I cannot believe there are still people out there spanking their children...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s now the official position of the United States government that corporal punishment should not be used to manage children in our public schools - and quite obviously the intent is to signal that same position to parents. This statement by the US secretary of education is full of hyperlinks to the latest research on what it does to children.
https://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/secletter/230324.html

This next piece is nearly 10 years old, but the statistics on use of physical punishment in parenting remain about the same today. American mothers, by a wide margin, endorse and employ physical violence in managing their children’s behaviors. Americans fathers with access to their children also use physical violence in parenting.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/hitting-kids-american-parenting-and-physical-punishment/#:~:text=35%25%20of%20children%20experienced%20some,at%20least%20once%20per%20year.&text=26%25%20of%20men%2018%2D59,by%20parent%20as%20a%20child.&text=61%25%20of%20women%20report%20hitting,spanking%2C%20or%20slapping%20their%20children.&text=41.6%25%20of%20parents%20physically%20punished,child%20in%20the%20past%20year.


The older I get the less puzzled I am by how many wounded people there are in the world and how much violence. I grew up in a violent home where both parents seemed to get off on managing typical, developmentally appropriate child behavior with regular beatings by fist, yardstick, belt, and dog leash. We lived in fear of our parents, didn’t have close emotional bonds with them and we all have the spectrum of midlife dysfunction and disorders as a result. My two siblings who had children repeated the pattern and it has been upsetting to see the results there, too.

I grew up to be a commitment phobic childless workaholic, first as a domestic violence advocate then as an attorney prosecuting abusers of all stripes. I also carried cases for many years in dependency/neglect court and the juvenile justice system. The link between violence in the home and in one’s early childhood experience and later dysfunction of all kinds is beat your head against a brick wall undeniable. Yet people continue to beat their kids and call it love.

Peace on earth begins at home, we say in the DV movement.

The only people you work with, the people you've worked with for years and years, are victims of domestic violence and abuse. So you think everyone is an abuser.

ER doctors are well known to be bad at risk assessment. Police are well known to think everyone is a criminal. You think everyone is an abuser.

Not true. Beyond my years in law enforcement I also have spent years as an educator and hospice caregiver among many families who have not been involved in the system but who employ(ed) corporal punishment in child rearing. I cannot begin to tell you the laments I have heard on people’s deathbeds.

Those of you who hit your children - they NEVER forget it. The hurt and rejection it puts into their hearts will be something they tell a caregiver about when they are dying 70 years later. It will be something that they understand drove much of the unhappiness in their lives and in their adult relationships and which troubled their own experience of parenting because raising kids makes them fully understand how badly they were treated. And for many generations it is also something that it is never okay to talk about, because we must honor our mother and father even if they hit us regularly and called it for our own good, told us we deserved it. So it’s something they finally cry about in tbr months and weeks leading to their dying and leaving this earth - and that’s the one legacy you’ve passed on that some hospice caregiver knows about you decades hence.

I have no doubt you’ll stay in denial and justify to yourself every time you hit your kid (and *you* never do it in anger, you’re perfect after all) that it’s for their own good. And all the professionals who have studied this for years are just full of crap. As if it’s not plain common sense that getting hit hurts both physically and psychologically, none of us likes it, why on earth would you inflict it on the people you claim are the most important in your life?

It’s insanity. People who physically assault their children and call it love are deluded and mentally weak.

This is nuts. I was spanked growing up.Not a lot, but some. It doesn't bother me as an adult at all. It was part of being parented. Lots of kids all around me were also spanked. I doubt we will all be talking about it on our deathbeds. I was slapped across the face and hit in the head in anger, though. That REALLY bothered me. I honestly never remember being spanked, even when it comes up in threads like these. I remember being slapped, though, because those two experiences came from a different source -- one came from parenting, one came from anger. Totally different.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:94 percent.

“ Even as several western European countries have outlawed spanking, surveys suggest 94 percent of American parents spank their children by the time they are three or four years old, although that number hides great variability in the regularity and severity of the punishment, as well as the context in which the punishment is delivered.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2002/06/26/study-harm-outweighs-benefits-of-spanking/0f72fe3e-d49e-4a04-993c-d0934a1df286/

This article is from 2002, are you an idiot?

Figure largely unchanged in 2022

https://nabtahealth.com/articles/does-spanking-do-more-harm-than-good/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s now the official position of the United States government that corporal punishment should not be used to manage children in our public schools - and quite obviously the intent is to signal that same position to parents. This statement by the US secretary of education is full of hyperlinks to the latest research on what it does to children.
https://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/secletter/230324.html

This next piece is nearly 10 years old, but the statistics on use of physical punishment in parenting remain about the same today. American mothers, by a wide margin, endorse and employ physical violence in managing their children’s behaviors. Americans fathers with access to their children also use physical violence in parenting.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/hitting-kids-american-parenting-and-physical-punishment/#:~:text=35%25%20of%20children%20experienced%20some,at%20least%20once%20per%20year.&text=26%25%20of%20men%2018%2D59,by%20parent%20as%20a%20child.&text=61%25%20of%20women%20report%20hitting,spanking%2C%20or%20slapping%20their%20children.&text=41.6%25%20of%20parents%20physically%20punished,child%20in%20the%20past%20year.


The older I get the less puzzled I am by how many wounded people there are in the world and how much violence. I grew up in a violent home where both parents seemed to get off on managing typical, developmentally appropriate child behavior with regular beatings by fist, yardstick, belt, and dog leash. We lived in fear of our parents, didn’t have close emotional bonds with them and we all have the spectrum of midlife dysfunction and disorders as a result. My two siblings who had children repeated the pattern and it has been upsetting to see the results there, too.

I grew up to be a commitment phobic childless workaholic, first as a domestic violence advocate then as an attorney prosecuting abusers of all stripes. I also carried cases for many years in dependency/neglect court and the juvenile justice system. The link between violence in the home and in one’s early childhood experience and later dysfunction of all kinds is beat your head against a brick wall undeniable. Yet people continue to beat their kids and call it love.

Peace on earth begins at home, we say in the DV movement.

The only people you work with, the people you've worked with for years and years, are victims of domestic violence and abuse. So you think everyone is an abuser.

ER doctors are well known to be bad at risk assessment. Police are well known to think everyone is a criminal. You think everyone is an abuser.

Not true. Beyond my years in law enforcement I also have spent years as an educator and hospice caregiver among many families who have not been involved in the system but who employ(ed) corporal punishment in child rearing. I cannot begin to tell you the laments I have heard on people’s deathbeds.

Those of you who hit your children - they NEVER forget it. The hurt and rejection it puts into their hearts will be something they tell a caregiver about when they are dying 70 years later. It will be something that they understand drove much of the unhappiness in their lives and in their adult relationships and which troubled their own experience of parenting because raising kids makes them fully understand how badly they were treated. And for many generations it is also something that it is never okay to talk about, because we must honor our mother and father even if they hit us regularly and called it for our own good, told us we deserved it. So it’s something they finally cry about in tbr months and weeks leading to their dying and leaving this earth - and that’s the one legacy you’ve passed on that some hospice caregiver knows about you decades hence.

I have no doubt you’ll stay in denial and justify to yourself every time you hit your kid (and *you* never do it in anger, you’re perfect after all) that it’s for their own good. And all the professionals who have studied this for years are just full of crap. As if it’s not plain common sense that getting hit hurts both physically and psychologically, none of us likes it, why on earth would you inflict it on the people you claim are the most important in your life?

It’s insanity. People who physically assault their children and call it love are deluded and mentally weak.

This is nuts. I was spanked growing up.Not a lot, but some. It doesn't bother me as an adult at all. It was part of being parented. Lots of kids all around me were also spanked. I doubt we will all be talking about it on our deathbeds. I was slapped across the face and hit in the head in anger, though. That REALLY bothered me. I honestly never remember being spanked, even when it comes up in threads like these. I remember being slapped, though, because those two experiences came from a different source -- one came from parenting, one came from anger. Totally different.

did it bother you less bc it was your butt vs your face? am intrigued.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can you hit another adult who is not doing what you've asked them to do?

It is against the law. So yes, hitting children should be against the law as well.

Um yes, the government does it all the time. Try getting locked up and not doing what you are asked or told to do and find out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Spanking is so trashy. The only parents I know who talk about giving their kids a “good seat to the behind” cite the Bible in their parenting and are conservative. I don’t know anyone well educated and financially comfortable who resorts to this. We have other ways of instilling values in our children that don’t involve violence.

+1 absolutely trashy and low class. Associated with shitty parents who are poor and desperate and not yet mature adults themselves.

+2, spanking is a low class, low education, low SES thing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can you hit another adult who is not doing what you've asked them to do?

It is against the law. So yes, hitting children should be against the law as well.

In Texas you can legally shoot and kill someone for doing something you think they did wrong. Tread lightly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Spanking is so trashy. The only parents I know who talk about giving their kids a “good seat to the behind” cite the Bible in their parenting and are conservative. I don’t know anyone well educated and financially comfortable who resorts to this. We have other ways of instilling values in our children that don’t involve violence.

Most people, including UC, UMC, and everyone else, spanks their kids. You may think that everyone is trashy but that's a different post.

Uh, no, not at all. I am 100% clear that me, my sibling, my cousins and my friends do not hit our kids. I am positive of this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think hitting/spanking your kids is just lazy parenting.

Do better as a parent and actually take charge in being the grownup in the situation. Say "no," take stuff away, ground them, hell... even shame them. Shaming is so much more productive than hitting, imho.

I totally disagree with you, from my own perspective on experiencing both shame and spanking.

Are you a sociopath? For the vast majority of people, shaming is quite effective in changing behavior.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s now the official position of the United States government that corporal punishment should not be used to manage children in our public schools - and quite obviously the intent is to signal that same position to parents. This statement by the US secretary of education is full of hyperlinks to the latest research on what it does to children.
https://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/secletter/230324.html

This next piece is nearly 10 years old, but the statistics on use of physical punishment in parenting remain about the same today. American mothers, by a wide margin, endorse and employ physical violence in managing their children’s behaviors. Americans fathers with access to their children also use physical violence in parenting.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/hitting-kids-american-parenting-and-physical-punishment/#:~:text=35%25%20of%20children%20experienced%20some,at%20least%20once%20per%20year.&text=26%25%20of%20men%2018%2D59,by%20parent%20as%20a%20child.&text=61%25%20of%20women%20report%20hitting,spanking%2C%20or%20slapping%20their%20children.&text=41.6%25%20of%20parents%20physically%20punished,child%20in%20the%20past%20year.


The older I get the less puzzled I am by how many wounded people there are in the world and how much violence. I grew up in a violent home where both parents seemed to get off on managing typical, developmentally appropriate child behavior with regular beatings by fist, yardstick, belt, and dog leash. We lived in fear of our parents, didn’t have close emotional bonds with them and we all have the spectrum of midlife dysfunction and disorders as a result. My two siblings who had children repeated the pattern and it has been upsetting to see the results there, too.

I grew up to be a commitment phobic childless workaholic, first as a domestic violence advocate then as an attorney prosecuting abusers of all stripes. I also carried cases for many years in dependency/neglect court and the juvenile justice system. The link between violence in the home and in one’s early childhood experience and later dysfunction of all kinds is beat your head against a brick wall undeniable. Yet people continue to beat their kids and call it love.

Peace on earth begins at home, we say in the DV movement.

The only people you work with, the people you've worked with for years and years, are victims of domestic violence and abuse. So you think everyone is an abuser.

ER doctors are well known to be bad at risk assessment. Police are well known to think everyone is a criminal. You think everyone is an abuser.

Not true. Beyond my years in law enforcement I also have spent years as an educator and hospice caregiver among many families who have not been involved in the system but who employ(ed) corporal punishment in child rearing. I cannot begin to tell you the laments I have heard on people’s deathbeds.

Those of you who hit your children - they NEVER forget it. The hurt and rejection it puts into their hearts will be something they tell a caregiver about when they are dying 70 years later. It will be something that they understand drove much of the unhappiness in their lives and in their adult relationships and which troubled their own experience of parenting because raising kids makes them fully understand how badly they were treated. And for many generations it is also something that it is never okay to talk about, because we must honor our mother and father even if they hit us regularly and called it for our own good, told us we deserved it. So it’s something they finally cry about in tbr months and weeks leading to their dying and leaving this earth - and that’s the one legacy you’ve passed on that some hospice caregiver knows about you decades hence.

I have no doubt you’ll stay in denial and justify to yourself every time you hit your kid (and *you* never do it in anger, you’re perfect after all) that it’s for their own good. And all the professionals who have studied this for years are just full of crap. As if it’s not plain common sense that getting hit hurts both physically and psychologically, none of us likes it, why on earth would you inflict it on the people you claim are the most important in your life?

It’s insanity. People who physically assault their children and call it love are deluded and mentally weak.

This is nuts. I was spanked growing up.Not a lot, but some. It doesn't bother me as an adult at all. It was part of being parented. Lots of kids all around me were also spanked. I doubt we will all be talking about it on our deathbeds. I was slapped across the face and hit in the head in anger, though. That REALLY bothered me. I honestly never remember being spanked, even when it comes up in threads like these. I remember being slapped, though, because those two experiences came from a different source -- one came from parenting, one came from anger. Totally different.

did it bother you less bc it was your butt vs your face? am intrigued.

Can you not read? I thought the anti-spankers were supposed to be better educated! I said it bothered me less to be spanked because it wasn't done in anger. Thanks for making light of what I shared, a-hole.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s now the official position of the United States government that corporal punishment should not be used to manage children in our public schools - and quite obviously the intent is to signal that same position to parents. This statement by the US secretary of education is full of hyperlinks to the latest research on what it does to children.
https://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/secletter/230324.html

This next piece is nearly 10 years old, but the statistics on use of physical punishment in parenting remain about the same today. American mothers, by a wide margin, endorse and employ physical violence in managing their children’s behaviors. Americans fathers with access to their children also use physical violence in parenting.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/hitting-kids-american-parenting-and-physical-punishment/#:~:text=35%25%20of%20children%20experienced%20some,at%20least%20once%20per%20year.&text=26%25%20of%20men%2018%2D59,by%20parent%20as%20a%20child.&text=61%25%20of%20women%20report%20hitting,spanking%2C%20or%20slapping%20their%20children.&text=41.6%25%20of%20parents%20physically%20punished,child%20in%20the%20past%20year.


The older I get the less puzzled I am by how many wounded people there are in the world and how much violence. I grew up in a violent home where both parents seemed to get off on managing typical, developmentally appropriate child behavior with regular beatings by fist, yardstick, belt, and dog leash. We lived in fear of our parents, didn’t have close emotional bonds with them and we all have the spectrum of midlife dysfunction and disorders as a result. My two siblings who had children repeated the pattern and it has been upsetting to see the results there, too.

I grew up to be a commitment phobic childless workaholic, first as a domestic violence advocate then as an attorney prosecuting abusers of all stripes. I also carried cases for many years in dependency/neglect court and the juvenile justice system. The link between violence in the home and in one’s early childhood experience and later dysfunction of all kinds is beat your head against a brick wall undeniable. Yet people continue to beat their kids and call it love.

Peace on earth begins at home, we say in the DV movement.

The only people you work with, the people you've worked with for years and years, are victims of domestic violence and abuse. So you think everyone is an abuser.

ER doctors are well known to be bad at risk assessment. Police are well known to think everyone is a criminal. You think everyone is an abuser.

Not true. Beyond my years in law enforcement I also have spent years as an educator and hospice caregiver among many families who have not been involved in the system but who employ(ed) corporal punishment in child rearing. I cannot begin to tell you the laments I have heard on people’s deathbeds.

Those of you who hit your children - they NEVER forget it. The hurt and rejection it puts into their hearts will be something they tell a caregiver about when they are dying 70 years later. It will be something that they understand drove much of the unhappiness in their lives and in their adult relationships and which troubled their own experience of parenting because raising kids makes them fully understand how badly they were treated. And for many generations it is also something that it is never okay to talk about, because we must honor our mother and father even if they hit us regularly and called it for our own good, told us we deserved it. So it’s something they finally cry about in tbr months and weeks leading to their dying and leaving this earth - and that’s the one legacy you’ve passed on that some hospice caregiver knows about you decades hence.

I have no doubt you’ll stay in denial and justify to yourself every time you hit your kid (and *you* never do it in anger, you’re perfect after all) that it’s for their own good. And all the professionals who have studied this for years are just full of crap. As if it’s not plain common sense that getting hit hurts both physically and psychologically, none of us likes it, why on earth would you inflict it on the people you claim are the most important in your life?

It’s insanity. People who physically assault their children and call it love are deluded and mentally weak.

This is nuts. I was spanked growing up.Not a lot, but some. It doesn't bother me as an adult at all. It was part of being parented. Lots of kids all around me were also spanked. I doubt we will all be talking about it on our deathbeds. I was slapped across the face and hit in the head in anger, though. That REALLY bothered me. I honestly never remember being spanked, even when it comes up in threads like these. I remember being slapped, though, because those two experiences came from a different source -- one came from parenting, one came from anger. Totally different.

did it bother you less bc it was your butt vs your face? am intrigued.

NP here. I would say no. I got the occasional old fashioned over the lap spankings, and those were a negative consequence, but they did not bother me.

Sometimes, like less than three times in my life, I pissed off mom or dad enough to get an angry swat on my clothed butt out of the blue. THOSE bothered me in the exact same way that the one or two slaps across the face I got from my mom did. It was the fact that they were just acting, or reacting out of anger. Not the location.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think hitting/spanking your kids is just lazy parenting.

Do better as a parent and actually take charge in being the grownup in the situation. Say "no," take stuff away, ground them, hell... even shame them. Shaming is so much more productive than hitting, imho.

I totally disagree with you, from my own perspective on experiencing both shame and spanking.

Are you a sociopath? For the vast majority of people, shaming is quite effective in changing behavior.

Shaming was effective, but it hurt much worse than the spanking.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s now the official position of the United States government that corporal punishment should not be used to manage children in our public schools - and quite obviously the intent is to signal that same position to parents. This statement by the US secretary of education is full of hyperlinks to the latest research on what it does to children.
https://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/secletter/230324.html

This next piece is nearly 10 years old, but the statistics on use of physical punishment in parenting remain about the same today. American mothers, by a wide margin, endorse and employ physical violence in managing their children’s behaviors. Americans fathers with access to their children also use physical violence in parenting.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/hitting-kids-american-parenting-and-physical-punishment/#:~:text=35%25%20of%20children%20experienced%20some,at%20least%20once%20per%20year.&text=26%25%20of%20men%2018%2D59,by%20parent%20as%20a%20child.&text=61%25%20of%20women%20report%20hitting,spanking%2C%20or%20slapping%20their%20children.&text=41.6%25%20of%20parents%20physically%20punished,child%20in%20the%20past%20year.


The older I get the less puzzled I am by how many wounded people there are in the world and how much violence. I grew up in a violent home where both parents seemed to get off on managing typical, developmentally appropriate child behavior with regular beatings by fist, yardstick, belt, and dog leash. We lived in fear of our parents, didn’t have close emotional bonds with them and we all have the spectrum of midlife dysfunction and disorders as a result. My two siblings who had children repeated the pattern and it has been upsetting to see the results there, too.

I grew up to be a commitment phobic childless workaholic, first as a domestic violence advocate then as an attorney prosecuting abusers of all stripes. I also carried cases for many years in dependency/neglect court and the juvenile justice system. The link between violence in the home and in one’s early childhood experience and later dysfunction of all kinds is beat your head against a brick wall undeniable. Yet people continue to beat their kids and call it love.

Peace on earth begins at home, we say in the DV movement.

The only people you work with, the people you've worked with for years and years, are victims of domestic violence and abuse. So you think everyone is an abuser.

ER doctors are well known to be bad at risk assessment. Police are well known to think everyone is a criminal. You think everyone is an abuser.

Not true. Beyond my years in law enforcement I also have spent years as an educator and hospice caregiver among many families who have not been involved in the system but who employ(ed) corporal punishment in child rearing. I cannot begin to tell you the laments I have heard on people’s deathbeds.

Those of you who hit your children - they NEVER forget it. The hurt and rejection it puts into their hearts will be something they tell a caregiver about when they are dying 70 years later. It will be something that they understand drove much of the unhappiness in their lives and in their adult relationships and which troubled their own experience of parenting because raising kids makes them fully understand how badly they were treated. And for many generations it is also something that it is never okay to talk about, because we must honor our mother and father even if they hit us regularly and called it for our own good, told us we deserved it. So it’s something they finally cry about in tbr months and weeks leading to their dying and leaving this earth - and that’s the one legacy you’ve passed on that some hospice caregiver knows about you decades hence.

I have no doubt you’ll stay in denial and justify to yourself every time you hit your kid (and *you* never do it in anger, you’re perfect after all) that it’s for their own good. And all the professionals who have studied this for years are just full of crap. As if it’s not plain common sense that getting hit hurts both physically and psychologically, none of us likes it, why on earth would you inflict it on the people you claim are the most important in your life?

It’s insanity. People who physically assault their children and call it love are deluded and mentally weak.

This is nuts. I was spanked growing up.Not a lot, but some. It doesn't bother me as an adult at all. It was part of being parented. Lots of kids all around me were also spanked. I doubt we will all be talking about it on our deathbeds. I was slapped across the face and hit in the head in anger, though. That REALLY bothered me. I honestly never remember being spanked, even when it comes up in threads like these. I remember being slapped, though, because those two experiences came from a different source -- one came from parenting, one came from anger. Totally different.

did it bother you less bc it was your butt vs your face? am intrigued.

Can you not read? I thought the anti-spankers were supposed to be better educated! I said it bothered me less to be spanked because it wasn't done in anger. Thanks for making light of what I shared, a-hole.

not making light of it just genuinely curious to understand why that would feel different.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:At the school where I teach, we can tell the kids who are regularly hit at home. They figure out that the teachers aren’t allowed to hit them and they do whatever they want, because that is the only authority they recognize. I even had one mother shrug and say, “the only thing he listens to is the belt.”

DC were spanked and were also considered well-liked and respectable at school. I do not think you know what you are talking about and what a terrible way to generalize, teacher.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Spanking is so trashy. The only parents I know who talk about giving their kids a “good seat to the behind” cite the Bible in their parenting and are conservative. I don’t know anyone well educated and financially comfortable who resorts to this. We have other ways of instilling values in our children that don’t involve violence.

Yes you do. They just don't speak of it with Ms. Judgey. It's not worth their time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think hitting/spanking your kids is just lazy parenting.

Do better as a parent and actually take charge in being the grownup in the situation. Say "no," take stuff away, ground them, hell... even shame them. Shaming is so much more productive than hitting, imho.

I totally disagree with you, from my own perspective on experiencing both shame and spanking.

Are you a sociopath? For the vast majority of people, shaming is quite effective in changing behavior.

Shaming was effective, but it hurt much worse than the spanking.

That's the point of shame. It's supposed to hurt - that's what makes it effective. The pain from spanking goes away, but the pain from shaming sticks and makes you think about your choices.

I stand by my claim - don't hit, but definitely do shame.