
To spank or not to spank: Corporal punishment in the US - amardeep
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2014/1019/To-spank-or-not-to-spank-Corporal-punishment-in-the-US
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teddyh
“Domestic corporal punishment” has been completely illegal in Sweden since
_1979_. It is upheld and anyone caught doing it risks having their children
removed, and if you are seen doing it in public, expect several people to
react and/or report you _immediately_. (I.e. it’s not one of those laws which
is frequently ignored – it is an established social norm.)

I would say that the population of Sweden has _not_ suffered demonstrably from
this. Make of this fact what you will.

~~~
LaurentD2
Some families where the children were removed suffered quite demonstrably.

~~~
netrus
It's one of the large pains in our European system (or at least in Germany),
that indeed we have no good process to give children from abusive families a
better life. Still, corporal punishment is frowned upon in Germany (and
illegal) and I see no negative effects. In my parents' generation, it was
normal behavior for boys to beat each other up from time to time. That is no
longer the case, we live in a society that is mostly free of violence. I like
that.

~~~
electromagnetic
The UK system was similar. It alternated between being ineffective and
overzealous. Either kids were left with abusers until something horrendous
happened, or kids were too willingly taken from homes and put into the foster
system where inevitably worse things happened.

My friend had been put into foster care because of "suspicions of abuse",
she'd had frequent broken bones, etc, but most had occurred outside of her
fathers care (one was from falling out a tree), so when he slapped her in
public she got taken away, because they alleged her record was all him without
actually asking anyone else about it.

When in foster care she was frequently beaten bloody. She went to hospital
once and got told she was being sent back to the foster carers while they
looked into transferring her - she didn't want to be transferred she wanted to
go home where she was safe.

Ultimately she ran away and started living with friends, and when social
services caught wind everyone started covering her.

At 15 she intentionally got pregnant, because she knew she could get given a
council apartment at 16 and be freed from the system. She considered herself
lucky because no one tried to rape her.

It's anecdotal, but the abuse rates in foster care is insanely high. The risk
has to be weighed heavily against the reward.

From everything I've heard Sweden's model is the most overzealous in europe,
the governments had to compensate many of the kids taken by the system. I'm
also curious of the rates of abuse in Sweden's system, because if its on par
with other western countries the sexual abuse rates on females will be around
30%. I honestly think every woman would prefer to be spanked by their parent
rather than be put at an unacceptable high risk of rape. And again, I've heard
nothing on Sweden's foster system being an improvement over any other European
country.

------
AnimalMuppet
My wife was arriving at our house. She parked on the street because the
driveway was full. Our two-year-old daughter went running out to meet Mommy.
Then a car came flying around the corner (since we lived at the top of a T
intersection, that means that the car was _right there_.) We both yelled at
our daughter to stop. She did, and the car went past.

Two houses later, the car ran over a cat. I went up to see if there was
anything I could do. There wasn't, but I got to see what the underside of a
cat's head looks like after a car has run over the top side.

I will do almost anything to have that not happen to my daughter's head.

But the problem is, my two-year-old daughter can't understand what 3000 pounds
of car at 30 MPH are going to do to her. It's totally outside of her
comprehension. Yes, we can tell her that playing in the road hurts, but
there's no way she can really get it.

But she can learn that, when Mommy or Daddy tell me to stop and I don't, it
hurts every single time. (The consistency is important. Most of the time, it
doesn't matter at all if she doesn't stop when I tell her, it merely annoys
me. But once in a while, _it really matters_. It may even mean life or death.
And I can't tell which ones it will be in advance.)

You could say, "You don't have to do that. Just fence the front yard." And,
sure that would work - for that issue. But then there's chemicals. "Well,
install child locks on the cabinets." Sure, we did that. But there's still
going to be that one time that you had it out on the counter and the phone
rang...

Now, can this be overdone? Absolutely. Should reason replace it as early as
possible? Definitely. But when my children were young, I spanked them to teach
them that disobedience hurts. I did this, not because I hated them, but
because I loved them and wanted to be able to protect them against a world
that has more dangers than they knew - dangers that could hurt a lot more than
a spanking.

------
tomp
I was spanked as a child. Not frequently (maybe 5 times over 15 years), but
enough that I knew pain was a possible punishment. Me and my brother were very
"active" kids (apparently, people called us "the demolition team") so I guess
it wasn't easy for our parents to control us; however, the more frequent
punishment was "kneeling looking at the wall" \- that one was very effective,
as it calmed us down _and_ discouraged similar behavior in the future. But,
without the fear of pain, I don't think we would see our parents as
authoritative figures.

~~~
chroma
_I intend to raise the kids in the same manner._

If you hit an adult, it's assault.

If you hit a dog, it's animal abuse.

If you hit your spouse, it's domestic violence.

But hitting your child is not just legal, it's encouraged by many. People will
spare no effort rationalizing justifications for it.

To see how preposterous this is, use the reversal test.[1] If hitting children
was unheard of, do you think society would move toward doing it? We've
eliminated corporal punishment in almost every other domain. Drill sergeants
can't hit soldiers. Even hitting prisoners is a violation of the 8th
Amendment. Hitting children is historical cruft that needs to be eliminated.

Edit: You removed the line saying you would hit your children. Well, at least
I've quoted it.

1\.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversal_test](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversal_test)

~~~
tomp
These comparisons with adults are intellectually dishonest. What would you do
if two kids were fighting? Treat them as adults, throw them into jail for 5-10
years? Or would you use some shorter-term form of punishment?

> Edit: You removed the line saying you would hit your children. Well, at
> least I've quoted it.

Yes, I wanted to A/B test which paragraph was causing the down-votes.

~~~
chroma
First, assault & battery are misdemeanors. They are punishable by up to a year
in prison, and maximum sentences are rare.

Second, violence is not acceptable as punishment, but it is acceptable (often
necessary) in defense of self and others. If people are fighting, it's fine to
break them up. That said, I doubt a larger adult needs to resort to blows to
stop two kids fighting.

Third, there are plenty of punishments that don't involve hitting. It's common
to restrict access to TV or games. If all else fails, there's the dreaded, "No
phone for a week."

~~~
tomp
> It's common to restrict access to TV or games. If all else fails, there's
> the dreaded, "No phone for a week."

Except, of course, if you're limiting the TV anyways, and you don't allow kids
to have (smart-)phones.

In general, I agree, there are other kinds of punishment, but they might
sometimes not be effective. Then what?

~~~
DanBC
You assume that physical violnce is effective. Research shows otherwise.

And if you try beating your child and it doesn't work, what then?

Physical violence is used by bad perents who don't know effective methods of
discipline.

~~~
tomp
> You assume that physical violnce is effective. Research shows otherwise.

Did you read the article? Research shows that corporal punishment can be
effective, if done in the right way (i.e. don'y hit your kids when they are
angry).

> Physical violence is used by bad perents who don't know effective methods of
> discipline.

We disagree with the definition of bad parent, apparently. I think my parents
were very good. Of course, as I said initially, they very rarely resorted to
physical punishment, but me and my brother knew that the threat was credible.
Of course, I don't think any of their friends would agree with them, but then,
none of them had comparably active and difficult children.

