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.”

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.

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.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Me and all my siblings were spanked. We're all okay. We grew up well-behaved too.

I was too. It was not a huge deal. I cannot believe how aghast and melodramatic this OP is. I say this as someone who doesn't spank my own kids.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NP: Clearly, you are all using different definitions for the word "spanking." Some of you say they were like swats, or stings. Others say their spankings were abusive beatings, causing pain, terror, and mental anguish. Those are two very different things. They will have very different effects on a child.

Did the spankings not hurt much? Were they infrequent? Delivered with love rather than anger? Did they leave marks?Were you sobbing in pain, laying in a puddle on the floor afterwards? Did you no longer feel safe in your own home? Did you know inside you that you deserved the abuse?

Yea. Different things.

You are so wrong about this. My parents would have claimed the former, my sibling and I the latter. MOST parents in the moment don't know that they're crossing the line until it's too late.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NP: Clearly, you are all using different definitions for the word "spanking." Some of you say they were like swats, or stings. Others say their spankings were abusive beatings, causing pain, terror, and mental anguish. Those are two very different things. They will have very different effects on a child.

Did the spankings not hurt much? Were they infrequent? Delivered with love rather than anger? Did they leave marks?Were you sobbing in pain, laying in a puddle on the floor afterwards? Did you no longer feel safe in your own home? Did you know inside you that you deserved the abuse?

Yea. Different things.

You are so wrong about this. My parents would have claimed the former, my sibling and I the latter. MOST parents in the moment don't know that they're crossing the line until it's too late.

Anonymous wrote:NP: Clearly, you are all using different definitions for the word "spanking." Some of you say they were like swats, or stings. Others say their spankings were abusive beatings, causing pain, terror, and mental anguish. Those are two very different things. They will have very different effects on a child.

Did the spankings not hurt much? Were they infrequent? Delivered with love rather than anger? Did they leave marks?Were you sobbing in pain, laying in a puddle on the floor afterwards? Did you no longer feel safe in your own home? Did you know inside you that you deserved the abuse?

Yea. Different things.