Pro-Spanking Study

[Surlethe]

Spoonist, forgive me if I oversimplify -- you're saying that the statistical difference in outcomes between "spanking" families and "non-spanking" families is caused not by the spanking itself but by the overall parenting strategy in which it is embedded?

[Edi]

Spoonist, forgive me if I oversimplify -- you're saying that the statistical difference in outcomes between "spanking" families and "non-spanking" families is caused not by the spanking itself but by the overall parenting strategy in which it is embedded?

That's the gist I got from his posts.

[Spoonist]

You are seriously overestimating child brains here. .

*Sigh* have you read any child psychology at all? Its covered in the first course for gods sake. Its called social referencing. This was already old three decades ago.
chebalier skolnikoff 1967
ekman et al 1969
Izard 1971
Bowlby 1973
Hinde 1974
Here is a vid for those too lazy to actually read up on stuff.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyxMq11xWzM
Fun fact 1; turns lots of parents don't convey enough emotions in their face for kids to pick up, probably due to social conditioning. So teaching parents the basic skill of conveying emotions through facial expression helps development and decrease the number of parent-child conflicts. Congrats to the "natural" crowd.
Fun fact 2; Parents with sight impairment can still be taught to convey facial emotions to their kids, with statistically significant improvements over time vs control. Go science.

*Useless personal anecdote.*

Doubleblind data over anecdote any day.

This does not mean you need to spank your child, but fear of the parent does fail when the child can't understand what is the danger.

Here I agree. There are lots of situations where its very hard to teach an intangible danger. For instance, its not the road that is dangerous, its vehicles, but not all vehicles only moving ones. Very hard to consistently teach.
But teaching basic communication skills and methods to parents will consistently give a statistical difference of the child listening to parental advice.
Not necessarily at 2-3y but definately from 4 and up.

[Spoonist]

Spoonist, forgive me if I oversimplify -- you're saying that the statistical difference in outcomes between "spanking" families and "non-spanking" families is caused not by the spanking itself but by the overall parenting strategy in which it is embedded?

Uhm, sorta kinda but not really. There are plenty of studies that show that spanking is bad, including lower IQ and lower EQ. For instance:
IQ http://www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2009/sept/lw25straus.cfm
EQ http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/2001-11562-002
There are lots of other studies that link being spanked frequently with antisocial behavior when in school. For instance:
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/n ... 1/art00003

However indifference is worse than bad parental skills, including spanking. So if you have a doubleshift working, minimum income, single mom, with a bunch of kids. Then if you simply don't have the time & energy spanking is better as corrective reinforcement than simply ignoring your kids.
Note that for most middle class parents without mental problems, there is statistically no excuse for spanking as there is always better methods of parenting. That doesn't mean that the kids won't turn out OK, it only means that they will turn out OK in spite of being spanked and that if the parents would have been taught simple parenting skills the kid would statistically be better of.

Also statistically, even the devoutedly pro-spanking parents will spank less if given parental skills training because it reduces parent-child conflicts (mostly due to improper interpretation of child behavior).

[Spoonist]

Back to the OP article, its dishonest on a creationist scale, ie complete intellectual dishonesty. Shit for brains Jason is quoting and referencing research that find the opposite of the cherry picked quotes he is providing.
If a study has a minority finding of a social group having a less negative effect than the majority, then he calls it censorship that news carry the majority finding.
Footnote 20 is the extreme example of this.

"...in this rapidly changing area of the law that lies at the heart of our children's education and future, only one side of the story is being told 20."
First of the area is not rapidly changing science wise, it was established in the 60s, correlated in the 70s, proven by the 80s and the majority of modern research is just confirming earlier findings plus elaborating on how to effectively utilize the research in pediatrics and education.
Where religion has less grip on politics the laws are changing to reflect scientific findings, go figure.
In the footnote these are his "proof" that only one side is being told:

society that brings up children by nonviolent methods is likely to be less violent, healthier, and wealthier.

Dishonest Jason's retort "Although he mentioned Sweden as an example, he never mentioned the rise in crime."
Well that could be because there was no correlation asshole. Instead in Sweden its statistically those who use spanking that get kids who end up doing violent crimes. Fucking idiot.
Read what Straus study finds including "The researchers also found changes in some children's aggression. Nonaggressive children at the start of the study who were spanked were twice as aggressive by the end of the study. Those who were aggressive in 1993 but were not spanked throughout the study were half as aggressive in 1998."
http://www.libraryindex.com/pages/1401/ ... HMENT.html

(it) should be illegal to use corporal punishment on all children under five years of age.

Ignorant Jason's retort "U.S. judge relying only on anti-spanking research". Maybe that could be because the pro-spanking research is in a minute minority and what's worse usually not double-blind nor peer reviewed. Teach the controversy Jason, teach it.
Read what the judge says including "Violence towards very young children has reached the level of a public health crisis and is similar in scope to the destruction of teenagers by street gunfire."
https://litigation-essentials.lexisnexi ... f8fa760093

[K. A. Pital]

Fun fact 1; turns lots of parents don't convey enough emotions in their face for kids to pick up, probably due to social conditioning. So teaching parents the basic skill of conveying emotions through facial expression helps development and decrease the number of parent-child conflicts. Congrats to the "natural" crowd.

So a mother fainting and falling while her child runs towards cars is not "conveying enough emotions"? I want you to acknowledge that some forms of danger are simply too fucking complex for a small child to understand.

Fun fact 2; Parents with sight impairment can still be taught to convey facial emotions to their kids, with statistically significant improvements over time vs control. Go science.

Um... who said anything about parents with sight impairment? I was talking about fully capable individuals who convey enough of an emotion.

Doubleblind data over anecdote any day.

Sure, sure, as soon as I get over a study on how small children react to automobiles. That's definetely not my area of interest. However, I'm not sure why you are dismissing the anecdote out of hand when you admit a few sentences below that the automobile is, in fact, a danger which the child struggles to understand - it is not easy neither can parent fear automatically make them stop dangerous behaviour.

Here I agree. There are lots of situations where its very hard to teach an intangible danger. For instance, its not the road that is dangerous, its vehicles, but not all vehicles only moving ones. Very hard to consistently teach.

The road is dangerous, because the vehicles are moving on it. Any idiot who teaches the road as "safe" is putting a huge time-bomb in his child's brains, because if a child sees empty road, he can walk on it. But cars can come very fast and kill you. That's why people teach children not to walk on automobile roads period. Regardless of if they're empty or filled with cars.

But teaching basic communication skills and methods to parents will consistently give a statistical difference of the child listening to parental advice. Not necessarily at 2-3y but definately from 4 and up.

So what do you do with 2-3 year olds? Strap them to some sort of leash, like dogs? *eyes suspiciously*

[madd0ct0r]

so at 2-3 a short sharp smack can make an important difference in certain, limited situations.

As the child ages, reason should become more and more important until it's the default method?

smacking is only effective if used extremely infrequently? and outside of those certain situations, it's still less effective then the reasoning method.

and if you must smack, make sure the child understands why, smack them and give them a hug afterwards?

[Count Chocula]

@madd0c:

That's pretty much the approach my wife and I used. My son spanks himself if he drops a car, utensil, etc. on the floor, as reinforcement for the lesson he learned when he was much younger. I don't swat him for dropping something on the floor any more, I verbally chastise him for doing so. Essentially, I'm builidng on the discipline I used that he could understand at 3 with discipline he can understand at 6. Only egregious, new, or repeated offenses get the token (okay, sometimes noticeable) smack on the bucheek. 95% of our discipline is look, gesture or word.

Even when he was only 3-4 years old, when I spanked my son I always explained why and reinforced that my punishing him for transgressions did NOT mean I didn't love him. It appears that negative connotations of spanking have more to do with poor parenting in general than the spanking itself. So yes, smack, explain and hug seems to be effective, with the "smack" portion becoming less important with the child's age.

When you get right down to it, raising a child is in large part implementing stimulus-response conditioning. Very young children can't reason very well, so simple stimulus (spank) gets desired simple response ("don't to that!"). As reasoning ability improves, stimulous-response gets less physical and more mental. It also gets more complex (i.e. "look both ways before crossing the road," "don't steal your friend's toy, how would you like it if he took your toys?", "don't drink and drive because you're likely to hurt or kill someone else and SERIOUSLY fuck up your life if you live through it") and complex conditioning can't be accomplished with physical methods. A huge, and uncertain, proportion of a child's ability to function in society depends on his/her parents' skills. That's pretty damn hard to measure, and one flaw in sociology I've seen (peripheral but applicable to the topic) is the difficulty in measuring the effect of numerous factors in outcomes.

[Spoonist]

@Count Chocula
Do you really want to discuss this? I'll be happy to but it seems you don't want to listen.

@Stas Bush
I give you 50 years of research and you retort against the fun facts? What the fuck?

Then you ask for stuff that I say later in the very same post? Didn't you read it through before hacking it into pieces?

You argue from ignorance, then when I point out what research has shown you go emotional and ask that I acknowledge stuff already in the research that I linked to. Come on.
Lets recap, I said to Simon Jester that expressing fear is effective vs even really small kids, you retort with useless anecdotes, I show research on why expressing fear is effective and elaborate on that, you respond with repeating stuff we already covered... Why?

So a mother fainting and falling while her child runs towards cars is not "conveying enough emotions"?

Now of course there are no research on this since it clearly would be unethical so I'm just using conjecture here. But I'd say fainting does not convey emotions to a toddler.
They simply can't interpret that for what it represents.
In a different situation then given time it would be distressing for the child if mom remains unconscious. But it would not connect that with the action that triggered it.
Why do you think that a small child would interpret fainting correctly?

I want you to acknowledge that some forms of danger are simply too fucking complex for a small child to understand.

This is just stupid, I already did exactly that later in the very post you quote from. To elaborate of course there are plenty of stuff that is too complex for a small child to understand.
Its not until ~25y that the frontal lobe is fully developed and can fully understand stuff like "the ability to recognize future consequences resulting from current actions". Check out "frontal lobe" and "executive functions" for more on this. Like why teens act the way they do its not just hormnones.
So of course there are plenty of stuff kids can't grasp. Why would that even be necessary to point out? My correction to you was that you clearly have not read up on basic child psychology and still you argue against what I already showed were proven concepts. Facial expressions is one of the things that infants do grasp and they are very effective as a parenting tool.

Fun fact 2 ... Go science.

Um... who said anything about parents with sight impairment? I was talking about fully capable individuals who convey enough of an emotion.

What part of the concept of Fun Facts don't you get? Its just that, a fun fact related to the discussion at hand. It was meant as a reinforcement of what I was speaking about, not a vs argument directed at you.

Doubleblind data over anecdote any day.

Sure, sure, as soon as I get over a study on how small children react to automobiles. That's definetely not my area of interest. However, I'm not sure why you are dismissing the anecdote out of hand when you admit a few sentences below that the automobile is, in fact, a danger which the child struggles to understand - it is not easy neither can parent fear automatically make them stop dangerous behaviour.

Because of the context you told the anecdote in? As a response against expressing fear being effective it was completely irrelevant?
See if I can make a comparison. Its aking to me saying that "click" training is effective for dogs, then you say click training didn't work for your neighbour, then I show research on the effectiveness on click training on dogs. With you responding with I want you to acknowledge that it didn't work for my neighbor. For me to cover everything from start to finish about how and why it didn't work for your neighbor is just unecessary.

The road is dangerous, because the vehicles are moving on it. Any idiot who teaches the road as "safe" is putting a huge time-bomb in his child's brains, because if a child sees empty road, he can walk on it. But cars can come very fast and kill you. That's why people teach children not to walk on automobile roads period. Regardless of if they're empty or filled with cars.

Yes? This is why we compliment what not to do, with what to do since its much more effective. Especially if the child sees the parent doing it as well.
"Don't walk on the road - Always use the sidewalk etc".
My elaboration which you responded to was just a clarification of why such a concept is hard to teach using parental fear, since the parent doesn't act scared of the road at all - instead its only when the kid approach the road that the parent acts scared.
It was supposed to give you a hint on why it was a useless anecdote.

But teaching basic communication skills and methods to parents will consistently give a statistical difference of the child listening to parental advice. Not necessarily at 2-3y but definately from 4 and up.

So what do you do with 2-3 year olds? Strap them to some sort of leash, like dogs? *eyes suspiciously*

Are you seriuos? Why the dickery? what could you possibly want responding like that, its not productive in any way. Do you really want me to teach you basic child psychology?
Fuck that - go read a book, or at least cover the links that I have provided.

Another response like this and I'll not bother responding beyond giving you links.

@MadDoctor
Yes, but with some caveats.
1) Smacking is unecessary. Grabbing is easier and better.
2) You can reason with a two year old.
3) If you have time to talk to the child then why smack at all?

[Count Chocula]

@Count Chocula
Do you really want to discuss this? I'll be happy to but it seems you don't want to listen.

I'm confused. What is it that I don't want to listen to? I have no problem with discussion. My posts here have pretty much covered the chronology and effects of my use of corporal punishment. My son's of an age where the spank is effective only as a reinforcement and not a painful lesson, and is therefore less frequently and less severely applied. I'm willing to discuss my personal experiences, with the caveat that they are anecdotal. I'm using what seems to be effective for my child based on observation and stimulus/response.

[K. A. Pital]

You didn't just say parental fear was an efficient technique, though, Spoonist.

In child psychology the most effecient preventative action a parent can do is be scared. If the child sees that the parent is genuinly afraid of something then that will stick out clearly in their mind. If the kid goes for the stove and mom screams, pulls it away and starts crying out of fear, that child will definately think twice about going there again.

You said this is the most efficient action. However, as you admit here, it is not universally efficient; and universal efficiency is what you'd expect from a "most efficient" method. I never argued physical reprimands or spanking represent a universally efficient method, and I never claimed they were most efficient out of an array of parent methods to train the child for proper behaviour.

My idea is simply that this method is too reliant on the child's mind interpretation abilities (as you note yourself, the child can't interpret fainting properly - it may not be able to interpret screams of fear properly too, after all). Therefore, it cannot be a "most efficient method", especially for smaller children.

I'm not denying efficiency par se; just your qualifier.

[madd0ct0r]

However, as you admit here, it is not universally efficient; and universal efficiency is what you'd expect from a "most efficient" method.

remove efficient, replace with optimal, then your point triggers less pedantic points in my brain.

Otherwise it depends how you measure the 'effciency' - as a boolean value of best or not or as a variable indicating damage to child. Across a range of categories (situations), grabbing might result in the lowest average damage, while spanking beats it in one or two - the road example.

Still, there is an important difference between using spanking to express parental displeasure and using spanking to inflict pain. As a young boy I was familiar with pain, and I figured out that spanking didn't hurt as much as skinning a knee. I also knew I preferred skinning the knee and guessed it must be the wrath of the parent I wished to avoid. Obviously, by this point I was old enough that reason had largely replaced spanking.

having 4 younger brothers and sisters to observe helped.

But i disagree with Spoonist's assertion you can reason with a 2 year old. You can, but I wouldn't want to rely on it in a high risk, high consequence situation like crossing a road. Two is the age when kids figure out they exist as an entity. It takes a little longer for them to figure out other people exist too.