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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]How do you know spanking causes harm?[/quote]

This was meant for the PP who claimed that she *knows* it causes harm.[/quote]

I put the *know* in the asterisks because I KNOW it in the gut sense that transcends "I think" or "I feel" because it permeates to my core. You might call that "I strongly believe" but since it is in fact backed by some pretty compelling data (studies mainly, but since i don't have to hold my observations up to scientific scrutiny, i would also include the observations of a good number of people with whom i'm close - family and not - and grew up with, and their discussions about how they feel about spanking today and how they were spanked as a kid). My parents were fine but they did spank, and none of us kids have a super close relationship with them. For me, i can't really pin it to a reason, i just am not really close to them. But my sister specifically attributes it to spankings. and really we didn't get that many of them compared to many kids. My brother is a junkie, so we can't really talk with him about it. Again, I'm not saying that my siblings situation is due to spanking and in fact i don't believe it is the only or even primary issue, but i think it didn't help. So the TL;DR version is I *know* because

1. gut feeling 
2. numerous studies 
3. my own experience 
4. numerous other personal observations  [/quote]

I respect your points, but the studies look at spanking as a binary variable, and they make no effort to control for other factors or context. Also, 90% of parents spank, and the 10% that don't tend to be the wealthiest (it's also easy not to spank when you have nannies watching your kid most of the time). Do you see the scientific weakness here?[/quote]

Yes, I do, but I also don't know that I agree that every study failed to control for different variables - yes, it's difficult to control for everything but science does attempt to control for confounding variables. Understanding that there is no perfect way to do this because people cannot really control every variable in life and also aren't ethically able to set up a study that encouraged parents to strike their kids given what we DO know about it all firmly suggests it backfires or doesn't work, I'll go with pretty good science over "it works in the short term for me / my family" every day.

Also, I do think that you are incorrect that 90 percent of parents spank, but i don't have time to fact check - maybe you are right about that. If so, that's way more than I realized. [/quote]

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