Trigger Warning
Recently I have authored a few posts about spanking. This issue continues to weigh so heavily on me in part because I myself am no stranger to the belt, and because I truly believe in the right of all living beings to be free of violence. Spanking a child is a violent act and any attempt to justify it is just denial. Children are amongst the most powerless in our society. They are considered to exist without bodily integrity and cannot legally act on their own behalf. Parenting by its very nature is authoritarian, and this has lead some to believe that they have right to strike a child in the name of discipline.
Some parents repeatedly refer to a lack of spanking as a failure to discipline. This spank or no discipline argument is a ridiculous strawman and they know it. How do these parents believe that things like groundings, and timeouts came into practice in the first place? There is also such a thing as rewarding positive actions to create a desire to continually perform behaviour that is socially acceptable, and responsible.
When parents assert to legislators that they are taking away their right to parent/discipline, what they they are seeking is to maintain authoritarian control over children. Our offspring are of us, but do not belong to us. In a society in which many feel powerless, parenting is one of the few areas left where people feel that they have the right to complete control and ownership.
Some continue to hide the desire to wield power over another by calling spanking an act of love. It is encouraged that the child be told that they are loved after each incidence of violence. What does this teach the child but to associate violence with love? How many women fall into abusive relationships after being abused themselves as children? This occurs in part because they understand violence as being part of loving someone.
What hurts me the most, is that there are not more pleas that base love as a supreme act of teaching. When you reach for your child their reaction should not be to shrink away with fear. We don’t exhort parents to model the behaviour that we wish children to perform. It seems our entire focus is rushing them from one event to another without actually communicating about life and sharing lessons. We can schedule play dates, but sitting down and critically engaging with children is something we simply don’t have time for.
Children are not robotic individuals that can be programmed to obey on command. Part of the process of growing is testing boundaries, and making mistakes. To be punished physically for maturing in the natural process impedes personal growth. It teaches a child that they are not worthy of respect. If we can socially decide that beating an animal is wrong why can we not decide that hitting a child, the fruit of our wombs is equally wrong?
Cross Posted from Womanist Musings and Feminocracy.
I’m a strong proponent of the non-spanking thing, to the point that I will distance myself from parents that spank. When I have been asked why I philosophically won’t do it, I tell them I don’t want my daughter to equate love with violence in any way shape or form. That usually gets people to thinking.
I remember the exact moment my mom stopped spanking me. I was 8. I don’t remember what I did, but apparently it was bad and deserved a spanking. It took one spank before I started laughing at her (to this day, spanking is a kink of mine, but she’ll never know). Imagine her dismay when this act of demonstrating power over an 8-year-old child was met with uproarious laughter.
I still react that way when someone tries to physically demonstrate superiority over me (with one exception wherein I was genuinely scared). I think it really pisses people off.
I think part of the reason people react with ambivalence to spanking is that they were spanked and don’t feel it did them any harm. At least, that’s why it’s hard for me to see it as clear-cut. My parents were loving, reasonable, fun, feminist parents and they spanked me from time to time, with clear ultimata and warnings first, and more in sorrow than in wrath.
But what I’ve come to feel is that if they had been raising me today, they wouldn’t do it. It’s a cultural shift, and I think we need to realize our parents lived in a different time than we do, that values do change and it doesn’t mean we were abused, if we don’t feel we were.
In my experience, spanking has more to do with venting one’s anger on a helpless person without having to face any consequences than with teaching one’s child a lesson. The only thing I got out of being spanked was an anger management problem and a total lack of respect for my parents. Maybe there are parents who spank in an entirely methodical and systematic way, but I suspect that in most cases, spanking is a symptom of immaturity and self-control issues.
In light of Cecily’s comment, I’d amend my last sentence to say “I suspect that in most cases *today*…”
I cannot speak for most people. I can only speak for the effect that it had on me. I continue to be triggered by it. Writing this post and even this response is something that is difficult for me to do because even now I am having troubling flashbacks. I think that a lot of people justify what their parents did because they now exist with the same power and are able to carry out the terrible tradition It is a transfer of power and many will not admit the pleasure that comes from it.
Spanking didn’t do much for me–and I wasn’t spanked by hand, more like the traditional black folk’s remedy.
I guess this was so because it was obvious that my mother was a rather lazy (or very tired) parent who was using whipping as a substitute for actual parenting, in the sense that she didn’t want to (or could not) do any of the things that most successful parents do. Parenting is full of very tedious tasks, looking back on it.
Corporal punishment is a real failure somewheres along the line. A spanking, as in a sharp slap used to get *attention* is alright and can be productive. A spanking in the sense of deliberatly causing lasting pain almost never really works, and it’s psychologically dangerous because you can develope a dependency (unconsciously train yourself) on spanking as a developmental tactic. Whatever ceasing of bad conduct you get begins to be tied to your personal presence and charisma, and not towards any measure of *understanding*.
Pro-spanking sentiments are exactly like anti-abortion sentiments. The people don’t give a flying fig about the child, usually, but they do give ultimate consideration on their ability to make someone else miserable.
Neither of my parents were physically abusive toward me, though both would occasionally spank me. Almost always the rule was, fess up to a bad act and apologize, and you’d get away with a warning or a time-out, lie about breaking a rule and get a minor spanking.
I vividly remember the last time I ever received a spanking. I was eight years old, and a chronic bed wetter; I was so ashamed of this that I would hide the evidence – my soiled pajamas and underwear – which would then stink up my room. My mother and father got so angry and frustrated with this deceptive behavior that one evening my father took me out into the woods behind our house and really hit me – not a “slap on the butt,” but the kind of hitting that caused incredible pain to me as a child and left marks for several days. I think that’s probably the only time either of my parents punished me in anger (my mother has slapped me twice in anger, once when I was six and once when sixteen; I take that only as exceptional anger provoking exceptional reactions, and not as ‘punishment’ as such).
My parents never spanked me, or, as far as I know, my brother, ever again. I believe they were so horrified by my incredible distress and pain, and by the physical results of their anger, that they chose from that time forward only to use nonviolent methods of punishment.
I’m not angry toward either of my parents – they were both raised in an atmosphere of intense corporal punishment (my father was raised in poor parts of Nebraska, where kids were switched, and my mother went to Anglican schools where children were caned for bad marks on tests). They were learning and growing.
But I know I will never, ever hit my children to punish them. I may not always control myself physically – perhaps in blind, uncontrolled rage I might unthinkingly slap a child – but I will never deliberately set out to punish a child physically.
I would add that to this day I cringe away from big men who are angry – I associate loud voices with impending violence.
This might have more to do with the devolution of my parents’ marriage much later on in my adolescence, however; it’s only in really the past couple years that they’ve become violent with one another.
I was spanked with a leather belt by my father. Any typical spanking lasted at least 10 hits, each successive hit being more and more painful. My father didn’t limit his punishment to spanking, it also included slaps, more creative things like being made to hold a heavy object out horizontally for arbitrary lengths of time, on pain of “a spanking” if we dared relieve our pain in the short term by lowering our arms – and the odd being held against the wall by my throat. Sorry for the run-on sentence.
The only thing ANY of this ever taught me was that I had to be way more secretive about the “bad” things I did.
Wow – great post. I guess I never really thought if it that way. I always figured if/when I had kids, I’d be a spanker in moderation. I was spanked, never too excess, but when I think about it how you think about it, it is a pretty messed up thing to do, no matter how little physical harm is done.
Still…I see those wild-ass kids of non-spanking parents out and about, acting like fools, and think they need a swat on the ass. I guess I have to come to terms with the fact that kids will be kids, and just because one doesn’t spank doesn’t mean one is an overly-permissive non-punishing hippie parent.
Rebecca, I’m so sorry your father was so horrible and abusive. My sympathies.
Like when you bite your sister’s back and won’t let go? (Yeah, that was me).
That said, I find this thread alarming for the reasons Renee mentioned: corporal punishment is really about making someone smaller and less powerful than you suffer.
I was spanked on occasion by both my mother and my father. Is it the best form of discipline? Probably (likely) not. But that doesn’t mean I was abused, or that my parents abused me, and I really, really don’t like the insinuation here that they did. They did not. They were wonderful parents who occasionally spanked.
“I think that a lot of people justify what their parents did because they now exist with the same power and are able to carry out the terrible tradition It is a transfer of power and many will not admit the pleasure that comes from it.”
No. I don’t have kids, nor do I even want kids. And my parents didn’t get “pleasure” from it. Your parents? Maybe; I can’t say anything about your parents. But you certainly shouldn’t assume that my parents were abusive who got pleasure out of spanking their children.
The parents just need to discipline their children, not hit them. You say to the child, “If you can’t behave, we’re leaving.” And then leave when they don’t stop.
FashionablyEvil: You can’t always just up and leave. And sometimes that’s what the kid wants (he/she doesn’t want to be in the grocery store, so he starts a fuss).
Kids WILL be kids, though. Kids aren’t perfect. I think sometimes parents have this idea that kids are little adults, when they aren’t.
Since I was the one who used the word “abused”: I was responding specifically to Rebecca’s description of her father’s behavior. I did not mean to imply that the worse “abuse” applied to all people who spanked their children.
CM, no you can’t always up and leave, but there are more productive disciplinary solutions than smacking a kid who’s acting up in the grocery store.
that should be “that the word abuse..”
To start with, I am not now, nor will I ever be, a parent.
That said, I look at my little sister and the way my parents have raised her. She is ADHD and going through puberty, and as a result, she sometimes, occasionally, while under medicine or not, will get so upset (not necessarily for a rational reason) that she cannot calm herself down. Sometimes, we fear she will accidentally hurt herself in the fray she creates. Sometimes, she gets spanked because of this. Occasionally, this shocks her out of her behavior.
I am not going to say that my parents do this because they enjoy having power over her because she is smaller. For one thing, she is more likely to inflict violence on my parents.
Still…I see those wild-ass kids of non-spanking parents out and about, acting like fools, and think they need a swat on the ass. I guess I have to come to terms with the fact that kids will be kids, and just because one doesn’t spank doesn’t mean one is an overly-permissive non-punishing hippie parent.
Speaking as someone who has worked with kids who have told me at various times that their parents spank them (or worse), spanking ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT make a kid better behaved. I was spanked exactly once, when I was about 2, softly (so my mother tells me; I don’t remember it at all), and never again, and I was a very well-behaved child. I tended as a child to make friends with well-behaved children, and in retrospect, I don’t think any of their parents spanked them either. I have no idea whether the kids who acted up in my elementary school were spanked or not, but I suspect some of them at least weren’t, judging from the cultural norms of the school I was in. Some of them, however, may have been.
Meanwhile, working with kids in a community where spanking is extremely common (based at least on what the kids told me about their parents spanking or hitting them or worse), pretty much all of my most frequent offenders on rambunctiousness, rule-breaking, and, yes, violence towards other children were kids who at one point mentioned to me that their parents hit them. Even setting aside all ethical implications (and I am ethically against spanking), “a swat on the ass” ABSOLUTELY WILL NOT guarantee that your kid is better behaved, or less wild, AT ALL. AT BEST, judging on my own experience at least, it’ll do nothing, or if you want to be really mercenary it’ll mean that threatening to call a kid’s parents will be temporarily effective in stopping the bad behavior (I don’t generally advocate this either and on at least one occasion a coworker and I toned down our behavior report for a kid because he was so upset over what his parents would do to him). At worst, it will teach kids that HITTING OTHER PEOPLE IS ACCEPTABLE. It is SO HARD to try to talk down a young bully whose parents use spanking or other violence on him, because the “violence is wrong” argument is completely and totally useless.
Addendum: I would like to say, however, that while I am personally against spanking and would psupport an anti-spanking law (like pretty much every industrialized country besides the US has) (though JenLovesPonies’ comment gives me pause on that stance), I am not sure that I would call all instances of spanking child abuse, and I would definitely not call all parents who spank “abusers.” The mentality that spanking is a required part of parenting is very much alive in some places (like the aforementioned community I worked in), and I do believe some parents who spank believe they are acting ultimately in the best interest of the child. Other parents may not have been exposed enough to alternate discipline/childrearing techniques. Some might feel scarred from their own upbringing and not have dealt with those feelings enough to stop (this is NOT meant as an excuse, merely meant to say we should act with understanding rather than pure condemnation).
Also, in my experience (and I feel like I read this somewhere too, but I don’t recall where), spanking tends to be more prevalent/accepted in low-income communities. This leads to two points, in my view:
1) Low-income parents are often under more stress, and more likely to be single parents, which might make resorting to spanking more appealing on some level.
2) Antispanking advocates need to be careful when the community is low-income and also non-white and the advocate in question is a middle or upper income white person. For example, I personally wouldn’t feel comfortable going around the aforementioned community trying to start up an antispanking thing, because I feel that no matter how well-intentioned, I as a middle-class white person (not to mention young and childless) would be more likely to be met with resistance than anything else if I tried to lecture people on their parenting habits. Obviously this does not apply to all antispanking advocates (for all I know about the antispanking world it might not even apply to most), but for some it is something to keep in mind.
It is really hard on a kid – from an adult’s perspective, they “deserve” it, and therefore the kid should just “grin and bear it” – but it’s really frightening and painful to be physically dominated by someone twice your size, against whom you have no chance.
Most of my father’s punishments were administered after stern warnings to stop the behavior (i.e. not coming home in time for dinner; not going to bed; picking on my brothers). Or they were behaviors which I had already been warned and punished about, therefore (to him) requiring no further warnings. Yes, it sucked, but it could have been worse – there are many kids who are beaten worse than I ever was, for far less (or nothing). Thanks though for your sympathy.
Having said that, I firmly believe that more assertive parenting skills would have produced better behavior on my part, and precluded the perceived need for corporal punishment. I have a good, if rather shallow relationship with my Dad at present (I am 26), but I will always feel as if he was really punishing me for HIS failures as a parent.
I plan not to have kids until I know a lot more about responsible parenting and am therefore more confident that I won’t slide into that lazy belief that I have “no other choice” than to hit my kids.
@ CM No. I don’t have kids, nor do I even want kids. And my parents didn’t get “pleasure” from it. Your parents?
WHen you are being violent your body releases chemicals…endorphins to be precise, therefore whether or not we consciously admit to feeling pleasure, or not we do. That afterwards we may feel regret for the violent behavior does not negate the fact that pleasure was experienced during the act.
Most of my spankings, in retrospect, occurred because puberty hormones were invisibly fucking with my already not-perfectly-neurotypical brain chemistry and making me act like a horrible human being. And yes, being whipped with a belt repeatedly at that point in my life (age 7 – 9) did actually ruin my relationship with my father until I moved out of his house. He’s a wonderful human being, anger issues aside, and I’m really sad that that happened and we suffered for it for a decade.
Now that I understand that my “brattiness” was actually the kind of sensory integration problems that are pretty common in childhood, I actually do understand why a sharp swat (not a prolonged beating) might have been more helpful than hurtful. But so would have swaddling, sitting in a dark room, being sent out to run around the house five times, or about a dozen other things that don’t involve getting beaten up by someone twice your size.
(On the other hand, the only thing that really helped my SID problems was martial arts practice, so I don’t think it’s the hitting so much as the power dynamic that’s the problem.)
What’s profoundly shocking to me was to learn that it’s not only parents that retain a right to hurt their kids in the US – parts of our country still allow *teachers* and *principals* to spank their students – including high schoolers in obviously sexualized situations:
http://hrw.org/reports/2008/us0808/
I’m really glad you brought up children equating love with violence after being hit by their parents. It’s something I had never really thought of before, but this issue is one that I have thought about for a long time especially in relation to what I would do should I have children.
I don’t think hitting a child is right and it serves no purpose other than to establish superiority. However, coming from personal experience, there is a difference between someone hitting out of anger and someone giving a calm spanking. My father hit me twice in my life. Both times he explained to me what I had done, sent me to my room to think about it and then would hit me with a belt a couple times on the bottom to finish the punishment. To this day I have far greater respect for my father than I do for my mother. My mother would hit me out of anger. I always knew that it was coming because she would walk towards me with her hands held up and this crazy look in her eyes and she would just start hitting me wherever she could reach.
Had my parents chosen not to hit me at all I’m sure I would not be a different person than I am today, but perhaps I would have a closer and less resentful relationship with my mother had she not hit me out of anger so many times (especially when I felt like I hadn’t done anything to deserve that kind of treatement).
Having worked with children a bit, but having none of my own, spanking doesn’t really seem to have a purpose. I think that some children are definitely more inclined to act up than others but there are many methods of teaching a child what is right and wrong without resorting to violence.
“Force is the weapon of the weak.”
Ammon Hennessy
WHen you are being violent your body releases chemicals…endorphins to be precise, therefore whether or not we consciously admit to feeling pleasure, or not we do. That afterwards we may feel regret for the violent behavior does not negate the fact that pleasure was experienced during the act.
I’m sorry Renee, but I think that’s a very tenuous use of science to suggest that other people’s parents got pleasure out of spanking them. I don’t want to try to argue you into thinking spanking is OK, because I agree with you and respect what a trigger it is. But I have to draw the line at what you’re implying here.
I was spanked (mildly) as a child. My parents are great people and I have a great relationship with them. I am well aware that my spanking experience was mild and therefore does not reflect everyone else’s, and therefore I don’t expect everyone else to share my attitude. But I think you should also be careful not to assume everyone else’s experiences reflect yours, because I absolutely bridle at the idea that my father and mother got pleasure out of spanking me and “just won’t admit it.” I know they were not acting from a place of pleasure – they were acting from a place of frustration, and whatever endorphins might have been produced probably did not outweigh that.
Reading that over, I don’t mean to come off as if I’m taking your comments super-personally, because of course I know your coments are not All About Me. I just want to point out that there is a spectrum of spanking and a spectrum of motivations behind it. I realize that I was lucky to fall on the particular end of the spectrum where I didn’t have it so bad, and where I am able to look back and accept my parents as imperfect human beings. And so I don’t object at all to your statements about spanking as a practice, but I would be careful not to overgeneralize the people who actually spank.
I remember more than one long road trip sitting in the “way back” of the station wagon when I was small, because there wasn’t the big push for seat belts or safety restraints when I was little. The same thing about how when I was a baby, you put babies to sleep on their stomachs, not their backs like we do today. We know better now. I see spanking in previous generations the same way, in that it wasn’t seen as anything that can harm a child. Now, however, it’s known to not do a thing to change behavior at best, and can cause psychological harm at worst. I’m sure most spankers from previous generations would have opted to not spank if it was seen as actively harmful to a child beyond just the physical pain.
Thanks for this Renee. It horrifies me how many otherwise enlightened folks are casually OK with spanking. As if the injustice of a big person hitting a small, powerless person is somehow rendered acceptable if it means the small person is obedient. Obedience is more comfortable for the adults, for the people with the power.
Parents that are trying to subvert patriarchal parenting need to be very strong in the face of the mockery and hostility they are routinely subjected to. Very strong.
I think there are all kinds of physical and emotional behavior that we group together under the umbrella of “spanking.” I don’t have kids, and when I do I don’t plan to ever hit them, but there’s a huge difference between lightly swatting a fully dressed kid, and restraining a child and whaling on them with a cord or belt. My mother spanked me five times during my entire childhood, and very lightly. She made it known that no other relative was allowed to touch me or physically discipline me. Her intention was never to cause pain, and what I remember as worst about those experiences was how upset she was. By far the most traumatic form of discipline I experienced as a kid was being screamed at, emotionally manipulated, or called names– because that only happened when my mother was at the end of her rope, and she did it out of anger or fear. I was never hit out of anger, and I didn’t experience it as violence. I wouldn’t even remember how many times I’d been spanked if my mother hadn’t spent years apologizing for the time she spanked me because other people in a restaurant told her I was undisciplined, and resolved that that was the last time she’d spank me. I think some of what gets called “spanking” is actually beating, and without completely defending spanking in its milder form, I think it’s fair to distinguish between the behaviors.
I think that part of the problem is that people seem to have such wildly different definitions of the word ‘spanking’. I was spanked as a kid – which is to say, a few times, when I was pretty young (ie, it was difficult or impossible to reason with me) and had either done something so dangerous that it was important that I never do it again, or had hurt someone else deliberately, I was given a few swats on my clothed butt. It hurt a little, but mostly it was upsetting at worst – and because it was so rare, it was always a wake-up call that my parents really meant what they were saying.
What a lot of people are describing as ‘spanking’ in this thread is what I would describe as ‘beating’ – using anything other than the flat of your hand, hitting to cause pain or leave marks – basically, if you’re able to physically feel the aftereffects of a ‘spanking’ more than 5-10 minutes later at most, in my eyes you were beaten, not spanked.
I’m okay with very occasional spanking, although I don’t think it’s necessarily the best disciplinary method. I’m not okay with beating your kids.
I was occasionally smacked as a child – only ever after a clear warning, and not after I got to seven or eight. (I was once struck in anger on the bottom when I was eleven or twelve. It was humiliating.) I don’t think the smacking did me any harm at all.
It quickly became clear, however, that smacking did not make me behave, it made me defiant. Mother would say ‘do that again and I’ll smack you,’ so I’d do it again, so she’d smack me, so I’d do it again, so she’d smack me harder, so I’d cry, and do it again…
What did do me harm, and gave me hangups I’m still wrestling with, was the ‘ethical’ alternative. Being sat on the bottom step and told firmly that my mother didn’t love little girls who did X was very bad for me. I remain convinced that my parents love is conditional (they have never demonstrated that it is not) and by extention, so is the love of everyone else. I feel a constant pressure to be worthy, good enough, lovable enough, and I feel I deserve no better when anyone is harsh or thoughtless.
I’d rather the smacking had worked.
[...] spoil the child. 9 September, 2008 Don’t get me wrong, this is totally a response to Renee’s post over on feministe (as if the title didn’t give it away). I’m posting here because she says here that [...]
People seem to want to differentiate between a smack and a spanking with a belt. For those that think that this is important, I have one question. Can I smack you? If you as another adult do something to me or around me that I find distasteful can I smack you on the butt or the hand? I promise not to leave any physical marks.
I’m sure the answer is no. The only reason we are making this justification argument of smacking versus belt to begin with is because this conversation involves children. If you as an adult feel that you have the right to exist without violence then children deserve the same rights. Violence is violence regardless of the degree. Each act is meant to degrade a person and display power.
Froth, that story makes me so sad. I’m so sorry you had that experience with your parents.
As regards spanking, I too have a real problem with it. My parents spanked me, probably in anger and fed-uppedness, with belts and wooden spoons. They love me more than anything in the world, and I absolutely know that, and I love them back. But to be honest, the spanking did real harm to me. It taught me that reacting to anger with violence aimed at another person is acceptable. I don’t know, maybe I would be as angry as I am now even if they hadn’t spanked me, but somehow I doubt it.
And I don’t have kids, but I was the nanny to a really difficult child for about a year. As in, I thought she might be possessed (I’m only half-joking). She would all of a sudden get this look in her eyes, and you knew trouble was coming. Hitting, shouting at me, biting, bullying other kids – she did it all. I became a fervent convert to the SuperNanny school of childcare, and was very consistent with warnings and timeouts (which sucked, to be honest – it was hard not to give in to the urge to let a tiny thing go in order to keep the peace) and by the end of my time with her she was more well-behaved with me than with her mom (who occassionally spanks). It got so good that all I had to do was say “Maura, do you want me to count?” and she’d correct her behavior. So, IME spanking is not even neccessary, and certainly isn’t worth the damage it causes.
I am the second among four kids and grew up recieving little attention from my parents except for irregular, inconsistant discipline. My parents never showed me any physical affection (or verbal for that matter). My mother was the disciplinarian, and I remember her spanking me (but I have no memories of her hugging me). Physically, it was rather mild, but emotionally, it just reinforced for me the idea that I was not loved, wanted, or worthy of being listened to or treated with respect.I have always believed that the goal of spanking is to make the parent feel better and feel more powerful than the child, but also as a form of humiliation. My relationship with my mother improved after my parent’s divorce, but I still have problems with being touched (this was made worse by the fact that my older sister often beat me up). I have gotten to the point where I can hug and be close with friends, but touching a stranger, even something as simple as a handshake, makes me incredibly tense and uncomfortable. The fact is, spanking is not good for any child, but for the children who are already in bad situations, it can scar them for life.
Renee – no, you may not smack me. But you also may not tell me what to do, put me in timeout, or send me to my room for misbehaving. And while I wouldn’t call the police if you smacked me as hard as my parents did when they spanked me, I most certainly would if you whipped me with a belt. So it seems a little facile to pretend that either the situations or the actions are at all the same thing.
I completely believe that children are beings with rights, but the fact is, emotionally, neurologically, and in terms of social expectations and power, they are not just miniature adults. When you are a parent, you are responsible for teaching your child how to behave, and if you don’t, you and your child will suffer for it. I wouldn’t excuse an adult for hitting me in any context in which we weren’t playing with eachother, but I wouldn’t let an adult tell me what to do either, or ground me, or put me in time out, or speak sternly to me, or give me any order I felt any obligation to follow. But clearly some of these things are expected to be part of a parent child relationship, and I don’t know that it’s useful to draw absolute lines and demonize the people on the other side of them. Personally, if I could have had more spankings and fewer times I got screamed at, or felt my mother needed to isolate me or get away from me because I was “bad,” I would take the “spankings” in a minute, which is something I’m going to think long and hard about when disciplining my kids, because I don’t want to hit them but I don’t want to do emotional damage either.
Renee, I am not sure how well your hypothetical works. I wouldn’t let you send me to my room, make me sit in the corner, or take away my dessert either. There are many things that are part of the adult-child repertoire of behavior that would be ridiculous to attempt between adults.
I’d proffer one exception: children who are big enough to get into dangerous things, but not yet old enough to really understand language. If I have a baby who is just barely big enough to try and reach for the stove or an outlet (even if to just try and remove the outlet covers) or something like that, if they can’t understand/respect the NO just yet, a slap on the wrist might be necessary.
Once I was acting up in the grocery store and my grandpa turned me over right there and gave me a spanking. According to my mother I never acted up in a store ever again. Apparently my dad swatted my butt to teach me not to run into the street. I don’t remember any of this because I was two years old or something. I don’t think the point is to cause pain, it’s the shock value – like when I squirt my cat with water. And frankly, how else do you expect to discourage bad/dangerous behavior in a tiny child who does not yet possess the language or reasoning ability for explanations and time outs?
Definately. I’m also a part of the don’t-have-children-but-have-worked-with-them camp. Some children do respond well to physical correction, but there are a thousand little things that are physical but not hurtful or violent that can aid in discipline. A tap on the shoulder can catch attention just as easily as a swat across the butt.
Being sat on the bottom step and told firmly that my mother didn’t love little girls who did X was very bad for me.
Froth, I too am very saddened to hear about this. One thing I absolutely cannot abide is people who say call children “bad.” “That’s a bad kid” in full earshot of the child, or “you’re just a bad girl” or whatever. I think this is honestly one of the cruelest things that can be done with language, whether you are the child’s parent or not, and there is pretty much no excuse for it. A kid’s parents saying they don’t love her or him is maybe worse.
I can only remember being spanked once as a kid, when I had put myself in physical danger somehow (I can’t think what it was, now, I just remember the spanking.) It wasn’t something my parents believed in doing, and it only happened that once because I had frightened them — but I do honestly believe it was a loss of control on my father’s part, and that he did it because he wasn’t “together” enough at that moment to come up with a more effective, less violent method of discipline.
He grew up with an abusive father (not just one that believed in corporal punishment — genuinely abusive, by anyone’s definition) and made the decision never to hit his kids. So it was a big deal when he did it that time, and I think he was very disturbed by the fact that he had done it.
Anyway, I don’t think I would spank my kids either, were I planning on having them. Since I don’t have childhood memories of spankings, it’s something I associate purely with sex and foreplay (it being one of my kinks) and as a result it strikes me as a really odd thing to do to a child. I wouldn’t want to do something I associate with sex to my kid.
I do not plan on ever becoming a parent and the mild spankings I received very occasionally as a young child don’t bother me, but for what my opinion is worth, I just don’t really get the phenomenon of spanking. Spanking a kid in anger and causing physical harm is just obviously unacceptable, but I see the calm, measured, spanking-for-discipline thing as just creepy.
Spanking is such a common sexual activity that I feel like I can’t avoid the sexual undertones of spanking a child. My dad stopped spanking me at around age eight or so, but he threatened to do so until I headed off to college at age 18. Same went for my sister. He wanted me to be afraid of violence, but instead I was just seriously skeeved out and incredulous that he would even say that. Neither the intended effect nor the actual effect got me to behave the way he wanted me to. It just made me respect him less and sure as hell didn’t do anything to improve our relationship.
I am a single, mother of three, college student, employed full time and I believe in spanking my children, if necessary, to discipline them. I believe it is just as much my right to teach my children and discipline my children the way I see fit just as fiercely as any other rights an onlooker from the outside may try to take away from me. I have loved my children from the moment I laid eyes on them and I deal with their individual personalites differently. They do not get spanked for every thing but when my son pissed on the wall at Catholic School – he got spanked. He never did it again. My children know that there are varied extremes of consequences for their actions at home and in the real world. They are respectful to me, their teachers, and to others. I realize others may have had bad experiences and that is terrible. This is what works for my family. It is up to you to decide how you will handle yours.
My sister and I got beat with the belt (no more than three whacks, as we’re girls). Mine lasted until I displayed no reaction to the beating, at which point my parents were at a loss. So I’d say that while I’m undecided about “abusive”, certainly spanking is the lazy way out, more often than not.
Not that I have any effing clue what would’ve worked on me. Part of having no way of knowing is, how much of my later behaviour was shaped by early spanking? (I am going to chew on this all day now.)
I think another thing to be careful about is the part where by implying “spanking is violence, violence is abuse”, you’re implying that a person’s parents were abusive. Or leastways coming close enough to trigger defensiveness, blood being thicker than blog posts, after all. “I love my parents and they love me, so what they did wasn’t abusive!” Meh, tricky waters.
This reminds me Lisa Whelchel’s deeply disturbing book, Creative Correction. (Yes, that’s Blair from Facts of Life.) She advocates some absolutely bizarre disciplinary techniques, like putting Tabasco sauce on a child’s tongue as a punishment for using taboo words, or pulling a child across the street by her hair if she refuses to take your hand.
Or, out of nowhere, as she’s walking with her children she’ll command them, “Walk backwards.” Her admitted “favorite curve” is to reply to “May I use the bathroom?” with “No.” Just to make sure that the children know they are allowed no self-will: SHE is in absolute and total control at all times.
Entomologista: for whatever reason, your being spanked worked in this situation for its apparent intended purpose – to get you to behave. However, if you had continued on with the objectionable behavior, and received repeated spankings, I think the shock value would wear off and you would get to the pain part pretty fast.
I don’t understand why a parent would continue spanking a child repeatedly for repeating the same mistake. Obviously the spanking isn’t working, so you have to wonder what the motivation is.
Lauren O: I was just about to write about about that. As an adult, I actually find that spanking fantasies (involving an older man and teenage girl) turn me on. I’m not that happy about it, but the fact remains that it’s true. And it creeps me out that this (mild) fetish of mine could have something to do with the corporal punishment I received as a child.
My parents spanked me and my two sisters growing up. I hated it, because it wasn’t like they used their hand, so that they could feel how hard they were hitting us: they used a yardstick. At first it was a regular, thin yardstick, but one day my sister was antagonizing the youngest, I was trying to get her to stop, and my dad grabbed me and broke “Mr Stick” over my ass.
Take a minute to think about that: he broke a yardstick over my ass, and I wasn’t even the one misbehaving. That shit still bothers me, even today. I can’t believe he just came in swinging like that; didn’t even stop to see what was the problem, or try to talk to us in any way. He just grabbed the first girl he saw and hit her as hard as he could.
After that, we had a BIGGER yardstick: it was one inch square. That shit left welts.
Neither of my parents ever really talked to us about why the things we did were wrong, or why we shouldn’t do them. We behaved, not because it was the right thing to do, but because if we didn’t, we’d get beaten. That’s not discipline, that’s fear, plain and simple.
moni2238 wrote:
“but when my son pissed on the wall at Catholic School – he got spanked.”
You probably should have given him a reward.
An occasional swat on the but in certain situations is understandable, I think. Another commenter mentioned a swat as a useful way to get a kid’s attention when they’re big enough to get into serious trouble, but not old enough to be reasoned with. I swatted my godson on his butt when he reached for a hot pot on the stove, and another time when he tried to stick a twisted up gum wrapper in an electric outlet. But in most situations, I’m against it. If you spank your kids once they’re past the age of reason, you’re just teaching them that it’s okay for people to hit other people if they have “permission” for some reason.
My dad used to hit me and it traumatized the crap out of me. I would instinctively flinch when people tossed something to me–like car keys or a pack of smokes or whatever. Once, when I was 12, I left my jacket at school, and when I didn’t have it in the morning, my dad slapped me across the face. Another time my dad beat the crap out of me because I spent the night at my friend’s house, which I had permission to do, but she had moved, so I wasn’t where I was supposed to be. All any of this ever did was make me think of my father as an unreasonable, dickheaded fucking coward. I still have a relationship with him, but that kind of punishment started me out as an adult with a lot to recover from.
The line between spanking and abuse can get smudged, and if you regularly spank your kids, you might not recognize it when and if you do cross the line. Outside of quick, corrective behavior when kids don’t have a lot of language skills yet, I don’t think it’s a good teaching tool. at all.
Neither of my parents ever really talked to us about why the things we did were wrong, or why we shouldn’t do them. We behaved, not because it was the right thing to do, but because if we didn’t, we’d get beaten.
Besides making for an unpleasant childhood, this doesn’t lead to healthy adulthood (not that I’m saying you’re not a healthy adult, just that you would have to overcome attitudes of fear to reach adult attitudes of responsibility). The point of parenting isn’t just to make your kids obey you all the time, it’s also to teach them how to function on their own in the world. Training your kids to be adults who cower from and resent authority figures is just dumb and not helpful for society at large. It’s just a bad idea. Obviously non-abusive spanking can be paired with conversation and reason, but it seems to be pretty easy to let physical punishment become a substitute for those things.
On another note, calling the ruler “Mr. Stick” is a particularly bizarre and goosebump-provoking detail. That’s some messed up shit, soul donut.
“Violence is violence regardless of age.”
Also, violence is violence regardless of age.
Which is why the points about Renee not being able to put people in time out or take other parental disciplinary actions don’t really work. Renee’s point is not that all parental disciplinary actions should translate into adult-to-adult conflicts. We don’t want to be smacked or hit because we recognize someone taking their negative feelings out on us physically is inherently wrong. If you think you don’t deserve to be hit simply because you’re an adult then likely you have internalized the kind of ageist beliefs that continue to oppress children.
pisaquari,
My discomfort is with making the standard for whether or not a parent is taking anger out on a child whether or not the child was hit. Any discipline should be done out of concern, not anger. In my childhood, I was spanked out of concern, when I’d endangered myself or someone else, with great trepidation and recrimination and apology on my mother’s part, even though I never experienced any physical pain because “spanking” was a swat on the bottom. The things that stick with me are the times I was called pig or traitor or told I made my mother want to kill herself. That is what haunts me as an adult, and makes me think less of myself, and that is what I have to work against in my own relationships– both saying cruel and manipulative things to the people I love, and putting up with verbal abuse because I think that’s what people do when they care. And when we draw this line between “good” discipline being not hitting and bad discipline being hitting, we erase that light spanking can be done out of concern, and things like time out or chastising can be done out of anger, or for very screwed up reasons.
Well, Renee might not be able to give you a time out or tell you what to do, but most people’s bosses/supervisors have the power to discipline them along a whole range of actions from ‘little talks’ to bad reviews to docking pay to suspension to firing. Spanking or other physical violence still would not be tolerated, even if it was an equally dangerous situation (mining or pouring metal or working with heavy weight or dangerous chemicals or traffic or firearms etc).
As mentioned above, there are even some schools that are allowed to discipline kids physically. Try to get your head around a college professor doing the same thing. There really is a difference in what kids are supposed to tolerate.
Also, as an adult, you might not let Renee put you in a time-out or send you to your room, but if she was your boss, your commanding officer or your judge/juror, you’d be obligated to comply with some very similar rules. We do recognize that some people have the authority to force others to do things they may not want to do, by virtue of experience/rank/merit/whatever you want to call it. The parent/child relationship one example of this — just one of many. But it’s the only one where the recognized authority to direct, discipline and/or punish extends to cover violence.
^ And yugenue and I just said the exact same thing. Sorry.
Eva – YES. Exactly. I’m not pro-spanking but it bothers me that we see endless discussions on how horrible it is to smack your child lightly on the butt, but rarely any discussion on other ways parents can damage their children. Like you, I found being yelled at by my mother far, far more damaging than being calmly swatted on the butt by my father. Yelling at your children is just as acceptable as spanking, why no discussion on that?
And when we draw this line between “good” discipline being not hitting and bad discipline being hitting, we erase that light spanking can be done out of concern, and things like time out or chastising can be done out of anger, or for very screwed up reasons.
No one is arguing that bad discipline consists solely of hitting. Another lie from childhood: “Sticks and stones …”
“I love my parents and they love me, so what they did wasn’t abusive!” Meh, tricky waters.
When I was a kid bike helmets and car seats didn’t exist. My mother isn’t retroactively abusive or neglectful because she didn’t provide us with these things. Parents have more information now – isn’t that a good thing? Do we keep letting kids crack their heads open falling off bikes to spare feelings?
Besides making for an unpleasant childhood, this doesn’t lead to healthy adulthood (not that I’m saying you’re not a healthy adult, just that you would have to overcome attitudes of fear to reach adult attitudes of responsibility).
In hindsight, I can see why they wanted me to behave. I understand what they were TRYING to get at, but I can see they went about it in the absolute wrong way. They fucked me up proper, whether they realize it or not: I wet myself all through kindergarten and first grade because when the teachers told me I had to stay in my seat, I was too afraid to tell them I was having an emergency.
On another note, calling the ruler “Mr. Stick” is a particularly bizarre and goosebump-provoking detail. That’s some messed up shit, soul donut.
Well, I’m glad I’m not the only one who found it more than a little unsettling. It was mostly my mom who called it that, and she was…just not right. Not right at all. Who seriously holds down their kid and forces them to eat cat food? And laughs about it? She had a lot more wrong with her than just her penchant for violence. It makes me wonder what her parents did to her. I feel sick when I think about what she must have gone through.
I agree that all discipline should be done out of concern. Spanking a child is not the only way to teach them. You have to talk to them. I try to make sure my children know exactly what it is that they have done before ANY type of punishment. I think the guy in the link with the 2 by 2′s is sick. I do not believe that any one has the right to spank anyone else’s children. I do take offense at the sexual implications that people try to tie in with spanking, just as much as I take offense at people who try to tie in breastfeeding with the very sexual act of getting your nipples sucked. (I have had it happen) They are not the same thing! I don’t feel that spanking a child is lazy, trust me raising children is exhaustive – physically and mentally and the more children your have the more distinctly individual personalities you learn to teach, love, and dicipline. Parenting is so critical to our society and physical & mental child abuse is hard to control. Most people are capable of conception; not all are capable of being a responsible parent.
“I believe it is just as much my right to teach my children and discipline my children the way I see fit just as fiercely as any other rights an onlooker from the outside may try to take away from me.”
Um. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but while the OP and most of the posts on this thread are dealing with, you know, whether or not spanking is a good idea, you’re claiming that you have the right to spank if you want. Not only is it askew from the point of the thread – we’re talking about whether spanking is moral and effective, not whether it should be legal; no one is advocating here that your children should be taken away – but it’s a really, really creepy way of looking at the issue. Your children are not property. You do not have the right to do whatever you want to or with them – you can’t sell them, you can’t flog them, you can’t give them full-body tattoos; child abuse laws are not about taking rights away from parents, but about protecting the rights of children, and coming in and saying ‘they’re my children and I can do what I want with them’, like they were pet dogs and you were being told that you couldn’t neuter them…
… yeah, that’s the mindset a lot of corporal punishment boosters tend to have. Creeeepy.
I get and agree with that Eva.
My point was not, nor have I understood it to be the point of this thread, that angry discipline manifests only as hitting. Or that the defining line between good and bad disciplines rest only in matters of spanking. My comment was reserved specifically for spanking.
Verbal and emotional abuse can be just as bad as hitting if not worse, absolutely. Your examples prove just as much–I am sorry that happened to you.
Yes, it’s absolutely true that my boss, the state, etc, have methods at their disposal to discipline me should I break their rules. It’s also absolutely true that those methods differ in kind and scope from those available to my parents when I misbehaved as a child.
Of course, it’s also true that neither the state nor my boss have anything like the kind of power over me that my parents did when I was a child, and that’s for a very simple reason – I am an adult, and my judgement and knowledge is much more comprehensive and trustworthy than it was when I was a child.
Some people in this thread want to make the line between these two types of discipline about violence and not-violence – but the state rather obviously has at least a de facto right, and in many cases a de jure right, to use violence against me up to and including that which results in my death. I’d draw the acceptable line rather at ‘lasting consequences’. You do not have the right to inflict non-ephemeral punishments upon your children, whether that’s a beating or a verbal reaming that they remember for the rest of their life.
That’s for the simple reason that children are children, and they’re neither capable of thinking through the outcomes of their actions nor competent to face adult-style consequences. That’s why we don’t try children as adults when they commit a crime, and why we don’t allow them the same level of control over their lives that we do adults.
I wouldn’t let you send me to my room, make me sit in the corner, or take away my dessert either. There are many things that are part of the adult-child repertoire of behavior that would be ridiculous to attempt between adults.
Cecily, I would offer my experience parenting, that I am raising a wonderful, sometimes misbehaving but generally well-demeanored child without putting him in the corner, taking away his dessert (how cruel!), or making him sit in time-out. There are ways to parent without punishment, as well.
I treat my son like I treat any other person who is worthy of my love and respect. That does not mean that he is treated like a miniature adult, but it does mean that I always take into consideration his needs (and often his wants).
For example, if my son is acting inappropriately in a store, I take a second to stop and think – is he hungry? is he tired? is he bored? How can I adjust my behavior to get a better attitude out of him? I KNOW, deep in my heart, that my son wants to be a good person, and wants to behave well…all kids do. He’s not being naughty just to be a little shit – he needs something – even if it is just to get the fuck out of Target because it’s loud and overwhelming and he’s hungry and shopping is BORING! So just like if I were shopping with my mom (who has the social and verbal skills to clearly express to me that she is DONE with shopping and wants to go home) I try to consider his needs as well. Does this mean sometimes he has to suck it up and continue shopping with me? Ayup, sometimes. But I also try to take a second to remind him what we are there to do, and give him a time frame so he feels like he has some control over his situation as well.
I maintain that kids need to have sense that they have choices and some power in their lives. Just like my partner, my mom, my sister, myself…we are all allowed to make mistakes, to act like a brat or selfish, and most importantly need to be reminded how to be a decent person. It doesn’t end with childhood!
Mad:
If I creeped you (or anyone) out it was not my intention. No mention was made of any other form of child abuse until I voiced my opinion so I do not understand how it was distracting from the point of the thread. Furthermore I am not afraid of my children being taken away from me but discussions on spanking – its moral implications and effectiveness do tend to lead to statements about child abuse laws taking rights away from parents. Spanking does not equal child abuse and it seemed to me that equation was being drawn here.
My children are not property but my responsibility from the moment I conceived them, carried them, and squeezed them out – which is a little bit different from the relationship with a pet dog you get from the rescue. They are my babies. I am not a corporal punishment booster but I feel that how families dicipline their children is personal and up to the parents to decide and maybe there should be more help given to parents on dicipline in general. I hate to imagine a home where a child is abused like you describe. I just don’t agree with you 100% and meant to add perspective from the parenting end.
I hope you heal.
You do not have the right to inflict non-ephemeral punishments upon your children, whether that’s a beating or a verbal reaming that they remember for the rest of their life.
I don’t mean this snarkily, but isn’t the point of any punishment, including the most responsible and healthy discipline, to be memorable? Kid draws on the wall, you send them to their room. The next time they go to draw on the wall, they remember the time-out and stop. (Again, I’m not trying to be a smartass, and I very much agree with your point that drawing a line between physical and non-physical punishment is reductive.)
I do take offense at the sexual implications that people try to tie in with spanking, just as much as I take offense at people who try to tie in breastfeeding with the very sexual act of getting your nipples sucked.
I’m not sure I agree with this parallel. Breasts exist to feed babies. It’s their evolutionary purpose. That they attract others and give pleasure to their owners is totally secondary.
Spanking doesn’t have an evolutionary purpose. It’s a specific act that was invented by humans and can have whatever context society gives it. I am sure that the vast vast majority of parents who spank their children do not do so for any sexual purpose. But because it has sexual social connotations, the act of spanking, when applied to children, just gives me the jibblies. That says nothing about its moral or legal viability necessarily. I just personally find it creepy.
I was given a few sharp swats on my bum as a child when I was misbehaving badly. I don’t see anything wrong with it – it was like spraying water on a cat, or swatting a bad puppy on the nose. It doesn’t work for every child, but I didn’t have a problem with it and didn’t find it abusive at all.
Lauren O: I think there is a difference between ‘leaving memories’ and ‘lasting effects’. I certainly remember the times I was spanked…but I also remember the times I was yelled at, and frankly I was a lot more worried about whether my mother loved me etc, when she yelled at me.
But regardless, when I say ‘ephemeral’, I mean that while the child may remember it, it’s not the kind of punishment they’ll carry for their whole lives – because no child deserves that.
And yeah, I don’t agree that spanking falls into that category.
I think I may have a different perspective to offer on this than, perhaps, anyone else who has commented here. Maybe I flatter myself, but I’ll try to explain.
Here goes… ::ahem::
My mother was raised in a verbally/emotionally abusive household, but she was very rarely hit. She got a couple of swat-on-the-butt-type spankings from her father, and a couple of moonbat-crazy-type beatings from her (we now realize) probably manic-depressive mother. She never intended to hit me, ever.
She did swat me on the butt, once, when I was four years old. It didn’t hurt, just shocked the hell out of my four-year-old-never-been-touched-self. I had hid from her in a department store, and the swatting I received shocked me into realizing the importance of what I had done. When we got home, she read me a childrens’ book about a Sesame Street character who had got lost in the mall, just to make sure I completely understood why she had reacted as she did. I never did it again. In fact, I clung to her in public places after that.
My father’s father was physically abusive. He swore that the cycle would end with him. He has never, to this day, raised a hand to me. (I’m now in my early 20s.)
Unfortunately, they divorced when I was three.
When I was six, my mother remarried. My stepfather was a Vietnam vet from an insanely abusive (verbal, emotional, psychological, and yes, sexual) conservative-Christian Midwestern family. He barely lived through his childhood.
The first time he made my mother beat me with a belt was six months after they were married. She cried as she did it, but after that the belt became a very familiar instrument of punishment in my household. Around the time I was ten, it became a studded belt. In between belt-whippings were beatings of a more regular out-of-control-rage, hands-based type. These only occurred when Mom wasn’t around, at least until he started drinking when I was a teenager.
It became clear to me long before then, however, that the concerned-parent shtick he put on in front of my mother (“Do it, or she’ll just get worse later; this is for her own good, honey”) was just a front, a facade he put on to make himself look better in front of her. He hit me because he was angry. He beat me because he was angry. Eventually, he left welts that bled because he was angry. It was all on the same continuum. He was angry, and I suffered for it.
The atmosphere he brought with him could only exist for so long without poisoning our entire house. My mother eventually joined him, beating me with a belt independently of his admonitions. Eventually I realized that she was angry, too. It had nothing to do with me.
We all have a relationship now, but it took my moving out to achieve it. As long as he had power over her, she would never stop being abusive toward me; as long as he had power over me, he would think it well within his rights to beat me until I bled.
I told him once, several years ago, that I wanted to do better by my future children than had been done by me. The implication was clear. His eyes welled up with tears, and he said, “Don’t you think I wanted to do better?” It is the closest we have ever come to speaking of it, but I think it says it all.
I firmly, firmly, with every fiber of my being, believe that a swat on the rear and a spanking can be two different things. A swift, attention-getting swat on the rear, especially when followed up with a conversation in which an understanding is reached about why the swat was administered (though if such a talk can be had, I see no real point to the swat in the first place), can be useful in parenting. But spanking? Hurts. And physically hurting a child is unacceptable. This is non-negotiable in my mind. I cannot for the life of me understand how this point could be debated.
Purposeful pain is only inflicted out of anger. Acting on that anger is no more than venting. And I agree 110% with Renee: the parents who inflict physical pain on their children do so because it feels good to act out that physical anger that wells up inside them.
I know because I can feel those impulses in me, too. I am horrified to have to report, in the interest of full disclosure, that slapping someone in the face when you’re super-pissed off feels great.
Until the guilt kicks in. And then you deny that it felt great, because all you feel is sorry.
Renee, as a fellow human being and belt-survivor, I am behind this post with every part of my heart and soul. I applaud your courage in writing about something so triggering and painful, and I look forward to seeing more of your writing in the future. Thank you for providing people like me a space to have this conversation with you.
Just to throw another analogy into the mix: there are situations in which adults are allowed to physically restrain other adults. If a patient in the hospital begins seizing, nurses are allowed to inject him with Ativan (even though we do not generally recognize the right of strangers to go around injecting each other with things). If a person is on a violent spree, police are allowed to physically stop him.
Of course these scenarios are about restraint, not discipline. So they are not perfectly analagous to all forms of physical discipline, except perhaps to the situations described in which a child is big enough to hurt himself, but not yet developed enough to understand how not to. (Going near a hot stove, finger in the socket, etc.) In those instances a swat on the butt arguably acts as a form of restraint – although a crude form, to be sure.
I used the analogies above because a seizing person, and occasionally a person on a violent spree, is not mentally in the place where they’re going to respond to a rational, verbal approach. And sometimes, a child isn’t either. They are not mini-adults.
And I have to add that when I personally talk about “spanking,” I’m thinking about a smack on the butt, tops. As soon as belts or sticks or anything that involves raising welts get involved, as far as I’m concerned that is not spanking, it’s beating.
I host a website, http://www.nopaddle.com, about school paddling as physical abuse, sexual abuse, and sexual harassment. Many here may not know this, but school paddling through age 19 continues in 21 US states, and very heavily in the “deep South” where it was born in slavery. Paddling is often meted out to teen girls by male paddlers and/or witnesses, and these days is likely videotaped by internet-linked spy and security cameras in many schools.
As many respondants have reported here, many people have hidden spanking fetishies, including school paddlers.
No matter how pure the spanker’s motives, however, and even if it is a parent, we can never know the sexual and S/M effects on a child, who is unable to verbalize it or understand it.
Many are surprised to learn tha the New Testament does not teach anyone to hit anyone.
There is no good reason to hit a child’s buttocks, and a long and growing list of scientifically proven reasons not to.
My kids are 6 and 8. They have been hit or “swatted” or any other form of physical or verbal or emotional abuse in our family.
Kids learn love down to every cell in their bodies because they don’t consciously or rationally remember much from very early childhood. Pain deliberately caused by parents who “love” them teaches each cell in their bodies that pain equals love. And that can start them on a lifetime of seeking relationships that will cause them pain.
My kids get nothing but hugs, snuggles, kisses, positive reinforcement – love to every cell I call it. We have a “no hit ever” rule in our family. For discipline, we use time-outs and separations so that they have some time to reconnect with their natural desire to want to please their parents and lower their stimulation levels. It works.
Of course, I meant They have *never* been hit or “swatted” or any other form of physical or verbal or emotional abuse in our family.
This kind of conversation opens a wide spectrum of experience for me. As a child, my dad was fairly reasonable, but I wasn’t. So whenever I misbehaved, the result would be the stick end of the feather duster, which stung for at least two hours, but only came after I’d done something really special that warranted such behaviour. So physical punishment in my home was lasting, but effective in making me behave. I never felt unloved as a result of being swatted, because my dad was rather matter-of-fact in delivering it: “I told you not to do it, and you did it, here are the consequences.” His methods of discipline was fairly varied, and he would encourage me to do more good things, possibly to distract me from misbehaving.
So, the very rare swat is fine by me – constant spanking bothers me. But children who are never spanked and act out as a result bug me more, because by that time it’s probably too late to discipline them much – reasonable methods or not. I don’t mind corporal punishment at school (although, I’m convinced that compared to many other schools, particularly compared to those here in North America, my school probably got it right – corporal punishment was based on a point system; you had to do something really bad before getting it)
My mother rarely hit me, unless it was out of some hideous anger, but HER methods of getting me to behave was far worse – verbal abuse, emotional blackmail, guilt manipulation… she would weep and tell me how much she sacrificed for my sake and how awful it was to be a parent – that didn’t discipline me; it just told me that underneath it all, she didn’t actually want me.
And to this day, I get along far better with my corporal punishment dad than I do with my emotionally abusive mother.
But obviously, different strokes for different folks.
I just want to say thank you to everyone who had the courage to share their stories here. I know that it can be a very triggering thing to do. As someone who has still not healed from my dances with the belt reading your commentaries has helped me to not feel as isolated. Childhood spanking is unfortunately continues to happen to much but survivors seldom speak out as openly as they have in this thread.
Despite the distinction made in this thread between a swat and the belt, I stand firmly in my belief that hitting a child for any reason is completely wrong and should never be tolerated. I am sure that my experiences with the belt have made me into a vocal anti-spanker. I simply cannot see a distinction and I don’t feel like this is a bad thing because it means I am always advocating for the rights of the child. When I touch my children, I want them to feel nothing but their mothers undying love and devotion. I want them to know that they are my entire world. To confuse that message with violence would teach them love and hitting go hand in hand. This is not the kind of message I wish to send.
I have to say how angry some of this thread makes me. There is an assumption running right through that your children will understand if you talk to them, that smacking them (not beating them!) is redundant at best, abusive at worst.
Not all children are able. Not all children are capable of being reasoned with. My elder brother is mentally handicapped. He didn’t say his first word until he was six. His short-term memory is so poor that if you ask him what he did that day, he won’t know. He is somewhat autistic. Age 21, he functions roughly at the level of a five or six year old, so you can imagine what he was like when he was five or six.
How, exactly, was my mother supposed to reason with him? Smacking was the only form of discipline possible with a child with no language skills who wouldn’t remember after five minutes that he had been sent to his room, let alone why.
Froth, my cats aren’t capable of being reasoned with, either, but funnily enough I can get them to behave without hitting them.
Your cats are incapable of a lot of things, including being a good example!
But children who are never spanked and act out as a result bug me more, because by that time it’s probably too late to discipline them much – reasonable methods or not.
I said this upthread, but once more with feeling: lots of kids who have never been spanked wind up extremely well-behaved. Lots of kids who have been spanked wind up little terrors. (I still love the little terrors, because I love all small children, but they do make one’s job harder when one’s job involves getting them to do things). ESPECIALLY, lots of kids who are often spanked wind up much more difficult to deal with, because you cannot explain to them that hitting is bad the way you can explain it to a child who has never been spanked. Sure, there is a difference between a parent spanking and a kid hitting another kid. Seven-year-olds either cannot or willfully refuse to understand this distinction.
You want more than my anecdata? Fine. Major study links spanking of children to later aggression and behavior problems:
After analyzing six decades of expert research on corporal punishment, psychologist Elizabeth Gershoff, found links between spanking and 10 negative behaviors or experiences in children, including aggression, anti-social behavior and mental health problems.
Now I am the first person to yell “CORRELATION DOES NOT EQUAL CAUSATION.” However, LACK of correlation can be used to prove lack of causation, so clearly, spanking does not produce nonagressive behavior, social behavior, or improved mental health. Once again: spanking does not produce better-behaved kids. It creates instant obedience, but this does not turn into a long-term pattern of better behavior. To defend spanking because of kids who act out later is:
a) to imply that all kids who act out have never been spanked (which is false), and
b) to imply that kids who have been spanked turn out better-behaved, which is also false.
Do I think all parents who spank are abusive? No. Do I think emotional abuse is generally worse for a kid’s mental and emotional health than non-severe physical punishment or sometimes even physical abuse, and is also woefully neglected in discussions about child abuse? YES A THOUSAND TIMES YES. But to defend spanking on the grounds that otherwise kids will act out, or that not-spanking produces more uncontrollable kids, is like defending it on the grounds that it makes kids taller. It just isn’t true.
Isabel: Maybe it’s just my experience, then. When I was growing up, those kids whose parents never beat them were divided to the two ends of the spectrum; either they were bullies who knew their parents would always take their side, or they were placid and thus, bullied. Then there were the angry kids like me whose parents wouldn’t beat them, but yell at them instead.
There is a very big difference between a swat on the ass or two and a whipping with a belt. Conflating the two is not helpful.
I am a parent of two. One is a two year old, who gets the odd swat to stop him from whatever he’s doing (assuming that talking, or a quick shout doesn’t do it). As stated, that’s fine. But implement an anti-spanking law and watch some over-zealous asshole call social services on me.
The other is a 13 year old. At wits’ end, I spanked her a couple of times when she was about 8. She has ADHD and a rather severe learning disability, and a food intolerance that makes her nuts when she eats it. None of this was diagnosed. Does it make me an abuser to try the only thing left? I don’t think so. But some of you clearly do. She was out of control and I smacked her clothed butt about 5 times, barehanded. And yet, some of you would make this a criminal act.
I don’t think spanking should be a regular part of a discipline program, but criminalizing parents who are doing their best and occasionally spank (open handed over clothes – NOT a beating) is ridiculous.
@froth (apt name, I suspect): Well I’m angry too. I’m angry that people resort to spanking because they don’t have the support or information to parent another way. I’m angry that anyone would decide that if a 3 year old can’t be reasoned with, that spanking is somehow the answer. I have never hit my child, who is 3. Somehow we have managed. Somehow he hasn’t been seriously injured, run in front of a car, stuck his finger in an outlet, etc.
How, exactly, was my mother supposed to reason with him? Smacking was the only form of discipline possible with a child with no language skills who wouldn’t remember after five minutes that he had been sent to his room, let alone why.
Did the smacking work? And if so, ever ask yourself why?
Renee, thank you for this post, and Annabel, thank you VERY much for posting about raising your children without punishment. You said:
There are ways to parent without punishment, as well.
I treat my son like I treat any other person who is worthy of my love and respect. That does not mean that he is treated like a miniature adult, but it does mean that I always take into consideration his needs (and often his wants).
I am so glad someone said this on this thread. I was raised without any punishment and I am a completely non-agressive, non-violent person very much in touch with my own needs. My mother is a developmental physchologist and the author of several books about non-punitive parenting. I highly recommend her articles about spanking and “misbehavior”:
Don’t spank your children
Why do children “misbehave”?
It is a bit frightening to see so many people defending spanking or “swaps.” Spanking is violence. It teaches your child that violence is acceptable. Children learn a lot from the behavior modeled by their parents and the other adults in their lives – perhaps more than from the verbal words those adults use. The best way to raise a non-aggressive child is to be that way yourself.
I wrote about corporal punishment in schools a couple weeks ago: Corporal punishment in schools.
I think that spanking teaches children that violence is the primary source of authority, which is a lesson that proves itself true in the case of corporal punishment. I feel that “sparing the rod” also has its lessons, using other forms of punishment. Deprivation of things or privileges teaches the child that material things are the source of power. Grounding teaches that social connections, or the power to isolate, imprison, or disconnect people is the source of power. Punishments not only teach obedience and social values, but they also teach the child what the highest form of power is, as it is wielded.
In a strange way, the best logic in defense of spanking is the fact that the child lives in a culture where corporal punishment of children occurs, which probably means that the power structure of that society is founded upon the use or threat of violence to exert dominance. Children who would not be spanked in this culture would be at a disadvantage with their more violence-accustomed peers. Spanking that is regular and consistent with rules will create authoritarian-violent lessons (programming the fear-obedient and soldiers), but beatings that are erratic and not based on any rules will create chaotic-violent lessons (programming psychopaths, sociopaths, and other trauma-induced disorders)*
*note: this is not scientific, but a generalization which I acknowledge as such for the sake of brevity. I also recognize that all trauma survivors to not become sociopaths, and vice versa, but I am not trying to write a 5 page research paper here. :)
Needless to say, psychopaths are not controllable, and some make talented killers and criminals, though a few make great leaders (of cults as well as institutions). Soldiers, however, are the foundation of every empire, and make useful and obedient weapons platforms (and/or child-bearers). The point here is that spanking is authoritarian (productive), while beatings are sadistic (unproductive). Every society wants obedient subjects, not ones that want to horrifically dismember it.
This explains why it is called “corporal” punishment (bodily punishment, but also reminiscent of army “corps” as in submitting individual will to a larger body) and also why it is loved by religious institutions which were formerly military powers, and also the military (hazing rituals).
It is not that I condone the beating of children (far from it), but that in the least moralistic and most mechanical sense, it is a purposeful practice that programs members of a group to have certain values and respond with a certain set of behaviors in violence-based societies.
Any thoughts?
This thread, as said, make me angry. Because enacting violence upon a person, for any reason IS NOT OKAY.
We have laws against corporal punishment for children, and no one I know has turned out to little monsters. Certainly none of us three siblings are badly behaved.
Shall I tell you of the one punishment I remember, when I usually don’t even remember things from even a few years back? I was little. I can’t tell you how young, but I had a fever, and my dad was going to check it by a butt-thermometer. I obviously didn’t like this, and fussed. Me swatted me on the butt, which caused me to fall down from the table. I don’t know if the swat itself hurt, but falling on my back on the floor sure hurt. If he hadn’t swatted me, I wouldn’t have fallen off, and I wouldn’t remember it.
I just don’t get what’s so hard to understand. You do just not enact violence upon anybody, even less a child.
I can’t speak to anyone else’s experience, and I don’t know that my own experiences will mean anything to anyone else, but here’s my childhood in a nutshell.
The only thing we (my brother and I) ever got spanked for in my household was lying. There were a lot of ways to get in trouble, but coming clean always meant less trouble and lying always meant a spanking. When I was caught in a lie, the parents always sat me down to talk with me about it and hear my side of the story. If it was determined that I had, in fact, willfully lied (as opposed to a misunderstanding or mistake), Mom (a cream puff) and Dad (a hard-liner) would go back to their room to discuss punishment. As I said, the punishment for lying was spanking.
Spankings were always administered bare hand to bare skin. Whichever parent was delivering it would sit down, explain again why we were being spanked, and then deliver it–in a calm frame of mind without anger. And, yeah, it hurt–that was the point–but it never left marks or swelling or bruising or anything but a reminder not to sit down for a few minutes. And when it was over, it was over–no isolation, no silent treatment, no glares, no passive aggression, over.
Maybe I was abused, I don’t know. I don’t feel like I was. I didn’t like it, but I understood it. It didn’t make me feel like my parents didn’t like or love me. It didn’t even make me feel like they were mad at me. And it didn’t make me feel like I was a bad person–just that I had done a bad thing (which I had) that I didn’t need to do again. And it left me with a real respect for honesty. Obviously, it was something that my parents found more important than anything, if they were willing to take that drastic step for that and only that.
I like the way my parents raised me. I liked their team approach to discipline–it meant that they were usually working from reason rather than emotion. They made mistakes, sure, but we all got through it. If (God forbid) I should ever have kids, I fully intend to raise them by my parents’ example, and if they turn out like my brother and me, I won’t be disappointed.
Whoops. I did mean, of course, that “in our country we have laws…”, since well, you don’t in the US. Sorry about that.
Renee –
I’m far more okay with you smacking me or any other adult than an adult smacking a child. I believe that force is sometimes an appropriate way to acheive a desired result. There are situations besides self-defense where I would feel that boundaries have been pushed enough that I would respond with a slap, and condone others doing the same. To me, even. (And I understand that not everyone draws this line in the same place.) But there’s more than one factor (willingness to use force/violence) involved in this case.
There’s the ability to control of one’s actions, which is the only way for the use of force to have real meaning. It’s easy to go beyond what you thought you could do and hurt someone in ways you *did not intend.* To know what you intend to do, what the probable physical harm is and how great, and when to step away, are all important. Lots of examples on this thread of how badly things can turn without it.
There’s also physical disparity. I would hesitate before hitting an adult smaller than myself. The greater the disparity, the more likely I would opt for either restraining measures or non-physical ones. I think it’s generally unfair to pick fights with people smaller than you. Any martial art that includes grappling/sparring teaches the value of weight classes pretty quickly. Parent vs child? There’s rarely even a chance for a small child to fight back. It’s an ideal way to instill feelings of helplessness. And what do these parents do when the growth spurts hit?
And there’s the relation between the person using force and the person on the other end. Say, two same-age friends tend to work out differences with fists & both know they can go at it and be over it after the fight — I have no problem with that. On the other hand, smacking someone known to be a pacifist is almost never warranted. When the person on the receiving end is dependent on the other for love/approval/sustenance, and in a position of societal powerlessness at that? That’s wrong, with very few exceptions.
Hmmmm.
Unfortunately there are many other ways of hurting children besides spanking. My mother has spanked me only twice in my life (a deterrent against going in the road and sticking my fingers in a socket) and I can’t really fault her method because it was very effective for the very young child that I was.
However, she was emotionally abusive which is some is worse, especially when to this day she can’t understand why I’m afraid of her when she’s mad, especially when she stated in exhaperation that she never hit me.
All kinds of abuse indicate bad parenting, or perhaps an inability to see another valid method to deal with misbehavior. Or an ability to see how abuse impacts the future person.
@smmo – Yes, a very brief unpleasant physical sensation when he broke things on purpose, or hurt other children, did induce him not to repeat that behaviour for a variable length of time. Shouting had no effect at all – it was just noise to him, not directed or meaningful.
Once he got too big to smack he became much less manageable, because he can understand avoiding unpleasant physical sensations. Stern words require too much processing to have an effect. He was violent then and he’s violent now – only now there’s no easy way to dissuade him from doing real harm. He still can’t be reasoned with, because he isn’t smart enough.
Incidentally, your child may be three, but I suspect that he understands more words than none whatsoever, and can control his bladder most of the time, and could be left alone with his baby sister without killing her by hugging with all his strength. A disabled child is not directly comparable to a normal child or even other disabled children. Don’t get on your high horse about how much better you must be at parenting.
The “Well you couldn’t spank me but you couldn’t put me in time out either” comments are almost insulting. Let’s look at a scenario. You’re in my house, you decide you don’t like what we’re doing and you throw a fit. Can I hit you to make you “settle down and act right”? No. But I can tell you to get the hell out of my house and not come back. Now say my 4 year old starts throwing a fit for the same reason. Can I just tell him to get the hell out of my house and not come back? Of course not! We,, I could but that would be insane. However I can do the child-proof version and have him set on his bed for a few minutes while both of us calm down and i figure out what to do to change how he is acting. All without spanking, amazing.
Froth, my grandmother and mother both have worked in home for mentally handicapped adults nearly all of their adult lives. You’ll get no sympathy from me because your mother decided hitting was the only way. I’ve seen a thousand other actions being used that didn’t involve beating the good into someone. And the fact that you yourself said
tells so much about how affective spanking was. Clearly the only lesson was “don’t do this or I’ll hit you” and once he as too big to be hit the lesson was worthless.
And to the “there are other things that hurt children than just spanking”, funny how that story sounds familiar. Maybe because it’s been played on other topics before. “There are other things worse than/as bad as A therefore you shouldn’t talk about how bad A is”. Go back through the archives, you’ll find quite a lot of people making similar comments on a number of topics. It was absurd there, it’s absurd here.
you all are right. spanking is just plain wrong.
…and that’s all there is to say about it, period. There can be no rationalization, no breakdown of the psychological or social processes behind it, and no recognition of its purpose in authoritarian institutions. The difference between discriminated avoidance learning and free-operation avoidance learning have no relevance or application to anything relating to human behavior. There is no space for anything aside from visceral disgust, horror, and disdain for the practice. Any analysis that is not completely subjective, personal, and emotionally charged is irrelevant and has no value in relation to this issue. The fact is, spanking, in any degree, form, or context, is morally wrong, irresponsible, and is probably a mark of mental illness on the part of the abuser. There are not, nor can there be, any arguments that deviate from this position, period. We all know this to be true, and those who don’t are monstrous distortions of humanity. Got it?
@Froth: You said,
I have to say how angry some of this thread makes me. There is an assumption running right through that your children will understand if you talk to them, that smacking them (not beating them!) is redundant at best, abusive at worst.
A lot of opinions have been expressed on this thread, not all of them as you describe — not by a long shot.
But more importantly, you are correct that the “children” being referenced on this thread are not assumed to be mentally disabled.
Perhaps that is a weakness of the thread. Perhaps the other commenters should be more inclusive of the experiences of mentally disabled children and their parents. But I don’t see it as a reason for you to become angry at commenters who are having a conversation that assumes that children who are not mentally disabled can be reasoned with verbally, rather than being hit or spanked.
I don’t want to display an ableist bias — and someone please call me out on it if I am — but I don’t think that your parents’ necessarily limited choices in raising your brother are in any way typical of most parents when they have to make choices about discipline, or are in any way meant to be part of the kind of debate about physical punishment that Renee and the commenters are having here. Perhaps a separate post is needed, because I don’t think this is it.
@literarycritic – you’re right. I’m angry because families like mine are invisible, never talked about, never considered. We get buried under ‘it can’t be that bad’ and ‘you’ll just have to manage’, and I should probably write a post about why.
But except for that I’m not angry at the content of or participants in the thread. Spanking is a subject that needs raising, and serious conversations need to be had about it, and this falls in that category.
Sorry, I got my wires crossed there, folks, and apologies for muddying the waters.
Great post. I completely agree. Was going to say more but my connection is playing up.
Yes.
Whenever criticized, I start rationalizing and giving multiple excuses very quickly; nattering on in an almost-free-association manner…my supervisor and I once talked about this. We both ended up talking about ‘parental discipline’ since she was ‘spanked’ (beaten) too, and had this exact same personality tic. It isn’t simply “defensiveness”–I think it is a genuine FEAR of criticism, waiting for the violence to start at any minute.
We were bargaining for our lives, trying to avoid the belt (or the switch, the spatula, the fly-swatter, whatever was close at hand). And if you are SMART enough, and could finally say the right thing, we learned, sometimes you CAN avoid it. So, you keep on with excuses, hoping you will say the right thing, hoping to avoid punishment.
It’s a real good way to screw up a person.
[...] at Feministe: Spanking a child is a violent act and any attempt to justify it is just denial. Children are [...]
I am a graduate student and researcher in sociology, and I have spent years looking at this topic of spanking, both from an academic point of view and also a personal exploration of my past. I applaud for Renee writing such an insightful essay on the topic, and also for having the courage to examine an issue that can trigger painful memories for her. It is my hope to one day organize workshops and therapy groups that deal with recovery from spanking similar to those that are currently offered for sexual abuse survivors. I believe that spanking involves the same kind of trauma.
My thesis project is a quantitative study, looking at the relationship between early corporal punishment and later compulsive behaviors. The data from my study support my thesis that spanking is linked to later problems with emotional eating and the incidence of cigarette smoking in survey participants.
The most exhaustive analysis of corporal punishment ever conducted was Dr. Elizabeth Gershoff’s meta-analysis of 88 studies, published in 2000. The results? Corporal punishment in childhood is positively associated with higher rates of aggression, substance abuse, and mood disorders in adulthood.
An excellent article by parenting specialist, Mac Bledsoe, lists the “Reasons (Why) Punishment Doesn’t Work.” The link > http://www.parentingwithdignity.com/rss/0203_reasons_punishment_does_not_work.htm
Most learning comes through modeling rather than direct interaction with aversive stimuli or exterior rewards. Modeling is where parents have their biggest effect. If you want to raise a responsible child, model responsible, respectful behavior toward others. Spanking contradicts the two main messages that children should be taught by adults: 1. Use words not violence to solve problems. and 2. to respect the personhood of other humans. When a parent hits to teach a lesson, the real lesson the child incorporates into his neural wiring are lessons of aggression and shaming.
Thanks Renee for sharing your wounds caused by spanking. I’m a 49 yr old man with three kids whol lived most of my adult life in shame for a sexual spanking fetish. I sought therapy after the internet social crowd tried to explain it as genetically excused sexuality. I have the truama flackbacks of seeing my mother tell me she loved me so she had to spank me. I still recall her slight smiling and attempt to hide her own pleasurable enjoyment at my humiliation looking into my eyes as she unbuttoned my pants, undid my zipper, and pulled them down and then my underware. I remember having pleasant arousal feelings I didn’t understand and the order to bend over her knee. I was so full of fear I felt a sense of being killed and total anihlation
I have no recall after that. Dont’ recall why I was punished. Therapy has taught me I was sexualy abused by spanking and likely my mother had a sexual fetish she was unconsciously indulging in. I believe she believed my spankings and the trauma associated with it were benefical because she had survied it herself and the fetish rewards a trauma. This sexaul fetish doesnt’ happen to all children but it hurts those who develope one for a lifetime. The feelings of being and wanting to be dominated by a female authority figure and spanked by them are the sexual fetish. My Ph.d. psychotherapist with 25 years of clinical experience I can make available to validate my statements. She she said the pschotherapy profession denounces this punishment practice for the abuse and problems it causes but the cycle goes on by parents living, denying.
I have met a popular feminist cyber blogger, an ex prosecuting attorney turned private Catholic school teacher who scours parenting websites espousing her own conversion from anti-spanking to prospanking of her children, admiting to indulging and enjoying being spanked by another adult. She invokes the mantle of motherhood as the right to bare her children for a spanking and brags by quoting her own mothers words, “it’s not your panties that did something wrong” She’s unabashedly blogged about spanking her daughter and worries about marking evidence on her children and if she is producing enough pain! She denies spanking produces a spanking fetish but says she doesn’t care if it does. Accidental unintend consequences of spanking forgive great denial about its abuse. I dont’ spank and favor its banning speaking as a sexually abused victim.