That article says that 90% of American parents spank their toddlers. Whatever the real figure is, a lot of people's gut tells them that hitting their children is right.
I agree with the sentiment that you shouldn't try to force some one-size-fits-all formula on your kids when it feels wrong. But we do need reason, frequently.
Hitting people is an ineffective way of life -- it is bad for yourself. When you cooperate, you both win. When you fight, at most one of you wins, and usually you both lose (even if you don't get hurt, peaceful people will now keep their distance).
Fighting is also an irrational approach to conflict resolution. It makes no attempt to have the best idea implemented. Instead, it implements the idea of the physically strongest person. That is not a way to find the truth or to achieve good outcomes.
Or only people who try reasoning with two year olds get so frustrated that they feel hitting children is best?
Hitting children for discipline is a touchy subject because without a proper motivation behind it, it becomes very inhuman. However, sometimes a child doesn't have a large enough sense of the world to be rational.
For instance, "don't stray very far from me" is a very reasonable command to give to a child because of safety concerns. However, what does a child know about kidnappers, careless drivers, or even the feeling of being lost? The child has to have some experience of these things (not direct, could be through stories, etc) in order to be able to reason why parents give that command. Because you don't have 3 years to explain to the child about the world, you have to have a more direct way of making them obey, and it is hard to think of a better way. Most of the ones you can think of involve some form of pain for the child because humans respond the most to pain first (and reasoning as an afterthought). The non-pain alternatives include letting your child do whatever they want to and take the consequences themselves, spending a lot of time enlarging their sense of the world, or making sure they understand that you mean to do good for them. Granted, nothing is perfect in parenting, and you really have to work with what you're given - that said, if your child won't listen to something that affects their wellbeing, you need to give them a reason to listen.
Discipline is also only a part of parenting. You need to give them love, praise, and someone to look up to. Children dislike their parents when discipline is the only thing they remember when growing up. I want my kids to remember me when growing up, not as a family figurehead, but as a role model for them to grow into or beyond.
or suppose he doesn't understand why to not stray very far and this makes a mistake about it's importance. then it's first ignorance, second pain.
or suppose he doesn't understand what situations "don't stray very far from me" applies in and which it doesn't. then again, not knowing what his parent wants is followed by pain.
there is no lesson or learning there. what's going on is a lack of communication followed by pain. there isn't even punishing disobedience, because disobedience didn't take place. that's one sort of way spanking can be completely senseless.
now, suppose there was disobedience. is "disobey and i'll hurt you" really the best way to handle that? that's leadership by fear, not leadership by inspiration. you call this "a reason to listen" but it isn't, it's a reason to look for ways to avoid being hurt, whether they are what the parent wants, or not.
Seriously, though, at least you can understand where it comes from. And discipline is not just smack smack smack and you're done. Discipline involves telling the child what they did wrong and why.
A better approach is to recognize that everyone makes mistakes, and the important thing is to institute policies that correct errors. That means rather than spending all your time making your rules be obeyed by any means necessary, there needs to be mechanism so that if you make a mistake you will be corrected (at least if anyone, including your child, is aware of it). This could be called "philosophically enlightened parenting" and it's better because it takes into account what we know about how knowledge is created (including knowledge of what to do in particular situations or how to solve problems in one's life including undesired behavior by one's child). That it doesn't hurt is nice too.
Just go out on the street and look at people walking their dogs. Do you think it makes a lot of sense if those people get angry with their dogs, you know the kind who go "bad doggy" all the time and have full conversations with their dogs? I don't think it does, because dogs can not even understand what these people are saying. They are fooling themselves, and so apparently are you with your communication with kids (I mean it seems to be a human error). (I know the dog can probably understand it did something wrong, even if not WHAT it did wrong, but I hope you know what kind of people I am talking about - a lot of time the human-dog communication just doesn't make sense, but humans somehow fool themselves).
Daddy, I want to play over there! Son, there's a constant stream of cars going by at 40mph, you will die instantly or be hurt worse than you can possibly imagine. But I WAAANNNT TOOOO...
Spanking (when administered carefully and without angry reaction) seems to be a valid form of behavior modification for a creature that does not have any reasoning ability because it allows aversion to be stored directly in the same part of the brain that is motivating desire. Its probably better to reason with a 9 year old than spank but as the parent states, anyone who thinks that a 2 year old can reason, doesn't have one.
The kid will most likely cry even though your hitting his/her hand will not really hurt. Its the fact that you're hitting them that they don't like, cause its a negative connotation.
Aside from it, lots of love and affection! Kids need attention while they're young or they'll claim you're a bad parent. They need affirmation.
Curi: Do you think states should outlaw spanking, or do anything to discourage it? Or do parents have a fundamental right to hit their children without causing injury, misguided as it may be?
I have noticed reasonably frequent atheist references, so I think a fair amount of people here are atheists. But parenting comes up rarely, and people often have views on parenting that are poorly integrated with the rest of their personality.
But I don't think spanking should be banned today in the USA. I don't want to make 90% of families (or whatever the number is) into criminals overnight, and make the debate go underground. A ban wouldn't stop spanking; we need to persuade more people first. I do expect that some time in the future we will rightly ban spanking.
I wouldn't object to the State taking steps to discourage spanking, but I don't think the State is really any good at persuasion. Their anti-drug and anti-smoking campaigns and stuff like that don't work.
What we need is for people to start believing that rationality isn't just for doing science, and maybe your job, it's for everything including parenting and relationships. And to learn something about which ways of arguing and thinking are capable of finding better conclusions than you started with, and which aren't.
"But I WAAANNNT TOOOO..."
'Firstly - that's whining. And you know that you are less likely to get what you want when you whine, don't you?'
'Secondly, the reason you can't go over there is because that road is too dangerous for you to be near at your age. When you're bigger, we'll teach you how to do that more safely and you will be able to.'
[and if over-repeated...]
'Now, if you carry on complaining about that then we'll have to go home/you'll have to go inside/you'll have to go and stand over there as a punishment]. You're making this no fun for me and no fun for you. You can X Y Z which is a decent alternative'
[and never give a threat you're not willing and able to follow through on.]
[Child runs to road...."STOP!" + rugby tackle if need be.]
I don't dispute your right to raise your child as you wish, but I do dispute the reasoning you've demonstrated as your justification for doing so.
I'm not here to say when or how much spanking is appropriate. This is for each parent to decide for themselves. I'm just saying that it can and does work where reason fails, and if used appropriately and with discretion, its not the soul-draining horror some alarmists make it out to be.
they don't have to understand every word you say because they can hear compassion. i think if violence has to be used in a relationship, it's a broken relationship. but perhaps most parents don't see it as a relationship where respect has to go both ways. if your child is having tantrums against you, and not listening to you, something went wrong long ago, and using that as evidence that children can't be reasoned with is fallacious
I've never used spanking on my child.
But I have used a variety of other techniques to express displeasure, ranging from freaked out yelling (in dangerous situations), to removing them from the situation, to denying dessert.
I think that, like primary rewards in animal training or online ads in web startups, spanking represents an unimaginative approach to the problem. The lowest common denominator. The solution you use when you can't come up with anything better.
I expect more than that out of myself and my son.
My dad and I have been laughing about it for a long time now. I think my sister was only spanked 2 or 3 times. The last time any us of were spanked happened when my she wet her pants in Dad's lap. We laugh a lot about it, actually.