Ben Stein's Commentary on Religion and Atheists

[Ender]

I wonder if shitty parents are more likely to resort to spanking as a "get-quick-results-without-doing-work" method of punishment, and that's one reason why spanking is correlated with a poor upbringing.

Firstly we'd need to define what makes a "poor upbringing". However, I'm gonna use the idea that the kid grows up to be a criminal or stipper or something. Now the thing there is that there is a strong correlation there with being "blue collar" or lower class. There is also a strong correlation between spanking and the lower class, with middle and upper class being more likely to use "timeouts", groundings, etc. So the link there is poverty, not spanking used, period.

[Ender]

Because it has worked for thousands of years in thousands of countries.

At least that's what the guy, I debated on the issue a while back, said. Remember that these people are not very rational about the issue (lord knows why though; do they actually want to hit kids?). This particular specimen thought common sense, like the above, was more scientific than actual scientific studies (that's a verbatim quote, for the record, he even said it before I got around to posting any).

You mean like the scientific studies that show the learning portions of the brain flare up with the pain receptors? Spanking is an effective discipline tool.

Of course it is. No would have used it if it didn't work. The question is whether it is a good tool, that doesn't have negative side effects.

So how about providing some evidence showing the causation, not correlation between poor upbringing and spanking. Or just defining "poor upbringing". Or just stop using the "begging the question" style here of trying to phrase it so you are just thinking out loud to try and get the other guy to assume the burden of proof.

[PeZook]

So how about providing some evidence showing the causation, not correlation between poor upbringing and spanking. Or just defining "poor upbringing". Or just stop using the "begging the question" style here of trying to phrase it so you are just thinking out loud to try and get the other guy to assume the burden of proof.

The issue isn't "Does spanking work?", it's "Would using more spanking fix all problems with today's youth?"

Accoridng to the chain letter, yes.

[Dooey Jo]

Of course it is. No would have used it if it didn't work. The question is whether it is a good tool, that doesn't have negative side effects.

So how about providing some evidence showing the causation, not correlation between poor upbringing and spanking. Or just defining "poor upbringing". Or just stop using the "begging the question" style here of trying to phrase it so you are just thinking out loud to try and get the other guy to assume the burden of proof.

What the fuck are you rambling about? You're the one to even bring up "poor upbringing". I was talking about a recent debate that I had. One that I am not particularly interested in continuing it right now, which is why I said what I did, but if someone's interested, here's a collection of studies. You can note that at least one of them was conducted solely on middle-class families, and still showed a correlation between the amount of corporal punishment and negative effects, in this case "misbehaviour". It also seems like a bit of a stretch that all of the studies would have failed to take basic socio-economic factors into account.

[General Zod]

OK I'll follow the OT bread-crumb trail. When my son was 2, I didn't spank him very often. Instead, I taught him to give himself a spank any time he dropped a Matchbox car on our wood floor. As he entered his rebellious phase (which is continuing now), yep I started spanking him as a form of discipline.

He just turned 4. I still spank him as a reminder to stay in line, but now he's learning what behaviour will get him spanked. I expect that by the time he's 6 or 7 I'll have to enforce discipline with a swat rarely, if at all.

The key here, in my observations, is that small children do NOT understand consequences and can NOT be reasoned with - they need to be 'told' physically where their boundaries are. As they learn to reason and understand things, physical reminders become less necessary. Spanking is not an extreme tool, it's one of several tools in the parenting Snap-On box.

They don't understand consequences and can't be reasoned with? That's hilarious. If they didn't understand consequences then spanking wouldn't work whatsoever, because they'd never develop the connections that doing bad things = getting spanked. The last I checked a consequence was generally defined as the result of an action, so I guess they do have some understanding of the concept after all. Shocking, I know.

Frankly I'm of the mindset that spanking doesn't do shit for teaching children about consequences. Hell, I used to get spanked and the only thing it made me realize is that I should work harder on not getting caught, because it didn't actually do anything for teaching me why my actions were bad.