Discipline or Assault? The Double Standards of Parents Who Spank

It's not OK for (bigger, stronger) men to beat their wives & girlfriends.  It's not OK for older kids to bully & beat up (smaller, weaker) kids or siblings.  Children who abuse (smaller, weaker) animals are equally frowned upon.  But it's somehow seen as acceptable for (bigger, stronger) adults to assault their minor children in the name of "discipline" when said kids have no choice about their living situation, mental health treatment or anything else.  Make it make sense PLEASE.

You can't because it's nonsense.  Not only that, it's abuse.  🤬 🙅🏻‍♀




The (Real) Effects of Spanking

A simple flowchart.

Discipline is not just about punishment but about imparting wisdom/teaching a lesson.  If the kid's not old enough to understand why you're striking them, you shouldn't be doing it because they won't learn anything from it.  If they are, you should be explaining/discussing what they did wrong & WHY it's wrong instead of hitting them.  Not only is spanking abusive, it's lazy parenting done entirely for the spanker's benefit, usually as a means of venting their own frustration & ruling by intimidation. 

And because kids learn from our actions rather than our words, the only thing hitting teaches them is that it's okay to assault smaller, weaker beings when they're frustrated.  It teaches him that their negative emotions are OTHER PEOPLE'S problem & that it's acceptable to take out these emotions on others.  It's not.  No one, least of all your minor children with developing brains & a total lack of agency, can "provoke" you into rage or other strong emotions.  That's all on you.  And they're certainly not responsible for your unwillingness or inability to control your violent response to your own emotions.  

But because so many people were abused under the guise of "discipline" as kids, they passively accept it as normal & never give much thought to alternative methods of disciplining their own kids.  This devious rebranding of physical abuse as loving discipline is perhaps the most twisted aspect of it all and definitely a form of psychological abuse.  "I only hit you because I love you/this hurts me more than it hurts you" becomes 'if he doesn't hit me, he doesn't love me" in adult relationships. 




If It's Control You Seek, Start with Yourself

Authoritarian parenting from a kid's POV

Parenthood is a rough & winding road that's littered with choice points, the first being whether to have kids at all.  It's way past time for grown-ass adults to get their asses to therapy or parenting classes and ACQUIRE some healthy parenting skills before even thinking of bringing a child into this world.  There are plenty of non-abusive methods of discipline, but they require consistency.  Intermittent reinforcement is the worst possible way to produce a desired result with kids because they know they can eventually get what they want if they keep misbehaving.  As they get bigger, the outbursts become more destructive & harder to manage & before you know it, you've created a monster.  We don't need any more of those.

If you don't have the time, patience or desire to apply consistency with your rewards and punishments, you shouldn't have kids.  It's really that simple.  Never existing is preferable to a lifetime of abuse & self-esteem issues imposed by those who are supposed to provide love/support.  If assault is your only or main tool of behavior modification; if you're fine with inciting feelings of fear & inferiority in your own offspring as a means of control, please take yourself out of the gene pool post haste.  

Children are individuals, not extensions of your brittle ego.  They don't exist as punching bags for you to work out your own parental trauma on.  Kids owe their parents NOTHING, didn't ask to be born and don't choose who they're born TO.  You have all the power & control so start acting like it.  And no, there is no room for debate about the harms of beating OR spanking, which oddly affect children in almost identical ways despite some pretty major differences. 

Yet despite mountains of evidence, 50+ years of research of every kind & the testimonies of adults who suffered this abuse at the hands of their caregivers, around 80% of the world's population continues to spank assault & abuse their kids. 




Adult Violence as a Result of Childhood Abuse

America: where people love their guns more than their children.

Yes, I said "abuse" because spanking affects children in identical ways as brutal beatings and other forms of abuse.  Imagine life if that weren't the case--if all these angry adults who were raised on fear & physical intimidation had been raised in mindful, patient & predictable households instead.  Imagine how much calmer & more orderly the workplace would be, our road-rage filled streets & highways.  Bullying rates in our schools would surely go down.  Public brawls, drive-by shootings & other forms of violence in inner cities, prisons & the public transport system would decline.  Perhaps the rates of obesity, addiction/overdose & other ailments driven almost entirely by escapism & childhood trauma would be much lower.  How could they not be?

Instead, we walk around armed to the teeth watching people get their heads bashed in for sport on Jerry Springer & Bum Fights & MMA/boxing/NFL for entertainment.  Our police shoot down unarmed citizens in the street, our military commits atrocities overseas and we cheer it all on from the comfort of our recliners.  Kids mow down other kids in school shootings and we fail to pass even the most menial gun control laws.  And on and on.  All of those social ills would still exist if spanking weren't the preferred method of discipline, but you best believe the rates would be much, much lower.  This country might even be livable. Americans' white-hot rage doesn't arise from nowhere, and while it can't all be blamed on bad parenting or individual choices (see: late stage capitalism), there's a reason every branch of psychology dating back to Freud's creepy ass has focused on "early childhood trauma".

Public freakouts & meltdowns a common occurrence.

Any time you see someone acting like an antisocial maniac in public, just remember:  it starts in the home.  The parental abuse, neglect, toxic conflict resolution methods, inconsistent rewards/discipline, enabling/overindulgence, lack of involvement in the child's interests & modeling of bad behavior impact a person more than any other single factor, hands down.  Yet somehow it's always PARENTS clutching their pearls & railing against drugs/violent video games/vulgar rap music.  They use personal anecdotes of how their "good kid went bad" due to these social influences, but if you squint & look closer, you'll almost always see a breakdown in the parent-child relationship that started long ago: usually around the age the kid developed their own personality & stopped serving as the parent's passive "Mini-Me"--a natural & healthy part of growing up.

That's another thing: if you're not prepared to raise a rebellious adolescent/teenager with as much tenderness as you did when they were younger, you don't deserve a cuddly dependent infant or toddler.  Most of the time these "good kids"  didn't "go bad", they just grew up and became their own person, which angered their narcissistic parent.  Good kids don't magically morph into Problem Child due to a few joints or violent video games.  Rebellious behavior is just that--they're rebelling against something, and 9 times out of 10 it's the people they spend the most time being ordered around by.  Quit scapegoating media, drugs & everything else under the sun when the problem stems from abusive parents, absentee parents, neglectful, selfish, uninvolved, toxic parents.  

You can change & heal at any time with the right help but it requires brutal honesty with yourself, total accountability & consistent work to change your behavior & make amends.  Sadly, too many people think that crapping out a kid makes them an expert in parenting & aren't willing to listen to constructive criticism or admit fault for past mistakes.  These tend to be the people dying alone in nursing homes despite having a shit-ton of kids.  Life is funny that way.  If you spend your young, vital years doing people wrong, don't be surprised when they're in their young and vital years and decide to repay the favor.  Time is not an apology & nobody owes anyone--let alone their tormenters--their love, labor or time.  And if that was your main reason for having kids, so they'd "take care of you when you're old," there's a good chance they'll see through you and not do that.  I sincerely hope that's the case.



It's Personal For Me

Who is this REALLY for?  The child or the frustrated parent?

I could tell you all about how I tortured my siblings as a small child due to my parents' own abuse of me (hitting was the only "tool" I had to deal with my frustration) causing years of fractured relationships that I work to repair to this day.  Or about how the kid with ADHD in my class was beaten by various teachers starting in kindergarten & ending in high school when a brawny male teacher almost broke his back by Hulksmashing him to the ground in front of our horrified 7th grade class.  Or how most of my peers had it even worse than me, being beaten with belts, extension cords or other objects & growing up to have dysfunctional relationships, serve time in prison or die prematurely.  But as they say, "anecdotes aren't data" and the kind of person who clings to things like corporal punishment does so despite what mountains of data say.

What I will do is make a plea with the survivors of child abuse/spanking who still extoll the virtues of spanking/hitting & other forms of fear-based parenting.  Using your own experience as "evidence" of the benefits ("I was spanked & I survived") is both inaccurate & harmful to current abuse victims trapped in houses of horror.  Not only did spanking NOT make you a better person who "respects authority," it actively damaged your developing brain.  That's not opinion; it's a fact supported by over 50 years of scientific data.  Fear ≠ respect.  Time to grow up and accept that your parents were abusive, even if that wasn't their intent.  Not making this difficult connection means you're likely to pass on the generational trauma and never address your own underlying issues (and physical abuse causes many).  You're exhibiting Stockholm Syndrome because siding with your abuser is less unpleasant than examining their harmful behavior objectively.  Stop it.  

Two things can be true at once: that your caregivers did the best they knew how at the time, and that what they did was wrong.  Forgiveness & peaceful resolutions are possible but not without accountability.  That is, acknowledging that what they did was indeed wrong & harmful, apologizing sincerely for the harm they caused (with no "but" statements, justifications or deflection), and growth going forward--i.e. not continuing the same toxic behaviors.  For potential future parents, take the time to learn about actually beneficial, effective forms of parenting & stop equating not hitting your child with being "soft" or enabling bad behavior.  If your kid has an actual behavioral or mental health problem, GET THEM HELP FOR IT.  You can't beat or spank ADHD, OCD, autism, Oppositional Defiant Disorder or other neurological conditions out of someone, you can only fuck them up more.  Speaking from experience on that.  💔

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