Posted on 09/03/2016 8:24:21 PM PDT by Arthur McGowan
New studies have failed to find even a single positive benefit to spanking children and a near endless amount of horrible effects. Dr. Elizabeth Gershoff joins Stefan Molyneux to discuss her latest study, refuting the common pro-spanking arguments, why social justice warriors have nothing to do with less aggressive parenting, associating love with physical abuse and ending the escalating cycle of violence in relationships.
Dr. Elizabeth Gershoff is a developmental psychologist, in addition to being a Faculty Research Associate and Associate Professor of Human Development and Family Sciences at University of Texas at Austin. She recently published a revolutionary new study called “Spanking and Child Outcomes: Old Controversies and New Meta-Analyses.”
(Excerpt) Read more at youtu.be ...
Well fine. But riddle me this: A large, and vast majority of citizens, have been spanked growing up. Is there a large and vast majority who are horrible violent people?
Then, ask yourself since less people are now spanking their children, and is the world becoming more violent? Being afraid to discipline your children is only a symptom of this sick world, true.
That is called a reversal of proof logical fallacy. You are basing it on an "appeal to authority" fallacy, to boot.
The very premise of your proffering this video is sorely need of rejection.
“Since neither person in the video is a liberal, who are you talking about?”
And you “know” this how?
Somewhat like the "research" on Global Warming?
The problem with research on spanking is that it is a political subject, with conservatives believing in the value of discipline. If spanking is more likely to make a kid grow up with conservative values, then the "social science" community will go all out to try to stop it, regardless of any other factor, and will say ANYTHING they think will help stamp it out.
I don’t even spank the women who want me to.
Sorry that you’re so perfect that you can critique my responses.
I'm rubber, you are glue, everything you say bounces off of me and sticks to you.
Oh, this is about spanking children?
I’ve known several women who benefited by
a good spanking, of course you have to make it
up to them afterwards.
Man, you are too cruel!
When you are dealing with people who are out of touch with reality then it is a waste of your time to listen to them.
And their error is that they have apparently not been around groups of children. You can quickly pick out the ones who were raised with the possibility of being spanked and the ones who's parents don't.
One is mostly happy and secure, they know where the boundary's are and while they may walk right up to the line they don't cross it. The other one is a whiny screaming mess who runs around making the other children miserable.
I was spanked often and can’t recall any reason why. I was no angel, but still can’t remember my crime. We either got the belt from dad or wooden spoon across the backside. There was one time I was spanked for something my brother did and when dad found out I was innocent of the offense, he said...well then this spanking is for next time you do something wrong.
I never spanked my children as a result of my upbringing.
The fact that you cannot remember why you got spanked does not mean it did not work. The object of spanking is behavior modification. Just because you didn’t like it and that’s the point of it does not mean it does not work. Spanking in moderation works very well and has for generations.
The article is just a bunch of psycho babble.
We’ve seen the terrible results of lazy “parents” letting their children run around without any discipline.
Terrible results. Out of control “adults”.
But that’s OK, says a friend of mine, a cop that just shot an 18 year old kid who thought throwing a temper tantrum with a gun was acceptable behavior.
As he said: “Go ahead and not discipline your children...we’ll just have to shoot them later when they throw their temper tantrums with adult level violence.”
Not spanking isn’t “compassion”. It is lazy, worthless, parents without the guts to be adults themselves.
The so-called “greatest generation” came back from WWII only to fail to discipline their kids and now we have four generations of spoiled brats, the dumbing down of America, and non-existent standards. By 1963, the colleges went from having dress codes to flip-flops; college degrees from an education to participation trophies.
So, go ahead and make your childish excuses for not parenting. Just remember, there will be a day very soon that you are too old to care for yourself and those spoiled brats you raised won’t give a sh*t about how or if you live because it is all about them and not you.
Even Dr. Ben Spock, who wrote the book on not spanking and being a lazy parent, recanted his writings:
“We have reared a generation of brats. Parents aren’t firm enough with their children for fear of losing their love or incurring their resentment. This is a cruel deprivation that we professionals have imposed on mothers and fathers. Of course, we did it with the best of intentions. We didn’t realize until it was too late how our know-it-all attitude was undermining the self assurance of parents.”
I’m not disagreeing with you. I just wish I hadn’t required as much behavior modification as I received. Clearly, I wasn’t catching on. LOL
It was my decision not to spank my own kids, based on my upbringing. We worked out their behavior issues in other ways.
I believe that is doable, dependent on the child's personality and number of them that require correction at any given time.
Unfortunately, I have seen the wreckage of sanctimonious parents that refused corporal punishment only to adopt emotional arm-twisting to gain compliance. Now THAT is a recipe for emotional pathology!
Children's disciplinary needs are, no pun intended, a moving target. It was only as an actual parent I learned what was meant by "the terrible twos." At that age children want to influence their environment, but lack the cognition to process what that influence is accomplishing. THAT is a perfect time for spanking. They may not know what they are accomplishing, but they sure find out what results with minimal cognitive processing.
“The notion that beating people repeatedly is okay, provided they are too small to defend themselves, is clearly an anti-civilizational idea.”
The application of painful sanctions in response to bad behavior (especially the willful sort) is a wonderfully economical technique. Probably the only functional one too. Every organism (humans included) works harder to avoid negative consequences than it will to reap rewards. At the end of the day, it matters a whole lot less whether the recipient feels validated, happy, or brim-full of self-esteem; it matters only that they modify their behavior.
“Positive motivation,” therefore, is not merely an anti-civilizational idea, its assertions are contrary to everything found in the natural world.
(I credit the late Robert A. Heinlein for these ideas, which he stated {in better prose} in his novel _Starship Troopers_. I’d furnish a verbatim quote but I am presently unable to locate any of the half-dozen copies we have).
But we waste our time attempting to argue with the likes of Arthur McGowan. It’s a mild surprise he hasn’t been citing stray notions from religious dogma, inexpertly interpreted, in support of this variety of loopy postmodern therapeutic diktats. Caring uber alles.
And no, I did not watch the vid. Don’t need to, to bet the odds on its content. Psychology, sociology, and the other disciplines we could group under the topic heading of “social science” hasn’t contained any actual science since the 1960s. And there wasn’t much there before.
Personally if I had kids I would hold the spanking out as a last resort which is what my parents did. We all knew the rules three verbal warnings and then a spanking. Its not like we couldn’t count to three. :-)
The notion that it is is okay to construe Biblical physical discipline of children as beating them senseless, or that judicious, measured physical discipline of children is not okay if warranted, is a liberal, anti-Christ, anti-Biblical and anti-civilizational idea. The same hands that hug sometimes also may need to spank, with some children it being more often needful than others. "Time outs" can teach a child how to simply do time, and here or in Hell, a soul will learn there are literally painful consequences for disobeying God's law and valid authority.
And the "defenseless" appeal would make forms of child punishment wrong unless he is escape the consequences.
The rod and reproof give wisdom: but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame. (Proverbs 29:15)
He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes. (Proverbs 13:24)
Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him. (Proverbs 22:15)
Chasten thy son while there is hope, and let not thy soul spare for his crying. (Proverbs 19:18)
Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell. (Proverbs 23:13-14)
For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. (Hebrews 12:6)
For whom the Lord loveth he correcteth; even as a father the son in whom he delighteth. (Proverbs 3:12)
Like a car thief cannot find a police station.
This article talks some sense:
Whenever I read something on the spanking controversy, I remember an incident in a downtown day care. It happened at about 6:05 p.m., five minutes past the deadline for parents to depart with their offspring. The staff was itching to leave, and an occasional dirty look aimed at a tardy parent darted through the mask of cordiality stretched across their faces. I was hurriedly helping my son put on his socks, shoes, and coat, when I heard a commotion behind me. I turned; it was another late parent walking toward us carrying a boy of about four, her arms locked firmly around his middle. He was kicking and yelling at the top of his lungs, "No! No! Put me down!" She was talking to him in the very best contemporary parenting book manner: very calmly, very firmly, not raising her voice. "It's time to go now," she said. "I've given you 20 minutes to play with the day-care toys. That's enough. Daddy's got dinner ready, and he's waiting for us at home."
She put him down by the kiddie coat rack, and knelt beside him. He seized this brief moment of freedom to unleash a barrage of blows to her head and chest. "Let me go!" he yelled as he connected with her chin. She looked around in embarrassment. I averted my eyes. "That hurt," she said evenly, taking down his coat, "That really hurt. I don't like that." She grappled with him in a fruitless effort to force him into his coat; he wriggled out easily, shoving her face as far away from him as possible. The struggle continued for minutes, then reached a stalemate. The day-care staff, looking on with increasing disgust and fatigue, offered such helpful comments as, "Come on Tyler. It's time to go home now."
As I left with my son, I reflected upon the spirit of the age that has blessed us with such incidents. Perhaps some nonaversive method of discipline would have made that terrible child comply with his mother's request quickly, but I cannot think of it. I am convinced that the most effective solution in that particular instance would have been a sharp, compliance-inducing swat on the bottom.
A New Definition of Spanking
But what parent does that today when people are watching? The antispanking movement has done a brilliant job propagating the view that spanking is just another form of child abuse. Normal parents are not just frightened of appearing abusive; they also fear that an occasional swat to the behind can turn their little darling into a dangerously aggressive adolescent and an incorrigibly criminal adult, as the "scientific evidence" says. In fact, the antispanking movement, and its agents in the mainstream media, has used this weak, and in some cases simply non-existent, evidence to beat parents into submission. Antispanking advocates have given us nothing more than a smattering of half-truths along with heavy smacks of propaganda.
Before I continue, let me state categorically that I reject spanking as a primary method of discipline. Let no one see this article as encouragement to parents to spank their children for every little thing. It goes without saying that I support all efforts to end the physical abuse of children, but I do not think that spanking, used rarely and judiciously, is abuse. Rather, it can be useful in some situations, with many kids.
But what is spanking? Antispankers define it as broadly as possible, not just to show that spanking causes harm, but to more easily place it on a continuum with child abuse. One antispanking article, for example, defined spanking as "any disciplinary hitting of kids that's not injurious or currently considered abusive." Note the emotive and misleading word hitting which can include punching, cuffing, boxing the ears, and slapping the face. But the meaning of the word spanking, which has remained relatively stable over the centuries, is quite different from these abusive behaviors. The English language's most authoritative source, the Oxford English Dictionary, defines the verb to spank as "To slap or smack (a person, esp. a child) with the open hand." Its earliest etymological entry, dated 1727, reads, "To spank, to slap with the open hand.
More: Questioning the Research
A Questionable Link
Is Spanking Harmful?
Also of interest, New Study Finds Spanking Is Good for Kids
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