Freebase Dali

For the record, my dad was far more qualified than my mom to be the one spanking us. My mom was abused. Dad never let her spank us.

I guess he didn't fit that stereotype you're talking about. He was smart enough not to Neanderthal his way into a parental option. Just because a guy may have larger muscles than a woman, it doesn't mean he's subject to them instead of his brain.

And we didn't get spanked past 10 years old. 11 through 18 was grounding territory. Funnily enough, we never had to get grounded because we were well behaved by that point. Weird huh?

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VEGANGELICA

FD, I'm sorry to hear about your mom. Yes, it is true that men can be very gentle regardless of strength (and, conversely, women can be physically abusive).

Why did your dad switch from physical punishment to groundings (that never needed to occur) when you and siblings were 11? Do you really feel it was the spankings that taught you (why) to behave?

An aside: I got grounded once when I was 10. I had stolen $10 from my mom and went with my best friend to buy Charlie's Angels dolls and blueberry slushies at Target. My mom told me I had me stay in my room all that afternoon and evening. She sprinkled flour on the landing to see if I tried to escape while she was out. She forgot I was an excellent standing long-jumper as a child (of which I am proud to this day). The story of my escape goes on, but the important point is that I didn't steal anything after that, and when I learned how much time it takes to make money I didn't want to take my mom's. For me what was important in learning kind social behavior as a child was developing more empathy and sympathy.

Learning more about your family reminds me of something I read on that website I mentioned (The Center for Effective Discipline), which I quote below:

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Freebase Dali

^ I meant to say that he stopped using spankings as punishment by that age. By that time kids are developing different priorities. He just felt that an 11 year old should no longer be spanked, due to the developing priorities and maturities of a pre-teen. At that point, spanking is rather irrelevant, considering.

And yes, I do believe that spankings reinforced the concept of consequence, in our case. We were taught right from wrong, believe me. We even had a life of religion to back it up. But kids will be kids, and when we got mischievous and willingly dissented, we got punished. If those punishments didn't work, the end of the line was a spanking.
Knowing that was a pretty good deterrent. It's not like we wanted to be horrible kids or anything, but we respected the laws of the house because we knew the consequence of breaking them.

As for the CFED quote, that highlighted part and the following sentence is clearly biased.
If you can never know that you could have turned out better without spankings, then what about the inverse? Is that known? No, Neither is.
Trying to predict whether your parental skills are going to produce the highest quality version of what you wished your child could achieve is less of trying to raise a child and more of trying to feel adequate as a parent. It's selfish.
A parent should do the best they can and do what works. The statistical spanking vs. punishing argument is completely irrelevant. The force behind how a kid turns out lies solely on the parent's shoulders and their ability to know what's best for their children, and applying that knowledge with love and wisdom.
The more you start relying on society to tell you how to raise your child, the less you're going to be satisfied with how your child turns out.

My parents raised us the best they knew how, and they did it with love. Every one of my siblings and myself included can tell you they did a great job.
The only thing statistics can prove is that there are a lot of inadequate parents out there and I'm glad I didn't get stuck with any of them.

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VEGANGELICA

FD, I agree that when firm, loving parents use spanking (in addition to the majority of their parenting practices that were non-physical), then, like you say, it is *possible* that children might turn out "better" (however the children define that when they grow up) than they would have if they hadn't ever been spanked. Also, like you say, this can never be known for a given child since each child only has her/his one life path.

However, when I read the statistics that point to a correlation between spanking and future behavioral or emotional issues when children grow up, then this does make me concerned that spanking increases the risks of children developing these issues. I would err on the side of caution, especially since I have never seen any evidence that spanking makes children happier or more well-adjusted than people who were never spanked.

You wrote that "the statistical spanking vs. punishing argument is completely irrelevant." I see the value of statistics on spanking because statistical results can serve as a rough predictor of what may result if you spank your own child. I do agree with you that people should not blindly follow what society says, and people should think through things carefully. I feel that gaining insight from scientific studies of large numbers of humans is not blindness but instead a good way to benefit from many other people's experiences beyond one's own.

I agree with you that parents' decisions should focus on what is best for the child and who that child will become rather than on what is best or easiest for the parents. Raising children with love, like your parents did with you and your siblings, is what is most important.

What, outside of personal experience, *would* dissuade you from spanking your own children?

(Personal note: just to make sure you know, I realize that families that don't use spanking aren't automatically healthier or happier than those that use spanking. For example, although my dad spanked me just that one time, my parents were very busy with work responsibilities and so sometimes we had little quality time together. I would have liked more time to just relax and do more things with them when I was a child, and we try to make up for that now that they are older and retired.)

--Erica

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sleepy jack

A moot point. You're never going to have kids.

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Hesher

Yeah dude. You need to actually speak to a woman for that to happen.

Freebase Dali

Vegangelica...

I really wish you'd start raising your own children instead of letting someone else's statistics do it for you.

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Guybrush

Statistica are important. For me, this discussion was never about you and how you were raised and turned out well. Imagine if the discussion was this; if you could have society with no weapons, you could think there would be less violence. If that was the discussion, you'd then have numbnuts writing stuff like "I've fired a gun and I never killed anyone!". It has such little relevance to what you're talking about but once you get started discussing discipline, these sort of arguments get pushed around all the time.

At the start of the thread, the discussion was about discipline in a more general sense and also about wether or not physical disciplin should be outlawed or not. In order to make that law, if you ignore for a moment arguments like "the government shouldn't poke their nose in how I raise my kids", you may instead look at how physical discipline affects society. Reading through this thread you will find a wealth of scientific articles and other sources providing evidence that corporal punishment on kids comes with a trend of negative consequences.

If the stuff I've read in articles and studies so far is correct, physical discipline's general influence on society is more violence, more problems for children and more crime. The idea that you can have physical punishment and still turn out alright is a completely moot point. The idea that physical punishment gives a trend where people turn out better has also been argued to death, but like Evangelica, I've seen no evidence for this claim and people who push it only ever talk of their own personal experience .. which are, again, besides the point.

We reached this point in the discussion many pages back and so I stopped discussing then (no good counter-points were made) and now I'm just wondering if people missed it altogether and started over from scratch.

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Something Completely Different

Freebase Dali

All I'm saying is that I believe correct parental choices are more of a positive influence on children, not statistics that are nowhere near infallible.

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Neapolitan

Mark Twain said "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics!"

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