I dare you to prove me wrong?

wow, so many responses - here's my 2-penny's worth too.

i don't know about the statistics/correlation, however, the instances of school-aged children bringing guns & shooting their 'enemies' or killing another child are definitely increasing the world over. now even teachers (in Texas)have the permission to be armed! I find all this so bizarre...

anyways, i totally agree with your take. spanking, for a specific reason/misdemeanor is fine - it is Not abuse. Provided, the child is told/explained then or later, why s/he was spanked and what right behavior is expected in its place.

spanking should not become the norm - that would amount to abuse. By the same token, children are not dumb. a rare / occasional instance does not make the child hate you or mar/scar them for life. they can See & Feel the love & affection they get from you as a parent/teacher/authority figure throughout, every single day. So, if discipline is needed & warnings or threats don't work, a little spanking never "hurt" anyone. the strength of your regular love & concern far overshadows the few minutes of pain or discomfort. memories of good times, encouragement, support, care, respect, etc. will far outnumber the punishments. THAT is what is important - not the extreme positions of "no physical punishment" to "abuse".

If working parents, single parentship, no "quality" time with kids, etc. etc. are being used to explain or excuse the waywardness of kids, then i think one should rethink the meaning of 'abuse' here. to me, one should only bring a child into this world if one can give it a reasonable upbringing, enough time & resources ....

no, children are not dumb - they are very smart & intuitive. they can distinguish a genuine justified spanking from frequent "flying off the handle". it is in the latter case that they will disregard your "advice" & continue with their misbehaviour albeit behind your back to avoid the spanking & as a means of rebellion.

In the former instance, once they've understood their genuine mistake & its consequence, they will discontinue that behaviour - not merely out of fear of discomfort but due to realization & "Internalization". it will make them a stronger & better person.

finally, each child is unique & has his/her own self-respect. one has to assess the situation, the behaviour, the reaction, the desired behaviour-modification. it doesn't help to be cross all the time - it'll just lose its impact [also, frequent picking on a child in front of younger siblings or friends/classmates may actually make the child more rebellious]. In case of larger issues, instead of reacting immediately, it is always better to think through, consult with spouse or others about the best course of action....if a spanking is the most effective form for that particular occasion, then go ahead without any guilt ... the punishment should be 'circumstantial' not 'constitutional' (not a given)

enjoyed reading the less shrill answers ....;-)

I think that this is a very tough issue to actually come to a conclusion on because we really can't tell what happens inside peoples homes, why children are really being punished, etc. But I do believe that people have taken the whole situation too far. I have actually seen parents and grandparents outside my sisters dance studio and in schools who beg and bribe their kids to do what they should do anyway.

I once saw a kid throw a tantrum (yelling, kicking, the whole thing) because her grandmother brought her the wrong treat for after dance! If that had been me when I was young, my parents would have marched me home, put me in my room and I wouldn't have gotten any treat at all. Instead, this grandmother continuously apologised to the kid, gave her the treat and promised to get her the treat she wanted as well!

Parents today are so worried about punishing their children in any way that kids are growing up with behaviour problems, bad morals, becoming selfish and expecting everything they want. I do live in quite a rich area, maybe that makes it worse, but when a 5 year old child get the new iphone because "everyone else has it", you know there is something wrong. I am 16 and don't have a phone!

Anyway, I have gone off track. Back to the question about corperal punishment, I think that this is really not a one-size-fits-all situation. I am the oldest of three girls, all of us a very different people and we always have been. As a child, I was very strong-willed (that's a nice way of putting it!). When I did something wrong, my parents would hit me because that is what worked on me. I never got hit out of anger or frustration, I was never hit anywhere like the head and I never had marks, but I needed to be hit because that was the only think I would respond to. I learnt very quickly not to do the wrong things, because there would be consequences. Neither of my younger sisters were hit, though, because that simply was not effective for them. My middle sister would burst out into tears over the smallest rap, my parents didn't hit her because instead of teaching her it just upset her. Instead, for her they would use words and that was how she learnt. My youngest sister was the same, she didn't respond as badly to being hit but it wasn't effective either. As you can see, what works for one child won't work for another.

I think that parents should have the option to hit their children, if that is how they will learn, but of course there will always need to be guidelines. Where I live (in Australia) the law it that you cannot hit a child anywhere above the shoulders and it cannot leave a mark. I think this is a reasonable guideline.

Of course, there are going to be the instances where parents abuse their children but I think that this is very different from simple punishment. From the answers above, it almost seems like people expect a vast majority of people who hit their children to be abusing them when this simply isn't the case. Child abuse is a terrible issue, something that need to be addressed fully and dealt with, but although it can be related to the corperal punishment issue it should not be the full focus of the discussion.

Do you have evidence that youth crime rates actually have gone up? Crime rates in the US declined sharply after WWII, then rose again at the end of the '60's, before declining again after the mid-90's. The violent crime rate today is comparable to the first couple decades of the 20th century, even though corporal punishment was more widespread then.

You are making a lot of major assumptions. How do you know spanking worked? Why do you think you know more than child psychologists? Where is the proof that non-corporal punishment has been "proven NOT to work?"

Pulling heartstrings doesn't disprove a correlation, no, but you haven't even given any evidence for a correlation at all!

You present no evidence at all and are making wild assumptions. On top of all that, your use of random words in ALL CAPS screams "Lunatic!" Maybe if your parents had beaten rational argumentation in to you, I wouldn't be wasting my time right now.

First, think about why spanking worked... the children were scared and felt threatened, or they were afraid that their parents would actually hurt them, in which I'm sure many parents lost it and DID hurt the child. The children were not behaving out of respect, but out of fear. So...psychologists don't agree with this type of punishment because of the mental and emotional damage to the child. Therefore, in my opinion and many others, corporal punishment is not the way to go. "Breaking" children is not the answer. Children have more problems; such as confidence and bullying etc... If you really want to discipline a child you have to TEACH them, and this means patience, understanding, and an over all control over your temper. If you can't have patience with teaching a child morals or right from wrong, it is possible that you may need to reevaluate yourself. Using this method will ingrain right from wrong more effectively and healthier than corporal punishment. The child will come out with a sense of self and confidence, knowing what he or she wants to do in the world. They too, will have better control over their emotions and be more level headed if the discipline is taught correctly or effectively by the parents.

Yes, of course this does not work for every single child because all people are not alike and everyone has a different way of adsorbing things. So yes, there are flaws in this method as well. But the outcome of this method is much more healthier for the child and potentially more constructive.

Your view and understanding of statistics is more than a bit skewed and such distorts your possible understanding.

First the number of children in western societies has grown exponentially.

Second, in the past the media did not hold sway over the populace as it does in the present.

Third, in the past parents also spent more time with their children in what would now be described as quality family time (i.e., talking,, reading, dining together, family outings, social activities and community supporting activities) which does not happen as much in the present.

Physical punishment teaches the victim of the same that a larger, stronger person can force you to do what they want by inflicting pain on you. What happens when the one physically abusing the other grows old and weaker and the once victim grows stronger?

From the birth of this ones daughter, this one has talked with and to her, as well as having listened to her. She has been provided opportunities to learn how to make appropriate decisions that benefit everyone. Her questions have always been answered fully and accurately and in accordance with her then level of understanding.

We discuss together options, possible consequences and nature of reality.

We are both honest and very open with one another.

She has never needed to be physically disciplined, verbally abused nor psychologically manipulated, berated nor abused.

She has always been respected and treated by this one as this one would also like to be treated.

Physical punishment is abuse and teaches physical abuse which is not what this one would hope my child and all other children will be learning as there is more than enough violence in the world at the present time.

Unless you are willing to look honestly and well into the subject, you will never accept that your opinion might not be the one that would be beneficial to your self and to all others.

It is this ones sincere wish and hope that you will be open and veiw this objectively and not subjectively from the welfare of all persons who might be involved.

Be well and, please, be wise.

You're forgetting that these days both parents have to work to support the family. The problem isn't an issue of spanking or not spanking, the real problem is children have no one to look up to to tell them what is right and what is wrong. I never spanked my daughter, not even once, and she's the most behaved person on the planet because I spent time with her. I took care of her until she entered the first grade. I taught her right from wrong by using my intellect, not my belt. She's a much better person for it and so am I.

If you raise a child using violence then that is what they'll learn. If you use violence against them, they'll know they did wrong, and they'll probably never do that in front of you again, but they will do it when your back is turned. If you teach through abusive means, they won't know why what they did was wrong. But if you take time to discuss it with your child and explain to them what they did, they'll have a much better understanding of life. You get better results by teaching them what is wrong, not by showing them what not to do to others.

Violence is the lazy man's way to discipline. It's also the least effective. Why on earth would you want to teach your children to fear you? Isn't it much better if they respect you?

I can not nor will try to prove you wrong. I agree that one must be a disciplinarian, not a friend to your children. Today it seems that parents want to be like the clowns on TV, and that is not reality. However, my father in his youth (young Man) 1920-through the 1930's was a prize fighter. In his second marriage, in the late 1940's-1960's, He would punish all the boys with a belt, and then once we were 13 years old, with his fists. He would say that we will thank him some day, because we will have learned to take a punch. He was right, because we became very tough, however I vowed that I would never hit my children or a woman. I never hit my children, and loved them very much. But if they were told that they had to make their bed, and they didn't, I threw their bed out the window. Didn't hang their clothes up or washed them I told them that I would assume they no longer wanted the clothes and would throw them in the dumpster. A couple of those incidents, and they knew I wouldn't nag them, I would just act. Now they are 40 and 37 respectfully, one is married, one child, and is a chemical engineer, and my daughter is a artist, and has one child. Do they hit their children, they better not in front of me.

Well... your hypothesis is that corporal punishment reduces the rate of young people committing crimes. I'm sorry, but it can't really be proved either way through discussion. Existing variables are just too unreliable. I agree (?) that crime deterrance requires punishment to be proportional to the crime committed, but... that's for rational systems of criminal justice. Children's reasoning abilities vary wildly and across ages.

Moreover, there's the issue of one side saying youth crime rates have gone up as corporal punishment rates have gone down and the other side saying they've gone down. *How would either side really know?* It's not the actual crimes committed that have varied; it's the rate at which they're reported to police, effectively documented, and then reported to statistical agencies. The only crime that's even close to consistently reported is homicide.

I don't have a strong opinion either way, but if you really are interested in the question, you should search for cohort studies on spanking and crime. The only way to test a hypothesis like this is through experimentation, and your, my, or the personal experience of anyone else in this thread is just a case study of one person.

I agree with you, i.e. punishing children is necessary. However, nothing you have said has proved that spanking them is the kind of punishment needed. Maybe spankings are necessary but simply showing (which it could be argued that you really haven't) that punishment is necessary for children doesn't necessarily show that spankings are necessary as well since there could be other forms of punishments that could be administered and provide better results (which leads me to my next point). Even if something does produce "good results" that doesn't necessarily make that thing good. For instance, lying produces "good results" but lying isn't good. So does cheating on a test to pass the course but hardly anyone would have doubts as to whether cheating was a good thing to do. Still, rape (which is still sexual intercourse but in a very perverse, cruel form) gives the rapist a release of his sexual tension. But, again, rape isn't good rather it's an extreme of a good desire for sex. Also, are we sure that the increase in teenage crime has increased because of less spankings? You're making a casual claim here and I think that it may very well be the case that, if you don't back this up with good evidence, then you will be surely committing a fallacy known as "post hoc ergo propter hoc". An example of this fallacy may be, because I walked under the ladder on the side walk a few minuets ago I got fired at my job today. Such a claim makes walking under the ladder the cause of his getting fired. But causal claims need to be supported by good inductive generalizations and once instance isn't a good generalization. Maybe the rise in teenage crime is due to lack of religion, maybe a lack of education, maybe a lack of virtue, maybe a lack of good, logical thinking (which I think will inevitably have something to do with it). Any of these can be seen as plausible, too.

However, I do believe children to know the feelings first rather than good reasons. The FEEL that "x" is good so therefore it is good. The feel that "x" is bad therefore it is bad. They don't have logical reasons to do what they are doing, rather they have subjective, psychological reasons. They don't seem to grasp that what feels good isn't necessarily good in itself. I think it is easy to see that when children are left alone for dinner they eat ice cream and candy instead of healthy foods the body needs. They watch TV all day rather than exercise. If it can be shown that children know their own feelings first and see "x" as good because it feels good and "x" as bad because it feels bad then I can see where popping someone on the hand or the tail end will ingrain a concept of bad for bad things; and, praising them for goo things will instill a good feeling for the good things they do. Of course, all this depends upon an idea that there are good things that people ought to be doing. The problem our culture faces today is ethical subjectivism, which is adults acting like children, since they make everything that is good for the mere reason that it feels that way. This leads the point that what is good for me isn't necessarily good for you. How, then, can somebody spank another, even if it is their kid? I think this may be why parent have this idea that they "have to let there kids just figure out what is good and bad for themselves". I think this has probably caused some problems in our culture but we have a lot of work to do to show that it has.

Hope this helps

God Bless

Humans are so complicated and diverse maybe some kids would react more to a spanking while others would fair better with punishment of more cerebral means. There's no reason to think there is a universal cure-all for misbehaving kids and its likely best left to the discretion of parents how they should punish their children as long as it doesn't entail anything too drastic.