Why do people beat their kids... - Page 3

On May 28 2013 01:25 Burrfoot wrote:
I'm Chinese, I was beat, I feared my dad, and I will beat my kid if I feel the punishment is justified. :-)

On May 27 2013 03:49 salle wrote:
+ Show Spoiler +

On May 28 2013 05:59 Xenocide_Knight wrote:




So how many of you were actually beat as children? Because these are all ridiculously broad statements that can be easily challenged. For instance, Zoler's quote especially is comically ignorant and close-minded. Or Liquid Drone's post somehow comes to the conclusion that "because a child was hit, therefore the child learned that hitting others is ok".

On May 28 2013 05:59 Xenocide_Knight wrote:




So how many of you were actually beat as children? Because these are all ridiculously broad statements that can be easily challenged. For instance, Zoler's quote especially is comically ignorant and close-minded. Or Liquid Drone's post somehow comes to the conclusion that "because a child was hit, therefore the child learned that hitting others is ok".

On May 28 2013 06:09 lisward wrote:

Its a fact that physical abuse happens in a cycle. My great grandma abused her kids, my grandma abused her kids, my mom abused her kids (My sister and I). If you need citations

On May 28 2013 06:36 Fruscainte wrote:
I seriously can't understand why every corporal punishment thread everyone on both sides treat abuse/beating/assault as synonymous with corporal punishment. Spanking a child's rear or the back of their hand isn't the same as slapping them around or hitting them with a belt for fibbing about homework or something. Of course abuse is a cycle. I feel like I need to bold that just for emphasis. Saying parents are "cowards" for spanking their child's behind or that any physical contact with your kids at all is somehow abuse and is going to scar them for life is absolutely ridiculous though. Corporal punishment has a distinct purpose for a parent. You can't put your child in a corner for every offense, you can't ground them for every offense and you can't spank them for every offense.

It all comes down to some people just have no purpose being a parent. Physical punishment overdone can lead to overly violent children continuing a cycle and children who are never physically disciplined or not disciplined really at all lead to children who don't understand the consequences of their actions. Punishment, like many things in life, is best done in a balance of the two options.

On May 28 2013 05:59 Xenocide_Knight wrote:




So how many of you were actually beat as children? Because these are all ridiculously broad statements that can be easily challenged. For instance, Zoler's quote especially is comically ignorant and close-minded. PanN's post was "All parents who hit their children are cowards" from which you have to come to the conclusion "99% of all parents in asia are cowards" and because the majority of people end up being parents, "the majority of asians are cowards". Or Liquid Drone's post somehow comes to the conclusion that "because a child was hit, therefore the child learned that hitting others is ok".

I was always hit as a child and pretty much the biggest lesson ingrained in my head was "it is under no circumstance ok for me to hit anyone else. Only parents can hit only their own children." I never saw my parents hit anyone or even anything other than me. Even my younger sister was never hit. So i learned "don't hit girls", "don't hit young children", and "as the eldest male, my punishments must be stricter as I have much greater responsibility".

A 1996 literature review by Robert Larzelere suggested that, in some circumstances, corporal punishment of children can increase short-term compliance with parental commands. Examples of such circumstances noted by Larzelere are that no implements should be used, that the child is between ages 2 and 6, that the punishment be carried out in private, and that it should occur less than once per week. However, comparisons in the same study with alternative punishments such as one-minute time-outs did not establish that corporal punishment was more effective. This paper also did not measure long term outcomes.[54]

Diana Baumrind has studied the effects of different parenting styles[55][56] and has expressed the opinion that mild spanking with the empty, open hand, in the context of an authoritative (not authoritarian) parenting style, is unlikely to have a significant detrimental effect, if one is careful to control for other variables such as socioeconomic status. She observes that previous studies demonstrating a correlation between corporal punishment and bad outcomes failed to control for these variables.[57] She has also cautioned that neither the pro-spanking nor anti-spanking studies is truly scientific, in the sense that physics or chemistry experiments are scientific, as they cannot be modeled or reproduced by other researchers, there are too many disparate factors that might influence the results, and the studies are often heavily biased toward producing a result that affirms the researcher's personal beliefs.[58]

A 1996 study by Straus suggested that children who receive corporal punishment are more likely to be angry as adults, use spanking as a form of discipline, approve of striking a spouse, and experience marital discord.[59] According to Cohen's 1996 study, older children who receive corporal punishment may resort to more physical aggression, substance abuse, crime and violence.[60] A 1997 study by Straus, Sugarman and Giles-Sims[61] found detrimental child outcomes of nonabusive or customary physical punishment by parents using a design that would not also tend to find detrimental outcomes of most alternative discipline responses. Its findings were criticised by Larzelere,[62] who affirmed that the new study did not contradict his earlier study, the conclusions of which were summarized by Baumrind as "a blanket injunction against spanking is not scientifically supportable".[63] Larzelere granted that frequent and severe corporal punishment carried with it an increased risk for detrimental effects, but saw no proof that an occasional swat could harm a child in the long run.[62]
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) in an official policy statement[64] (reaffirmed in 2004) states that "Corporal punishment is of limited effectiveness and has potentially deleterious side effects." The AAP recommends that parents be "encouraged and assisted in the development of methods other than spanking for managing undesired behavior". In particular, the AAP believes that any corporal punishment methods other than open-hand spanking on the buttocks or extremities "are unacceptable" and "should never be used". The policy statement points out, summarizing several studies, that "The more children are spanked, the more anger they report as adults, the more likely they are to spank their own children, the more likely they are to approve of hitting a spouse, and the more marital conflict they experience as adults."[59] Spanking has been associated with higher rates of physical aggression, more substance abuse, and increased risk of crime and violence when used with older children and adolescents.[60] Research published in the American Academy of Pediatrics journal Pediatrics in 2012 based on data gathered from adults in the United States which excluded subjects who had suffered abuse[65] showed an association between harsh corporal punishment by parents and increased risk of a wide range of mental illness.[66][67]

The Canadian Pediatrics Society policy on corporal punishment states "The Psychosocial Paediatrics Committee of the Canadian Paediatric Society has carefully reviewed the available research in the controversial area of disciplinary spanking (7-15)... The research that is available supports the position that spanking and other forms of physical punishment are associated with negative child outcomes. The Canadian Paediatric Society, therefore, recommends that physicians strongly discourage disciplinary spanking and all other forms of physical punishment".[68] In the United Kingdom, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and the Royal College of Psychiatrists have both called for a complete ban on all corporal punishment, stating "We believe it is both wrong and impracticable to seek to define acceptable forms of corporal punishment of children. Such an exercise is unjust. Hitting children is a lesson in bad behaviour".[69] and that "it is never appropriate to hit or beat children".[70] The Australian Psychological Society holds that physical punishment of children should not be used as it has very limited capacity to deter unwanted behavior, does not teach alternative desirable behavior, often promotes further undesirable behaviors such as defiance and attachment to "delinquent" peer groups, and encourages an acceptance of aggression and violence as acceptable responses to conflicts and problems.[71]

Opponents of corporal punishment sometimes argue that spanking constitutes violence and is therefore by definition abusive. Some psychological research is held to indicate that corporal punishment causes the deterioration of trust bonds between parents and children. It is claimed that children subjected to corporal punishment may grow resentful, shy, insecure, or violent. Adults who report having been slapped or spanked by their parents in childhood have been found to experience elevated rates of anxiety disorder, alcohol abuse or dependence and externalizing problems as adults.[72] Some researchers believe that corporal punishment actually works against its objective (normally obedience), since children will not voluntarily obey an adult they do not trust. Elizabeth Gershoff, in a 2002 meta-analytic study that combined 60 years of research on corporal punishment, found that the only positive outcome of corporal punishment was immediate compliance; however, corporal punishment was associated with less long-term compliance.[73] Corporal punishment was linked with nine other negative outcomes, including increased rates of aggression, delinquecy, mental health problems, problems in relationships with their parents, and likelihood of being physically abused.

Opponents claim that much child abuse begins with spanking: a parent accustomed to using corporal punishment may, on this view, find it all too easy, when frustrated, to step over the line into physical abuse. One study found that 40% of 111 mothers were worried that they could possibly hurt their children.[74] It is argued that frustrated parents turn to spanking when attempting to discipline their child, and then get carried away (given the arguable continuum between spanking and hitting). This "continuum" argument also raises the question of whether a spank can be "too hard" and how (if at all) this can be defined in practical terms. This in turn leads to the question whether parents who spank their children "too hard" are crossing the line and beginning to abuse them.
Opponents also argue that a problem with the use of corporal punishment is that, if punishments are to maintain their efficacy, the amount of force required may have to be increased over successive punishments. This has been claimed by the American Academy of Pediatrics,[64] which has asserted: "The only way to maintain the initial effect of spanking is to systematically increase the intensity with which it is delivered, which can quickly escalate into abuse". Additionally, the Academy noted that: "Parents who spank their children are more likely to use other unacceptable forms of corporal punishment."[75]

The American Academy of Pediatrics also believes that corporal punishment polarizes the parent-child relationship, reducing the amount of spontaneous cooperation on the part of the child. The AAP policy statement says "...reliance on spanking as a discipline approach makes other discipline strategies less effective to use".[64]

A meta-analysis of 88 research studies testifies to many long and short-term dangers of corporal punishment and concludes that corporal punishment of children is “associated with all child constructs, including higher levels of immediate compliance and aggression and lower levels of moral internalization and mental health.”[73] A 2003 review of available research into parental punishment concluded that "strong evidence exists that the use of physical punishment has a number of inherent risks regarding the physical and mental health and well-being of children".[76]

In a 2006 Study on Violence against Children the Independent Expert for the Secretary-General to the General Assembly writes: “Children testify to the hurt – not only physical, but ‘the hurt inside’.”[77] A 2006 retrospective report study in New Zealand showed that physical punishment of children was quite common in the 1970s and 80s, with 80% of the sample reporting some kind of corporal punishment from parents at some time during childhood. Among this sample, 29% reported being hit with an empty hand, 45% with an object, and 6% were subjected to serious physical abuse. The study noted that abusive physical punishment tended to be given by fathers and often involved striking the child's head or torso instead of the buttocks or limbs.[78]

A 2008 study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine[79] found that mothers who reported spanking their children were more likely (6% vs 2%) to also report using forms of punishment considered abusive to the researchers "such as beating, burning, kicking, hitting with an object somewhere other than the buttocks, or shaking a child less than 2 years old" than mothers who did not report spanking, and increases in the frequency of spanking were statistically correlated with increased odds of abuse.[80]

There is also MRI evidence that children treated with harsh corporal punishment have reduced gray matter when aged 18–25 in their prefrontal lobe. Such research also found that these reductions in gray matter linked to reduced performance IQ on the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale.[81]

Funny how people talk about freedom and rights for everyone but their own children.

Just accept that they are individuals

Smacking is physical abuse. If you don't agree please let me "smack" you 10 times in the face. Then we can have the discussion again... when or if you wake up.

On May 28 2013 18:13 humblegar wrote:
If your kid is in mortal danger, pick him or her up.

On May 28 2013 22:40 Fruscainte wrote:


Are you trying to imply children should have the same freedoms and rights as adults and we need to treat our children as equals and like we treat other adults? I don't know how the culture is in Norway and that might just be the way things are done over there, but I can't help but laugh at that idea.



If I somehow get knocked out from you smacking me in the face as hard as I would ever smack my child on the back of his hand or spank my child on the rear, I would need to turn in every one of my man cards. Jesus, sometimes a quick, sharp notice of pain in the form of a light smack to the back of a hand is precisely what a kid needs to instantly and suddenly get the concept of "DONT DO THAT"

You anti-corporal punishment people just refuse to accept the possibility that maybe, just maybe, we don't derive pleasure from causing any amount of physical harm to our children and maybe, JUST MAYBE, we don't smack the shit out of our children for every minor infraction or for any infraction for that matter. Stop associating an ass spanking that has a force that would be appropriate to cause mild discomfort for a 6 year old to you punching an adult 10 times in the face and knocking them out.

Like I said before, corporal punishment has one purpose in my mind: To demonstrate to a child who is still in very developmental stages when violence occurs. If you curse someone out, you're going to get spanked because guess what happens when you curse someone out in the real world. If you slam someones face into a concrete structure of sorts, you can expect a physical retaliation. If you point a gun at someone or steal someones money, you can expect a physical retaliation of sorts.

Those are really the only situations I could ever imagine spanking my child, ever. Of COURSE if you spank your child all the time or smack him around he'll assume that the solution to everything is violence. However, you have to be beyond naive to think that violence still doesn't exist in our world and your child needs to learn the consequences of his actions, and he needs to learn that some things are so inappropriate he needs to never do it ever. If I only ever spank my child one or two times in the entirety of his life -- those one or two times I spank him is going to be in his memory forever. And he's going to remember the explanation I told him afterwards of why what he did was wrong, and you can guarantee he's never going to do those things again.

On May 28 2013 22:56 lisward wrote:


It's delusional to refuse to admit that many parents venture into th realm of physical abuse when dispensing so called corporal punishment.

There are statistics, studies, numbers, these are all facts that have been proved to be true.

I think it's funny society deems it fit to train your kids with your fists, but this same society frowns upon using physical punishment to train animals.