Should you spank kids?

Lady Jolanda said:

Yeah, because when something is legal, that automatically makes it just and right.

Right, I forgot, we respect the rights of adults to their own bodies, but not that of children.

:unamused:
I'll go cool off somewhere else.

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It's not about rights. And, not hitting an adult in the context we are discussing here has nothing to do with rights also. We are speaking of discipline, and the right of parents to raise their children as they see fit. You should cool off and actually pose a real argument.

Sloe Djinn said:

Spank him.

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@Sloe Djinn your parents would like a word with you....



Your dad didn't look happy...

Lady Jolanda said:

"It's not about rights". Next sentence: "We are speaking of the right of parents to raise their children as they see fit."
That seems like a contradiction. What exactly are you arguing here?

As for my 'real argument':

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0145213417300145#bib0020


https://www.jpeds.com/article/S0022-3476(17)31377-X/pdf

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It wasn't about rights in that context or from that angle, I thought this was obvious. You can't say a child has the right to drink and smoke just because an adult does, parents are still their caretakers and as such can determine what to allow their children to do.

Also, the studies conducted by Gershoff and Andrew Gordon-Taylor are highly flawed, and in other fields, like medicine it would not hold up. It suffers from a few major fallacies.

• The correlational fallacy: Correlations, or associations between two variables, do not prove causation. Correlations are especially misleading when evaluating actions chosen to correct disciplinary or medical problems, called corrective actions.
• The extrapolation fallacy: Even if infrequent spanking is correlated with better outcomes than overly frequent spanking, that does not prove that zero spanking is best.
• The lumping fallacy: Only 4 of their 75 studies were limited to two open-handed swats to the buttocks for child defiance. The other 71 studies lumped together all “spanking” regardless of how it was implemented and why it was used.

Quoted from : https://www.acpeds.org/the-college-...search-on-disciplinary-spanking-is-misleading

I want to get this out of the way...
If BF Skinner was to demonstrate operant conditioning on your child it would look something like this:

*** Positive reinforcement:
When the child shows desired behavior - give him a PlayStation.

*** Negative reinforcement:
When the child does not show desired behavior - wrap the PlayStation wire around the child's neck and pull till the child shows desired behavior and then let go of the wire.

*** Positive punishment:
When the child shows undesired behavior -
Hit the child with the PlayStation.

*** Negative punishment:
When the child shows undesired behavior -
Take the child's PlayStation away, until the child shows desired behavior.

Ideally, positive reinforcement and negative punishment should be used more than the other two.

I saw some misunderstanding about negative reinforcement and positive punishment back in this thread, just wanted to clear that up.

I will given my opinion on spanking later. I'm ambivalent!

Spanking is a great thing if it made you stronger and healthier than what not being spanked would. But since there's no way you can predict for sure which side of the blade -|+ your child will tilt over to, then avoiding it seems safer. Even if that means in many cases, children would actually benefit more from it, than without it.

In Norway it was forbidden sometime in the late 80's I think. My older brothers were spanked, I wasn't. They say that's the reason I'm a millennial and they're not When I saw my brothers being spanked, I didn't see it as my parents hurting them, but causing them the pain that they needed in order to learn. My parents disliked doing it, it showed in their faces. The reason for spanking my brothers, were only when they had put them selves in dangerous situations, to insure they wouldn't do that again.

From the time physical punishment became illegal and up until now - the people with the least mental issues nation wide, are those who grew up before the new law and the parental guidelines that came with it (positive reinforcement was a big hit in those guidelines).

I'm very sceptical about parental guidelines, teaching morals and propper behavior in school, and teachers practicing new and "improved" methods. If everyone are to be given the same treatment, then everyone has to be treated differently. If they're not, we have a serious personality crisis.

Another thing is culture. If one thing is normal in one society, the individual is less likely to be damaged from it.

So, I wouldn't spank my kids (if I had any), because it's not normal here, it wouldn't even cross my mind.

Want I do think is lacking in schools etc, is physical guidence. It's not fair to the children that grown-ups that work around them aren't allowed to help them set boundaries when words don't work. Kids can't regulate their emotions while they're in their developmental age. It's the grown-ups around them that has this job. It's natural and healthy to be touched, grabbed, held, steered in a direction. Kids are begging for boundaries. Taking this away leaves a lot of emotions unregulated, and that's not healthy. Don't know if it like this in other countries, but it is here on the North Pole.

Infjente said:

Spanking is a great thing if it made you stronger and healthier than what not being spanked would. But since there's no way you can predict for sure which side of the blade -|+ your child will tilt over to, then avoiding it seems safer. Even if that means in many cases, children would actually benefit more from it, than without it.

In Norway it was forbidden sometime in the late 80's I think. My older brothers were spanked, I wasn't. They say that's the reason I'm a millennial and they're not When I saw my brothers being spanked, I didn't see it as my parents hurting them, but causing them the pain that they needed in order to learn. My parents disliked doing it, it showed in their faces. The reason for spanking my brothers, were only when they had put them selves in dangerous situations, to insure they wouldn't do that again.

From the time physical punishment became illegal and up until now - the people with the least mental issues nation wide, are those who grew up before the new law and the parental guidelines that came with it (positive reinforcement was a big hit in those guidelines).

I'm very sceptical about parental guidelines, teaching morals and propper behavior in school, and teachers practicing new and "improved" methods. If everyone are to be given the same treatment, then everyone has to be treated differently. If they're not, we have a serious personality crisis.

Another thing is culture. If one thing is normal in one society, the individual is less likely to be damaged from it.

So, I wouldn't spank my kids (if I had any), because it's not normal here, it wouldn't even cross my mind.

Want I do think is lacking in schools etc, is physical guidence. It's not fair to the children that grown-ups that work around them aren't allowed to help them set boundaries when words don't work. Kids can't regulate their emotions while they're in their developmental age. It's the grown-ups around them that has this job. It's natural and healthy to be touched, grabbed, held, steered in a direction. Kids are begging for boundaries. Taking this away leaves a lot of emotions unregulated, and that's not healthy. Don't know if it like this in other countries, but it is here on the North Pole.

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I would suggest that the reason for that is due to mental illness not being taken as seriously then as it is now. I doubt people were any more mentally healthy then, as they are now.
It's just that repression was all the rage back then. Whereas now, people actually try to face their emotional and psychological issues.

Also, as a kid who was spanked, and as a person who has know a lot of adults who were spanked, it has never been a good thing. It has never had a positive outcome.
There are many studies, such as this one, that show corporal punishment just leads to more bad behavior. So it's pretty much a lose/lose.

Tin Man said:

I would suggest that the reason for that is due to mental illness not being taken as seriously then as it is now. I doubt people were any more mentally healthy then, as they are now.
It's just that repression was all the rage back then. Whereas now, people actually try to face their emotional and psychological issues.

Also, as a kid who was spanked, and as a person who has know a lot of adults who were spanked, it has never been a good thing. It has never had a positive outcome.
There are many studies, such as this one, that show corporal punishment just leads to more bad behavior. So it's pretty much a lose/lose.

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The study didn't actually prove much. Corporal punishment at best MAY lead to worse behavior in SOME people, and this is without knowing exactly how the punishment was administered every time.

Tin Man said:

I would suggest that the reason for that is due to mental illness not being taken as seriously then as it is now. I doubt people were any more mentally healthy then, as they are now.
It's just that repression was all the rage back then. Whereas now, people actually try to face their emotional and psychological issues.

Also, as a kid who was spanked, and as a person who has know a lot of adults who were spanked, it has never been a good thing. It has never had a positive outcome.
There are many studies, such as this one, that show corporal punishment just leads to more bad behavior. So it's pretty much a lose/lose.

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So you believe rates of mental disabilities are constant throughout generations? Lunatic

Tin Man said:

I would suggest that the reason for that is due to mental illness not being taken as seriously then as it is now. I doubt people were any more mentally healthy then, as they are now.
It's just that repression was all the rage back then. Whereas now, people actually try to face their emotional and psychological issues.

Also, as a kid who was spanked, and as a person who has know a lot of adults who were spanked, it has never been a good thing. It has never had a positive outcome.
There are many studies, such as this one, that show corporal punishment just leads to more bad behavior. So it's pretty much a lose/lose.

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Studies can be useful when looking at issues like this to get a broader understanding. But you can't really say what is the right/wrong thing to do from looking at one isolated area of scientific findings. If studies showed that bees killed more people than gun's, you'd kill the whole planet is you took them all out.

Things aren't always as they seem. That being said, I don't believe in spanking kids. But I don't think the majority of the children who were spanked throughout history has struggled more in life, compared to the majority of the kids who haven't been spanked. I suspect it's the other way around if you look at the whole. I do think however, that there are more cases of severe psychological damage within the group of spanked children, making it hard to defend.

Increased focus on mental health is overrated. I think it's actually making people worse than they actually are. If you look, you'll find. If I told a 100 people the story of my life, and one said I should see a psychologist, I would probably not even consider it and feel just fine. If 10 said the same, I'd wonder if they were right and start doubting myself. If 50 people said it, I'd probably believe them. If 100/100 said that I should go see someone, I would probably never fully recover.

Infjente said:

Studies can be useful when looking at issues like this to get a broader understanding. But you can't really say what is the right/wrong thing to do from looking at one isolated area of scientific findings. If studies showed that bees killed more people than gun's, you'd kill the whole planet is you took them all out.

Things aren't always as they seem. That being said, I don't believe in spanking kids. But I don't think the majority of the children who were spanked throughout history has struggled more in life, compared to the majority of the kids who haven't been spanked. I suspect it's the other way around if you look at the whole. I do think however, that there are more cases of severe psychological damage within the group of spanked children, making it hard to defend.

Increased focus on mental health is overrated. I think it's actually making people worse than they actually are. If you look, you'll find. If I told a 100 people the story of my life, and one said I should see a psychologist, I would probably not even consider it and feel just fine. If 10 said the same, I'd wonder if they were right and start doubting myself. If 50 people said it, I'd probably believe them. If 100/100 said that I should go see someone, I would probably never fully recover.

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In the studies conducted, for the most part, they were not able to differentiate whether the psychological issues or the aggressiveness of the subject was a prior condition to the abuse or not, and I say abuse because as shown earlier, some parents do abuse their kids and strike out in anger, and that is not what I am defending. You can't compare a drunk or abusive father or mother smacking their child willy-nilly, to a proper disciplining based on preset parameters and expectations. the studies conducted unfortunately lump it all in.

There's no way to fully prove whether spanking is harmful to children. It's too subjective a subject. But there are enough studies out there to suggest that it has a negative impact on their lives.

If someone has to resort to physical force to punish their child, then I question whether they should have become a parent in the first place.

Tin Man said:

There's no way to fully prove whether spanking is harmful to children. It's too subjective a subject. But there are enough studies out there to suggest that it has a negative impact on their lives.

If someone has to resort to physical force to punish their child, then I question whether they should have become a parent in the first place.

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You have to consider the circumstances and what's normal in the different societies. Spanking is probably more common than not, world wide, and that doesn't make most people inadequate parents.

The problem with correlational studies is that the correlation is just an indicator of a whole complex of behaviours which will be partially responsible for the outcome.

It cannot really be isolated as a behaviour.

And to be honest this is why findings in psychology break down after a few decades; this is why psychology is going through a verification crisis right now (experimental outcomes are failing repetition - other teams try to repeat the outcomes using the same experimental methods, but can't).

Psychology has an unrealistically nomothetic expectation of itself - it believes that most behaviours are vested in a mythical 'universal human nature', which just isn't true. Much much more is culturally determined.

Edit: In fact, I posit this. Spanking - even exactly the same parental behaviours will have a different effect if the child lives in Japan, Iran, or the Netherlands. The cultural milueu gives the act meaning, which is what really does the damage or not.

So much is interpreted through the matrix of culture that the individual hunan scale can become practically meaningless as an object of study.

I'll give you an example.

In 1979, a football/soccer team hosted an exhibition match with a gimmick. The gimmick? It was blacks vs whites.

Now at the time, the players felt they were doing something progressive, the black players felt that they could really show what they could do, while the white players felt they were supporting some progressive project. Nobody was psychologically affected.

Could you imagine in that game was repeated now? The same event with exactly the same behaviours, the only thing that would change is the cultural background upon which the experiment is taking place. The outcome on the players' psychological health and feeling about the whole thing would be totally different.

A psychological paper published in 1979 would conclude 'playing football matches with and against teams of different racial origin has no negative effect on feelings of wellbeing'. A psychology team in 2018 would not be able to reproduce this effect.

This is the essence of the verification crisis in psychology in my opinion. The founding axiom of the discipline (universal human nature abstractable from culture) is false.

Tin Man said:

There's no way to fully prove whether spanking is harmful to children. It's too subjective a subject. But there are enough studies out there to suggest that it has a negative impact on their lives.

If someone has to resort to physical force to punish their child, then I question whether they should have become a parent in the first place.

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I agree with you and don't see how the point you make could even be called into question.

I should add I'm probably emotionally non-neutral here though, as I was the victim of a pattern of repeated corporal punishment as a child, leaving psychological scars that take an extremely long time to heal.

I feel nothing but disgust towards those who use force against their children regardless of the circumstances.

You do not use physical force against a highly fragile being who can't defend itself.

Great example @Deleted member 16771 !

@Deleted member 16771 I totally agree with you. Which is why I said the research suggests corporal punishment is bad for children. Sociology, psychology are all very subjective subjects.
In fact, I think there's far too much attachment to older hypothesis. There are still psychologists which classify themselves as Jungian or Freudian. Which is ridiculous. They no doubt brought a lot to the field, and there's still wisdom to be found in their work, but to frame your approach around decades old research is hardly a sound practice.

@Ren I'm in the same position, and I know many who had the similar experiences.
So while I'm far from objective in this area, I don't think any version of me wouldn't find hitting a child whom you chose to bring into existence, disgusting.

Tin Man said:

There's no way to fully prove whether spanking is harmful to children. It's too subjective a subject. But there are enough studies out there to suggest that it has a negative impact on their lives.

If someone has to resort to physical force to punish their child, then I question whether they should have become a parent in the first place.

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That's a giant leap. Not all kids are born with the same temperament, you wouldn't know what it is like to raise any individual child yourself unless you're in the shoes of that parent.

Ren said:

I agree with you and don't see how the point you make could even be called into question.

I should add I'm probably emotionally non-neutral here though, as I was the victim of a pattern of repeated corporal punishment as a child, leaving psychological scars that take an extremely long time to heal.

I feel nothing but disgust towards those who use force against their children regardless of the circumstances.

You do not use physical force against a highly fragile being who can't defend itself.

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I'm sorry your parents abused you. You're projecting your experience and applying it across the board blindly, however. Your disgust is your own subjective reaction because of your circumstances and it is understandable, but that's basically all it is.