non-physical approaches it is less effective at increasing compliance or encouraging specific behaviors, especially in the long-term.
b) It has a high chance of increasing negative behaviors in children, like aggression or anti-social tendencies.
c) The research show little to no evidence for positive effects later in life and high probabilities of negative ones.

The best case you can make for spanking via research evidence is that the evidence isn't sufficient to justify limiting your right to expression or your right to religion. That your rights in that area should not be limited when we can't conclusively show that all children will suffer negative health consequences later in life. This is one of many "rights of the parent" vs "rights of the child" debate.

What the vast majority of research will not show is that spanking is somehow beneficial. And yes, this can be uncomfortable. It usually is when evidence and research contradicts cultural traditions.

Fundamentally we agree.

Infringements on freedom need the clear a very high bar. This one doesn't.

An argument rested mostly in tradition, not evidence. "It has to be right, because it's what we do and we wouldn't do anything bad".

A child also has legal rights and a right to health. You probably would not accept the legality of a person slapping you as means of persuading you to offer up your seat on a bus, and you can actually make a very solid case that this is far less likely to damage your well-being than that of a child being physically punished.

You have all the right in the world to argue that it is your right to hurt children, but the evidence simply does not support the position that it is a good or harmless thing to do.

You're going to have to be very explicit on what you mean here, as "establishing authority" isn't any part of any argument I've made, nor do I understand that concept as being part of anything that I've quoted.

Even if I accept all these claims as being absolutely true, I don't see how it makes sense to claim that the research shows that physical hurt/spanking is equal to abuse.

Also, please explicitly quantify "high chance" and "high probabilities" in your statements.

I think you're greatly overstating the evidence and see very little relevance with regards to religion (which I've not actually brought up anywhere in my presentations).

The use of "all" here is a weird overstatement.

I didn't say that the research is uncomfortable. I don't mind the research, and think it's useful and informative. I would generally agree that hitting children is wrong.

However, I don't believe that it is always wrong regardless of context or circumstance. I don't think that the evidence supports that claim in any sense.

Fundamentally, it appears you have an strong ideological belief about children/rights/etc and you're using weak evidence to support your strong belief. The claims of the research is not as strong as your belief requires.

Please quantify and make the "solid case" for the bolded, including specifying what you mean by "physically punished."

Furthermore, "right to health" does not mean "right to never feel pain." If someone slaps me in the face, I don't see that as an assault on my "right to health." It's far from clear to me what right you're actually trying to establish here.

You're pretty much answering your own question here. Right to health must be understood as the right to not suffer negative health effects, as research concludes physical punishment of children can often lead to, or injury.

But hey, for that matter it is generally illegal to just go around inflicting pain on people, and for good reason. It's not a very conducive way of social interaction.

The rest of the argument should be trivial. VeeDDzz focuses only on the right of the parent, I pointed out that the child also has legal rights. I can claim all I want that making it illegal for me to slap you is illegally infringing on my right to expression, but it's a not a very convincing argument.

No, the evidence is not weak. The evidence is actually surprisingly strong, esp considering the participation in the survey studies and observational studies is voluntary from the parent side. If you started including medical case studies on adults I'm pretty sure the painted picture would become very grim fast.

I don't really care about your beliefs or mine. I entered this debate because people were making strong claims about what the research said. The research pretty much says "physical punishment as a child is a solid predictor for negative outcomes later in life with few to no proven net benefits". Doesn't mean it will always lead to bad outcomes. You can feed your kid bad food his entire childhood, if he doesn't eat too much and gets a healthier lifestyle in adulthood... he can still get lucky and lead a healthy life over-all.

I'm not here because I'm all soft-hearted for the fates of kids I'll never meet, I'm here because of the commentary on the research aspect of the discussion. Like in all contentious issue with an element of interpretation, the literature will be divided. However, seen as a whole the research body is pretty one-sided.

Feel free to hold whatever belief you want about physical punishment of children, it won't cost me any sleep. But if you think the evidence is "weak" that it has high potential for negative benefits, then you are very misguided.

Does another animal/plant have the same rights?
Should other animals and plants have the same rights?
Also...
How old is the child you're referring to? Roughly? All child ages?

You seem to just have a pretty arbitrary concept of "right to health." I see zero correlation to your definition (that one "must" have) with anything else out there in the world. Freedom from any pain at all is not a right in any meaningful understanding of the term. You are welcome to point to evidence that this idea is used somewhere in the way you're suggesting.

I will point out once again that you have failed to quantify your claims in any way.