I recently saw a study that I found rather shocking that showed that most Americans believe in spanking children! As a person who doesn’t believe children should be spanked (even though I certainly believe some of them lack discipline–as do some of their parents), I was surprised by this result. I guess I’m the minority on this.
There were some interesting demographic trends:
- Conservatives are more likely to spank than Independents (me) or Democrats who are the least likely.
- Born-again Christians are more likely to spank than others.
- Southerners are the most likely to spank and those from the Northeast (me for example) are the least likely.
- African Americans are more likely to spank kids than other races.
Some of those demographics probably overlap a bit. For example, Southerners who are born-again Christians are probably mostly politically conservative. Many African Americans also live in the South. The Northeast leans left politically and there aren’t as many born-again Christians there.
Louis C.K. does a schtick on why we should not hit our kids:
“And stop hitting me, you’re huge. How could you hit me?! That’s crazy. You’re a giant, and I can’t defend myself.” I really think it’s crazy that we hit our kids. It really is–here’s the crazy part about it. Kids are the only people in the world that you’re allowed to hit. Do you realize that? They’re the most vulnerable, and they’re the most destroyed by being hit. But it’s totally okay to hit them. And they’re the only ones! If you hit a dog they… will put you in jail for that… You can’t hit a person unless you can prove that they were trying to kill you. But a little tiny person with a head this big who trusts you implicitly, f(orget) ’em. Who (cares)? Just… hit–let’s all hit them! People want you to hit your kid. If your kid’s making noise in public, “Hit him, hit him! Hit him! Grrr, hit him!” We’re proud of it! “I hit my kids. You’re… right I hit my kids.” Why did you hit them? “‘Cause they were doing a thing I didn’t like at the moment. And so I hit them, and guess what? They didn’t do it after that.” Well, that wouldn’t be taking the… easy way out would it?“
On a daddy blog, the author does a series on spanking. He begins the series from a pro-spanking standpoint, but ends up as a dad deciding that he will not spank. His thought process is illuminating.
“Time out? Yeah right. Like that does any good,” I would think to myself.
I believed that “non-spanking” was part of a liberal media agenda which led to uncontrollable children and even, overall, a higher crime rate for the adults who were not spanked as kids.
Then I changed my mindset. I stopped looking at opposing groups of people as “wrong” or “right,” based on their opinions. I stopped feeding into the polarization of America, based on our divided cultural leanings and preferences.
(Even to the point I now think Republicans and Democrats are equal. I realize it’s heresy to both sides to say that, though.)
But it’s true that I use to totally stereotype parents who didn’t spank their children.
I assumed that if a parent didn’t spank their child, they definitely didn’t effectively discipline them. Or it meant, in theory, they didn’t really discipline them at all.
Something that always kept me close-minded to the concept of discipline without spanking is a Bible verse (Proverbs 13:24) that I had always interpreted in a preconceived way:
“Whoever spares the rod hates their children, but the one who loves their children is careful to discipline them.”
I always took that to mean “the rod” (or the paddle, etc.) exclusively equalled discipline. In other words, I thought it would be impossible to properly discipline a child without ultimately resorting to spanking. But now, I read that verse differently:
My interpretation is, “It’s better to spank your child in an effort to discipline them, than to not discipline your child at all. But the main thing is, that you do discipline your child- not necessarily how you discipline them.”
Therefore, I totally don’t care how other parents discipline their children. I used to, but I’m way over that.
What I do care about is how I discipline you. And for Mommy and I, that means not resorting to spanking. For us, that’s what we feel is right for our family.
I had not previously associated spanking with the political right or non-spanking with liberalism. I tended to think that spanking was a generational question. Spanking was the norm in the 50s and 60s and probably even the 70s, but it grew out of favor and was replaced with “time outs” at least by the 90s. I simply assumed this was because it was seen as ineffective. My parents talked about spanking their children (my older siblings) back in the 1950s and 1960s, but I was not spanked. Of course, I was a model child. *cough, cough* Plus, they were probably worn down by then.
A few months back, a friend was telling me about an incident in which her father-in-law roughly handled her nephew, spanking him, yelling, and pulling on his arm. That was a recent incident that I would consider child abuse, although if I heard of it happening 60 years ago I would not find that surprising. If a relative handled my children that way, I would no longer have let that relative near my children.
My own views on spanking:
- It sends the wrong message. You can’t teach a child hitting is wrong when you are hitting them.
- It’s a fine line between “disciplining” the child and a parent venting his or her feelings of anger. Hitting a child in anger feels like assault.
- Hitting someone else’s child is completely unacceptable. Hitting your own is ill-advised.
I’d like to hear what you, our readers think of spanking.
<noscript> <a href="http://polldaddy.com/poll/9652133/">How do you feel about spanking?</a><br/> <span style="font:9px;">(<a href="http://www.polldaddy.com">polls</a>)</span> </noscript>
- Were you spanked as a child?
- Did you spank your children? Did you allow others to spank your children?
- Do you think spanking helps or hurts discipline?
- Do most of your fellow ward members believe in spanking or not? How do you know?
- Do you see this as a political divide, generational, educational, cultural, familial or some other divide between spankers and non-spankers?
Discuss.
Wheat & Tares 
I was about to make a smart-aleck comment about some people WANTING spankings when they are older, but I wonder if spanking of children were to stop if even that adult spanking would drop dramatically or even go away.
Like most things it can get out of hand and be wrong if the parent is not in control. However there are times when you need to get the attention of a kid and you try different methods. I have found a small swat on the behind, and a stern voice, gets the attention when other methods are not effective. Not in public. Not excessive. Not often.
I have 4 kids. 2 have never been spanked. The other 2 perhaps 3 times in their life. I don’t feel guilty about it.
But they remember dad’s stern voice more, if you ask them.
The parent must always be doing what teaches the child…not trying to show anger.
At a minimum there are generational, geographic and cultural divides. (I don’t specifically recall, but I think I was spanked two or three times. I do remember that I didn’t appreciate it. In my case it was generational.)
A good case study is Minnesota Vikings star running back Adrian Peterson whooping his 4-year old with a switch. He got into a lot of trouble for it. Northerners were horrified and cried child abuse; southerners shook their heads knowingly and approvingly.
I didn’t spank our kids. There was this one time when I started to spank my son for some action that seemed pretty egregious at the time (but I don’t recall the particulars).. But as I started to do it I caught myself; I realized I was doing this out of a sense of anger, and not for true discipline. I was never tempted to spank my children again after that.
I spanked my first two kids, came to regret it and thus didn’t spank numbers three and four. The change came when I started to study positive reinforcement training in animals, which included understanding how mammal brains react to reward/punishment. At the end of the day, punishment isn’t as effective as other teaching methods. It does cause change, but that change can be damaging to the learner in some situations.
May I suggest adding the following counsel from President Hinckley to your post?
“I am satisfied that such punishment in most instances does more damage than good.I recently read a biography of George H. Brimhall, who at one time served as president of Brigham Young University. Concerning him, someone said that he reared “his boys with a rod, but it [was] a fishing rod” That says it all.” Gordon B. Hinckley, “Save the Children,” Ensign, Nov. 1994, 52
“I have tremendous respect for fathers and mothers who are nurturing their children in light and truth, who have prayer in their homes, WHO SPARE THE ROD and govern with love, who look upon their little ones as their most valued assets to be protected, trained, and blessed.” Gordon B. Hinckley, “This Is the Work of the Master,” Ensign, May 1995, 69
As for me, there is only one time I spanked a child. I’m still ambivalent about it. Our son was 2 years old and had a penchant for sticking knives into outlets. He even figured out how to pull off the plastic plugs. After a week of close calls, I spanked him. Not hard, but I made contact. I still remember the horrified look on his face on realizing that his father could strike him.. He wasn’t physically hurt, but our relationship was hurt. That said, it worked. He never went close to an outlet again. I’m still not sure that was the right call, but at the time it was all I could think of to protect his safety.
I voted that spanking is wrong, but my true beliefs lie somewhere between that and letting other parents make the decision without judgment. I think most children respond well to consistent rules with punishments (such as time outs, grounding, loss of some sort of privilege) and rewards( getting to choose the family activity or movie, getting a treat) and, in general, spanking does more harm than good. I think it is wrong to resort to spanking because of anger or because consistency is really hard (I’ve never met a parent who is perfect at it). On the other hand, there are children who do not respond to that sort of discipline. Growing up with a brother who has severe behavioral disorders, I watched as my parents tried every method they could find to get him to follow even the most basic rules. They sometimes resorted to spanking and it rarely worked, just like timeouts rarely worked and grounding rarely worked. To this day, in his late 20s there is still absolutely no way to convince him to not make bad and destructive choices. (Sidenote: my older sisters and I would often be in charge of watching my brother while my parents were out. He was impossible and we found out that often the only way to keep him from harming himself or others was to sit on him. At some point as a teenager he realized he was strong enough to throw us off of him. I remember one particularly bad day where two of us held him down while the other one duct taped him to a chair which we then weighed down on the floor cement bricks. Now that is child abuse!! Good thing my parents had better sense than that. We all got grounded for that by the way.) I have a hard time condemning parents who love their children and in an attempt to do what is best for them find that spanking is the only method that works (or that they have to alternate spanking so that the threat is always there). Like Dave’s comment, is it worse to spank your kid or let him electrocute himself? I think in many cases the answers are not so black and white.
I can’t think of anyone I know who would say that spanking children is the best choice. I do know a few who would say that it’s not that big of a deal, but most would tell you it was not ok. It’s hard to tell what factors affect this since I live in an extremely homogeneous area of white, upper middle class, young mormon families. However, none of my grandparents were spankers.
If it’s true that conservative families are more likely to spank, I wonder what the relationship of adult spanked children to opposing points of view is.
I’m not saying I know the answer to that but it would make an interesting study. It might help explain why some people have trouble even tolerating the existence of some beliefs.
“…letting other parents make the decision without judgment…”
I think this is the right approach.
I think of Lehi’s dream where “the iron rod is the word of God.”
“He that spareth the rod hateth his child” becomes an admonition to have more family home evenings and less of an invitation to get mad at your kids.
It is interesting that none of the experienced parents here are defending their actions-personally I’m ashamed of the very rare occasions when I did physically discipline my kids, and I’ve had the Spirit witness to me that this behaviour was wrong, and apologised to my kids.
Interestingly, I had a Norwegian friend with six kids, who said that the law in Norway had changed during her time with young kids at home. The government also ran an education program at the same time, and so she had to make the transition from being a spanking parent to be ing a non spanker. She was really grateful to the government for offering her alternative ways of parenting.
Surely, no functional parent wants to hurt their child? I’m really glad that I could make the change in this generation and I’m sure my kids will never raise a hand to theirs, it’s just no longer an option.
I accept some kids drive you to distraction, but cannot justify violence to the child. I think there needs to be education and help available to parents who struggle, as there was in Norway when the law changed.
My parenting skills increased with experience and distance from my own upbringing, and actually never touched my youngest in anger-it was no longer in me to do it.
Spanking works, in the short term. It also sows the seeds of future rebellion and revenge and passive aggression.
If you don’t discipline your children at all or ineffectively, they will be even worse. Children are not naturally good. These virtues and characteristics have to be nurtured and taught and it takes time and effort..
The high road is to become acquainted with a legitimate modern approach based in social scientific research. I found the principles of positive discipline that came out of cognitive therapy to be most useful. You get ahead of the game; get inside your kid’s head and mold their perceptions. It takes more effort, spanking is the easy way in comparison. After months of effort you will be amazed at the results.
My experience: I spanked my daughter a couple of times when she was really young. It made her worse. My son , we were getting good at the positive discipline and he didn’t need it. He grew to be about 3 inches taller than I and about 40 pounds heavier,and not an ounce of fat on him. He is physically capable of playing college football. I am glad I did not get too physical with him because there was a time at about age 15 when he could have been dangerous. Without proper discipline he might have lacked the maturity to not just cut loose and thrash me which would have turned out badly. Playful rough-housing with little children who soon grow into big adults is dangerous enough. My son still thinks his dad is indestructable, which might have seemed true when he was about 6 years old.
A long time ago when he was small I picked him up playfully and threatened to stuff him head first in a nice soft 4 ft snowbank in Utah while we were visiting relatives, explaining he was missing out on some great experiences not growing up there. Last winter when it snowed about an inch here for the first time in a few years, he raked most of it along with some leaves and rocks into a pile. Then he grabbed me and dragged me out of the house and stuffed me head first in the snow bank. He explained he wanted me to experience some of the fun I so miss growing up in Utah and moving away. Think about me being playfully (sort of) stuffed in a snow bank next time you spank your kids.
This suggestion ( I made this one up) for those who still think that spanking is useful. Spank their stuffed animals instead. Kids will stubbornly resist even to the point of suffering intense pain. But threaten to whack Muffy the Muskrat for their misbehavior and they will capitulate immediately and go to extremes to prevent any harm to a beloved toy pet.It also lets you really cut loose with your own anger (which is what drives most spanking).without the risk of arrest, prison, and other unpleasantness.I have used this trick in the nursery at church and it works every time, even with poorly disciplined children, as long as they like the toy.
Not liking this Mike, sounds both manipulating and threatening, and I’d be taking my kids out of nursery.
Mufty the Muskrat has feelings too.