I have shared my opposition to spanking children to anyone who would listen, including the 2 mothers of my children. While we were married, the mothers didn’t, as far as I was aware, spank our kids. When we divorced, however, the resumed doing what their parents were doing. And a typical response from others was “my parents spanked me and I turned out just fine, so I don’t see anything wrong with it.” As a social science junkie, I look at the research and apply what I feel is common sense about an issue. Here is some recent science about spanking. [LINK HERE]
I once asked someone I know how they would feel if I spanked them when they did something stupid. Predictably they said they would stop me and said it was stupid to think that way. I asked them why its any different for children. It doesn’t seem to make sense to people who have already made up their minds, especially when they start talking about sparing the rod and spoiling the chld.
By the way, Dr. Elizabeth Gershoff posted a great Power Point presentation on the research about spanking, [LINK HERE]. The research she cites demonstrates that the poor results for corporal punishment apply across cultures, do not help in addressing behaviors in spanked children and lead in predictable ways to child abuse. If anything, the behaviors of spanked children deteriorate instead of improve.
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