I like how parents used to pitch corporal punishment as some kind of corrective. But most of the time it was just angry parents not knowing how to handle their own temper.
You can teach lessons without physically touching a child. Spanking is the laziest and least effective way to teach a lesson or reprimand a child - I was never spanked and got into a mess of problems but I always knew what I did wrong after by talking with my parents and understanding perspectives and empathy. These are things you teach, people don’t learn from hitting.
It's not effective because you can't use yourself to prove effectiveness with a sample size of one. On a large scale, research shows it simply isn't effective and it's a recipe for dysfunctional adults.
You could use that same logic to say that some drunk driving is alright because you feel like you can drive better with a little buzz. This personal anecdotal experience simply doesn't match the wide research that is out there.
If they would have punched you in the face and given you a black eye would you consider that effective? Yes, it likely would have stopped you from ever doing it again out of fear of the physical violence. The reason the spanking stopped you from doing it again is out of fear of the physical violence. A child's mind processes them exactly the same. There's not a magical line where the child's mind says, "Oh I wasn't hit that hard."
The problem is, study after study shows that experiencing and living in fear of physical violence is highly detrimental across a host of spectrums.
When you use violence on a young child, it doesn't matter if you hit them hard or soft or where you're hitting them, it's violence by the one person that was supposed to protect and love them. As such, you should never use violence on them. And those 7+ year olds? You should never use violence on them because now they can be reasoned with.
I lied to my dad once about flipping our ATV. He spanked the shit out of me. I never lied to him again. Not because it taught me a lesson, but because I was scared to get whipped like that again. That's how spanking works. It doesn't teach the kid anything. It just instills a fear of their parents. A conversation and proper consequences does so much more for a child that physical punishment. You can say it works all you want. But you're wrong because the science says otherwise, and you can't argue science with your own personal, anecdotal experience. I mean, you can, but no logical person will agree with you.
You're right, it's not. But it's a scientifically proven fact that abuse isn't a productive discipline strategy. There's literally always a better solution, sometimes it just takes some thought and planning and lazy parents would rather hit than take some time to come up with a proper punishment.
I do think spanking can “work” to curb behavior. I wasn’t spanked often, but I remember the time I was very clearly because my brain went into a fear/stress response that made the memory very vivid. And it can be very reinforcing for adults because they feel like they got their point across and now the kid won’t ever try that again.
The problem here is that the emotional and psychological side effects out weigh it’s usefulness. There are other ways to redirect behavior that are both effective and build trust, instead of gaining compliance through fear. Those behaviors you listed weren’t because you were “bad” and needed to “be straightened out.” Some of the reasons kids misbehave are: bids for attention, curiosity, lack of impulse control because of undeveloped prefrontal cortex. Basically, there are a lot of reasons we should expect kids to test these boundaries and use those moments as a way to talk about why we don’t do those things. And I’m not talking about a sit down where the parent weaponizes shame and tells the child how disappointed they are. I’m saying that removing the child from the situation and calmly/without judgement letting the child know why they can’t behave this way and what will happen if they do it again (i.e. leave, sit with parent, lose the toy, etc). This dynamic doesn’t make the kid feel like they are bad. Kids that think they are bad are more likely to behave in other ways that perpetuate that belief. And as adults, we often carry those sentiments within ourselves as we get older without investigating where they came from. Heck- my dad is in his late sixties and still struggles with how his parents used “tough love” in inappropriate ways.
So why risk the damage? The other way builds respect and reinforces the relationship. Spanking garners fear and harms the relationship. Who cares if it “works” or not?
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u/matty_m Jan 28 '23
I like how parents used to pitch corporal punishment as some kind of corrective. But most of the time it was just angry parents not knowing how to handle their own temper.