Topic: Corporal Punishment (Re: Our response to Dmytri Kleiner's misunderstanding of money - page 5. (Read 24725 times)

I don't know that answer.  Perhaps you could remind me?


There are lots of reasons that is so; not the least of which is that my moral code is based upon Judeo-Christian values.  Sorry to break it to you, but pimping out children is verboten, while spanking of errant children is specificly encouraged by the old documents on those topics.

Why should I, when you know the answer? I announced their birth on the forum.

Are you ever going to explain how you rationalize consenting for your children to be struck is OK, while consenting for your children to have sex is not?

For you, as well.  Are you ever going to tell me how old your daughters are, and if they have ever fought with each other?

Far more interesting than what you have responded to, MoonShadow, is what you have not responded to.

Strangely related to this topic....

http://www.strike-the-root.com/evicting-statist-within-us

Consider me encouraged.  Again, spanking is a very rarely used method in my household.  Particularly these days, since the only three children in the household that are still younger than the age of reason are foster kids, two of whom are in the foster care system because of severe physical abuse (which, at a minimum, renders spanking ineffective) and the third is an infant who is physically incapable of getting into any trouble, since she can't even crawl yet.  My two blood children are 10 and 12, and neither has been spanked in many years; although they still occasionally end up in the corner for fighting with one another.  When the older of the two abused brothers first came to our house, at about 2 years old, he only had two emotional states, indifference and abject rage.  My son, 8 at the time; was entirely unprepared for a little boy half his body weight to attack him like a pit bull.  Yet, that is exactly what happened!  In the first week, this two year old had bloodied and bruised an 8 year old boy who didn't believe that fighting back was kosher, because the boy was (less than, really) half his size.  The two year old had finally bit my 8 year old son so hard, through a pair of jeans, there was a pretty fine image of his teeth in a blood blister.  We had to explain to my son that we could not spank him, because we had made that agreement to the state, but that he had made no such agreement; and that he needed to defend himself.  It took a few more good brawls before the 2 year old caught on to how things would go for him, but he got the message.  Don't attack his new brother, because he would get hurt doing it.  This ended the reign of terror for my 8 year old, but things remain more difficult regarding that same kid and his own little brother.  He is starting to toughen up, now days, and can give his older brother tis for tat, so I don't expect that to persist much longer; but at the time the little brother was barely one year old, and still crawling, and we were literally prohibited from excersising justice on his little brother's behalf by contract. I'm still not sure that it would have made much difference, considering that the 2 year old had experienced so much pain for no cause whatsoever, that he might not have been able to associate a spanking to his own behavior at all.  (He actually has physical scars, some on his face.  I'm talking about real abuse here)  After all, that would imply an ability to reason at a very young age; too much to expect.

Yeah, I'm not disagreeing with you there. I'm just encouraging you not to spank your children because I don't think it is a good idea. Some stress is good for children, just make sure to introduce it gradually and provide a lot of affection if the children appear upset by it.

[Note: Even though I vehemently disagree with you about most things, I don't really want to take your children away. That would almost certainly be bad for your children and it is not for me to decide, anyway.]

You might find this interesting:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/474/back-to-school

I take those very same classes, as they are required annually of "resource parents" under contract with the state's Department of Child Protective Services, which I am.  Very few of the actual courses have much to say about alternatives to corporeal punishment per se, but the ones that do are incrediblely useful.  I do use those techniques, in as far as they work, but they have limits.  I'd suspect that Myrkul would consider some of those techniques to be corporeal punishment anyway, as they do involve the use of force and the deliberate use of pshycological stressors, if not actual physical pain as a deterent.  Myrkul's viewpoint simply isn't practical for a majority of children, assuming he would not consider caging them during the times for which he could not be actively holding them.  There simply is too many dangerous tools, appliances and household products to fully protect small children; and that is not even considering the hazards beyond the front door.


It makes sense to limit spanking as a deterrent anyway.  I never questioned that.  What I'm saying is that the use of corporeal punishment as a parenting tool is not criminal, not automaticly abuse, not a violation of their human rights, and between myself & my wife (and the state, in the case of foster care children).  Neither Myrkul, nor anyone else, has any say in that, no matter what he might think of it.

There is evidence that spanking is correlated with elevated levels of stress hormones (cortisol) in childhood. In turn, elevated cortisol in childhood is associated with lower wages in adulthood, unemployment, low educational attainment, criminal behavior, increased risk of disease, lower life expectancy, etc. All kinds of bad stuff.

There is a significant problem in interpreting causation here. Maybe the kids are just bad seeds and that is why they get backhanded? The way you typically get around this is through parenting interventions. i.e. new parents are randomly assigned to get parenting advice from state agencies; other parents don't receive advice or receive advice less frequently. There is a lot of evidence that these programs are tremendously helpful for children. In fact, they appear to be the most cost effective type of state program for improving adult outcomes.

Unfortunately, the parenting interventions involve a whole mix of things, not just spanking reduction. Thus, it is hard to say how important spanking is by itself. The animal studies show that providing touch and affection after a traumatic experience is very helpful. I agree this doesn't speak to spanking itself. Hopefully, they will try out more specific interventions in the future so we can get better data. However, it is difficult to get funding for research like this (governments prefer stuff that is proven to work instead of experiments designed to learn more about what works).

In the meantime, I think it makes sense to limit spanking as a precaution. At least until we get more conclusive evidence from well-designed research.

The implication here is that parents who spank their children are not gentle and nurturing. I reject that assumption as false and unscientific.

Parenting is not a hard science. Its futile to try to develop a blanket approach because every child is different. Children are not lab experiments.


It doesn't. Read the paragraph again.


Don't presume to dismiss offhand my observations with personal attacks, while on the other hand, you cite unnamed third party research as a good source of information on the subject. Unless of course you can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that I'm a pathological liar or insane.


I don't believe there is any kind of spanking that has a neutral effect. There is this pervasive and disturbing attitude that ALL pain is bad. That's a false assumption. There is no such thing as "bad pain", although bad actions can cause pain. The human body depends heavily on pain to regulate our behavior and keep us safe and healthy, yet we don't assign "evil" or "barbaric" labels to it. So there's a double standard here that somehow being human places on us the responsibility to never cause the slightest amount of pain to others, regardless of the intention, method, or situation. Would you cause pain to a human being in order to help them? Think about that.

Right, thus the animal experiments which are randomized and which control for genetic determinants by setting up random adoption. Science is all about experimental design.

You may be right about neighborhood. However, adult outcomes have many determinants. We should care a lot about anything that is under the parent's immediate control.

Corolation is not causation.  Those observations are just as likely to be associated to criminal behaviors to be learned by observation of both their parents & peers.  I would say that it is even more likely, criminality is often associated by neighborhood far better that whether or not the parents used corporeal punishment or not.

There very likely would be less crime if there were no spanking. A large body of research suggest that gentle, nurturing parenting is associated with vast improvements in outcomes during adulthood. The best evidence comes from randomized transfers of animal offspring. Offspring allocated to gentle adoptive mothers do much better in most respects (faster learning, higher social status in adulthood, longer life expectancy, etc.). In fact, in some studies adopted offspring perform similarly to the naturally born offspring of gentle mothers.

How does that make spanking a defense for criminal acts? Even if violent criminals lack all free will (I believe all people lack free will), we should still lock them in prison. They pose a threat to everyone else.

[PS Don't be an idiot and tell me that you know plenty of people who were spanked and turned out just fine. I'll retch. Learn some science.]

Finally, MoonShadow, I'm not trying to imply that you are necessarily damaging your children. There is probably a lot of non-harmful spanking mixed in with abusive spanking. In a statistical study, all you would observe is the average outcome associated with all spanking. And the stuff done in humans has lots of problems with research design, adding to the confusion.

This sentence contains very little intelligent matter. It is a violent, hateful personal attack.


Violence is not a response? Hahahahahahaa!


You implied that there would be LESS crime if there were no spanking. That is a defense for criminal acts. You're bailing out of that defense now?


I'm not indignant. YOU'RE indignant! eg. "WHO ARE YOU TO SPANK YOUR CHILDREN!!  HUFF HUFF PUFF!!!"  


The only thing I'm attacking is your swiss cheese of an argument. Ignore, so soon? Awwww. You're too kind.

Wandering slightly off-topic, I found this - very apropos to our side discussion - quote, by a name I'm sure you recognize:

"Government seems to operate on the principle that if even one individual is incapable of using his freedom competently, no one can be allowed to be free." ~ Harry Browne

Hmmm. Seems like a good rule.

Because children weren't considered "people" until three days after birth. Think about that for a minute.

What part of "For themselves" did you miss? If they want to pick a leader to follow, that's fine by me. They don't get to pick my leader, nor force me to follow theirs.

I'm sure pedophiles say the same thing. All I am demanding is that you treat your children like the people they are, not things which you can force to do what you want. If you want a dolly to play with, I'll gladly buy you one. If you want to raise children, you can't abuse them. PROTIP: beating your kids, even as a "last resort," is abuse.

Your kids have rights. Respect those rights. Take corporal punishment off the table. They are people, and deserve to be treated as such, not as cattle, too stupid not to wander into the road without pain to teach them to stay away.

Fixed some typos for you.

I know. They have some book which says everyone should be ashamed. When people aren't properly ashamed they get angry and ridicule them. Awful, isn't it?


In case you are serious, I recommend you live in Japan for a while before making fun of their social habits. The degree of concern for others in Japanese society is pretty awe-inspiring. On the downside, caring for others requires a huge amount of mental energy.

This should indicate to you that 'perfect consistency' is an idiotic aim. However, you seem to be drawing some other type of conclusion from this. What might that be?

Are you opposed to abortion because it violates the NAP? i.e. Pope the state Dictator AnCap Elected Governor Myrkul should tell women what to do with their bodies because Divine Natural Law says that he should.

Damn Christians, keep interfering into a perfectly disfunctional social habits.