Discipline

[Alcon]

I am curious to see how this breaks down, especially by region.

[Alcon]

None. I don't like gaining respect through fear and intimidation.

That's pretty much my view, too.  I prefer timeouts.  It's more like the discipline they will find/be able to utilise in the real world anyway.

[Alcon]

I think controlled hitting can be called for under certain circumstances.  Timeouts are a pretty weak punishment, and most kids know it.  Under more extreme circumstances, something more dramatic can be called for.

There's a big difference between controlled hitting and beating.

I also think limited and controlled hitting is far from the worst thing a parent can do to a child.  Emotional abuse and neglect are far more damaging.

Maybe it's being an ADHD kid, but timeouts were infinitely worse to me than spanking could have ever been.  Besides, goofing off is part of being a kid.  If they are put in time out, they learn that their behaviours have negative consequences.  If they are spanked, they learn to relate those behaviours to being humiliated and physically hurt.

[Alcon]

It's interesting than 72% of the U.S. supports spanking, but only 44% of the Forum.  Yet only 31% of the U.S. supports washing children's mouths out with soap, but 44% of the Forum does.

Obviously, some soap fetishists here.

[Alcon]

I'm bumping this thread because I never realized I forgot to reply, and I always meant to.  Always a fun discussion to rehash.

I think controlled hitting can be called for under certain circumstances.  Timeouts are a pretty weak punishment, and most kids know it.  Under more extreme circumstances, something more dramatic can be called for.

There's a big difference between controlled hitting and beating.

I also think limited and controlled hitting is far from the worst thing a parent can do to a child.  Emotional abuse and neglect are far more damaging.

Maybe it's being an ADHD kid, but timeouts were infinitely worse to me than spanking could have ever been.  Besides, goofing off is part of being a kid.  If they are put in time out, they learn that their behaviours have negative consequences.  If they are spanked, they learn to relate those behaviours to being humiliated and physically hurt.

Personally I find being humiliated and physically hurt to be negative consequences.

It is.  But it teaches consequence of getting caught.  Actually, it teaches consequence of appearing guilty.

My central objection is that spanking has been proven to cause issues later on.  I don't want this to come across as "spanking has horrible consequences for every kid."  It doesn't.  But the questions as I see them are:

I. Is it generally effective as a short-term deterrent?

II. Is it generally effective in teaching the correct lesson?

III. Is it ethical?

IV. Are its long-term effects acceptable, considering the ethical implications (III)?

I don't always agree with the APA (which tends to shy away from taking culturally unpopular or "immoderate" positions), but I agree with their interpretations of the studies, which I've read.  The gist is:  There are more effective methods long-term, similarly-effective methods short-term, and corporal punishment may have negative results.  I disagree with their wishy-washy conclusion, but again, appeal-to-moderation is kind of what they do.

As to (I), I think it is effective in the short-term.  I think there are other short-term deterrents, but spanking may be the most effective.  So, it has that going for it.

As for (II), I don't think it is the right lesson.  Again, it teaches kids to avoid getting caught.  It teaches them that physical domination is OK when you're "right" about something.  APA-sponsored studies have shown links to domestic violence in grown-ups.  There are valid arguments that those studies are somewhat tainted, because parents who spank are more likely (on average) to escalate to physical abuse.

However, I think that the central lesson is just fundamentally unsound.  "I am bigger than you, and I can physically enforce my will on you because I am right, and you are my responsibility" is not a practical lesson.  Would you want an elder caretaker to do that to you?  Our society has a weird double-standard on this issue.  I think we contort ourselves to logically defend something that we'd otherwise reject.

As for ethics (III), I have major qualms.  It's a violent act, whatever it is.  You have a high onus to prove the necessity of a violent act on someone weaker.  Studies tend to show middling spanking effectiveness, with other punishments comparably effective.  No matter inherent flaws in the studies, I don't feel comfortable dismissing them totally when a related link exists.  The difficulty in establishing a link between "light" spanking and violence, because of the difficulty of separating degrees of the practice, doesn't mean we should assume the "light" version is guilt-free.  And even if that's probable, how possible does damage need to be before alternatives aren't much more attractive?

I think (IV) is essentially the test of whether the practice is valid to me, and the answer is no.

[Alcon]

I'm interested in hearing how a pro-spanking person rebuts my points and the APA statement (which I think, explicitly or otherwise, is intended to discourage the practice)

[Alcon]

Man, that would have been a lot more fun if we disagreed at all

Thanks for taking the time to reply.  Didn't mean to single you out there, by the way, it's just what I ended up absent-mindedly quoting for a bump excuse.

[Alcon]

One and three, because I've experienced them.

*Sigh*  I so don't want to have to pick a fight here...

But you have published studies on this matter.  There are the things I raised, which I think are valid on a "macro" scale.  There are so many unanswered questions that deserve more than "if it ain't [apparently] broke [even if maybe it is on the whole], don't fix it."

You can take a single anecdotal example.  "It was done to me, I'm a good person and I'm happy, the people who did it to me aren't evil, it's OK."  That's really easy logic to pass on.  I think you see the problems with it, though.  Think of how many excitedly abhorrent applications that has.

My dad was abused and he is a PhD.  I don't think that makes abuse OK, or productive.  Neither, God willing, do you.

And I know abuse and spanking aren't the same thing, but you could apply the same justification to anything.  Seriously, anything!  Except maybe decapitation.  This exchange:

A: "Why is x  not unethical, considering [concerns]?"
B: "Because ____"
A: "But with ____, you could defend these bad things..."
B: "But those are clearly bad, this is just x."

...is not something I think anyone here genuinely believes in.  I think it's mostly rationalized.

Sorry, but I had to pick a fight eventually or I'd just keep getting ignored

[Alcon]

I'm interested in hearing how a pro-spanking person rebuts my points and the APA statement (which I think, explicitly or otherwise, is intended to discourage the practice)

If you want to link to some studies, I might be willing to skim through them. Generally speaking, though, I don't take that kind of literature very seriously. Isolating x variable in human beings is easier said than done--and in this case, even defining the variable is bound to be a nightmare.

I agree with your caveat, and included that with the argument in my original post.  For reference, here is the APA release on the meta-analysis of 88 studies:

http://www.apa.org/releases/spanking.html

The Gershoff study and its citations are readily available; if you are interested in them specifically, I can probably dig a (semi-legal maybe!) copy up for you.  There are also extensive peer reviews available that express the same concerns we raised.  They don't negate the studies nearly as much as I even did.

Just for clarity, again: I'm not advocating taking those purely at face value -- it is hard to stratify corporal punishment.  But, the situation pretty much presents itself as follows to me:

1. There is evidence indicative of the potential relationship between corporal punishment and psychological issues.

2. While the difficulty in separating extreme from lesser corporal punishment may introduce error into these findings, we still have an association between physical punishment for an act and inappropriate consequences.

3. There's little documented proof that spanking is any more effective, in long-term, as a teaching method than any other form of punishment.

4. Spanking may very well teach the wrong thing, as it is a "special case" moral exception that our culture has created.  (As I raised in my post)

5. I think, and I doubt many people will disagree, that you shouldn't violate someone's physical being an inflict pain unless you really have to.

I realize that this isn't black-and-white morally.  But even if you don't feel it's an abuse of parental privilege, I think that these points constitute a pretty strong indictment against the practice.  Other than tradition, immediacy and social acceptability, I don't see what it has going for it.

[Alcon]

When did I say my argument was logical?

You're a good guy, Xahar, but you confuse me

Wonderful.  You've found a correlation.  Now prove that spanking->these problems you cited.  I'd be far more likely to believe that spankers produce problem children than spanking produces problem children.

Don't get me wrong- I think spanking is wrong, and would never support it for the other reasons you mentioned (perhaps not 4).  But I don't like seeing evidence misused.

Hey, as I said, I don't think it's quantifiable either way.  It's just that hard to stratify the degrees of corporal punishment.  I agree that spankers probably produce more problem children than spanking does.  But I'm against dismissing the correlative evidence just because a caveat can be found.  It's a caveat I think has a strong effect.  I don't think its existence alone eliminates the possibility of a lesser correlation, and that possibility further compounds an otherwise morally murky matter.

I don't feel that I was misusing evidence.  I made my qualms with the study clear.  My objections are made from a combination of all of those items.  That is, it would matter less that a possible correlation exists if no valid alternatives were available, but they are; it would matter less if I saw this as harmonious in any applied system of ethics.  (I'd be interested to know your disagreement with #4, btw.)

I'll admit that I didn't dwell on the caveats for my entire post.  Sorry if you feel that I didn't give them due airing.  I wasn't meaning to gloss over them.  But they were considered in both the statements and conclusion.

[Alcon]

Warning - Updated link below, probably should read the next post before responding to this one

And what, specifically, is that page supposed to demonstrate? It contains scarcely a word about method.

Well, an APA endorsement does give some legitimacy, at least in that the APA doesn't warm up to "advocacy studies."  There's a lot of those, and without extensive Google work on the citations and researchers, they can be hard to identify.

I linked to it because the page gives a full reference to the article.  I was assuming you have access to an academic database through college (or whatever.)  If you do, what is it?  It'd be a lot easier (and less incriminating) to give you a link that way.

Citation: Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 128 #4, 2002.

The first of these simply evades the issue. We are trying to pin down the reliability of that very evidence. And as for any "association between physical punishment for an act and inappropriate consequences," I have no idea what that's meant to establish. Eating and obesity are similarly "associated."

I know we're trying to pin down the reliability, but sometimes "may be indicative" is the best you can get.  I'm not trying to avoid the issue.  I'm giving recognition to the fact that "the issue" may be only limitedly quantifiable.

The eating metaphor is not a good one, for two reasons.  First off, eating has a necessary positive consequence, and has established efficacy.  It's also easy to stratify eating, unlike corporal punishment.  You are asking for a piece of evidence I've conceded is not especially possible to extract.  My argument is not limited to that one facet.  If I knew of any way to accurately separate the degrees of corporal punishment, I'd be reproducing those experimental results up-front.  I mean, why not?

Maybe. But I don't know that "documented proof" is the appropriate standard; nor am I convinced that only the "long-term" matters.

Short-term does matter, yes.  But if short-term is potentially harmful long-term, teaches an inaccurate lesson (I don't see much dispute of that), is an ethical anomaly entirely enforced by cultural precepts, and involves what I think most people would rather avoid (physical harm to a child)...

...it seems like some concession should be given to moral restraint.  That, really, is my argument.  I don't think it's a convoluted one.

[Alcon]

Hey, just as I posted that, look what I found.  Sorry for the weasel-y source, but the original documentation seems intact to me.

I was actually undervaluing my source material.  Gershoff did attempt stratification, as hard as that is in a meta-analysis.  She found statistically significant associations at all levels.  I'm going to make a totally non-scientific concession here:  I think self-reporting issues may come into play, and some children who were abused may just report "spanked."

But I'm having difficulty finding support of any positive besides immediate compliance, which also reaches statistical significance.  No real surprise there.  But beyond that, I don't know if it's really possible for a very-not-universal, hard-to-quantify effect to show up in a meta-analysis with higher clarity.

It re-enforces the validity of the concern.  That's not to say it's possible to concretely establish "spanking definitely makes many kids more violent."  But how close does it need to get, and how many other valid caveats need to present themselves, before it's worth erring on the side of restraint?

[Alcon]

Respectfully, I don't understand why you're arguing for potential caveats that I've already conceded are included in the rest of my argument.  I also think that it answers to your closing question.  I'm not interpreting the study any differently than you are.

It could also be pure coincidence, although a meta-analysis of such wide range reaching statistical significance out of pure coincidence (as opposed to incidental relationships) seems...unlikely.

[Alcon]

Right. But the "caveats" make the findings meaningless.

Well, meaningless, no -- They represent a causal effect associated with the actions involved in corporal punishment.  Something that correlates at higher levels on a continuum is more likely to correlate on lower levels, too, to whatever degree, than something with no higher-level correlation whatsoever.

I agree there is no real way to stratify very reliably, but attempts at stratifications have found a causal relationship -- even one polluted by the incidentals you mentioned.  This contributes to my conclusion that there should be an extra element of caution here relative to a case in which this was not true.  Why?  Because I have a reasonable hypothesis (I believe) on why it may correlate on lower levels, there's no indication that it doesn't, and unless there's some kind of quota at which it begins to correlate (feasible but only feasible), it logically would correlate down the continuum.

Basically, I don't think that difficulties with contamination that cause near-impossibly to definitively test means we should ignore a concept altogether when those contaminations are quite possibly (likely?) and inappropriate underestimation of the positioning on subjects on the severity-of-corporal-punishment continuum.  I think it's wrong to take a nihilistic view toward causality in any situation with polluting variables, and then pretend the problem doesn't exist.  That very ambiguity of causality is a problem in itself.

That's not an unreasonable conclusion, and is something (even if that something is just a sub-component of my argument.)

Statistical significance doesn't get to the issue of causation.

I didn't say it did.  You said that the statistical significance could be coincidental.  I suppose it depends what you meant by coincidence; if you meant coincidence of correlation, fair point (but I think we were addressing that already.)  If you meant "statistical noise" coincidence, no, that's virtually impossible.

[Alcon]

I apologize.  I should have said they represent a correlation, not a causal effect.  In fact, that was kind of the point of my post, so that was a really stupid error to have made.  Sorry.

I've conceded that a causal effect cannot be determined, nor can a correlary one at lower stratas, from this "top-level" data.  "If" does not assume away the issue.  "If" assumes the potential existence of the issue.  Potentiality of harm is worth considering, too.  This is especially true when an actual correlation can't be proven, but the most stringent attempt to demonstrates a correlation.

I think you know that, I just wanted to reiterate my argument in a way that wasn't six trillion paragraphs long.

[Alcon]

Of those listed, I only approve of spanking and then only to a moderate level.  The reason is, spanking alone doesn't do any lasting physical damage.  The marks are usually gone within an hour or two at the very most.  Washing a kids mouth out with soap, to me, is just inviting the germs that have accumulated on that soap to seep into the kids body and potentially cause more harm than its worth.  Other physical or verbal abuse should not be permitted.  Remember, these are kids, and they are still sensitive.  Their bodies cannot take too severe of a punishment (including severe spanking), and their fragile minds cannot take severe verbal abuse lest they turn and verbally or physically abuse their children.

Well, I won't get off on a tangent about the function of soap, but anyway...

I don't think anyone here is arguing there is permanent physical damage, just that the risk of permanent emotional damage/lack of efficacy/moral qualms outweigh the immediate effectiveness of spanking.

That's my argument, at least.

The Bible says "spare not the rod" in the book of Proverbs, but that does not mean severly spank the child where the marks and the pain last more than, say, a half hour to an hour.

I've been told there are alternative interpretations of that; in fact, "rod" is used figuratively for "authority" throughout the Bible.  Some others posit that it references to work.  Similarly, Proverbs 22:15 references a "rod of correction," in the sense of a the rod that is correction, not a rod that corrects.

A shepherd also uses a rod to prod (not spank or beat) sheep, which would seem to fit into the theme.  It could even reference work ethnic (although I doubt it.)

The method of punishment I prefer that I will use on my kids (when I have them) more often will be grounding.  That is a physically painless, yet still very effective punishment on most kids.  I would take away their TV, their computer, their cell phone, and make it to where the funnest thing they can do is sleep.

Always has seemed just as effective to me, and without the other issues involved.