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Comment by bobbin | Hacker News Reader

> This societal moralizing about every single aspect of how one should raise their children is a big part of the problem described in the article.

Well, you are trying to add unearned emphasis with "every single aspect". It's not about "every single aspect", although it is moralizing about compulsion and pain.

> For the record, spanking is not necessarily abuse.

depends of the definition.

> For you to cite unequivocably that it is is pure unthinking political correctness.

You don't know how much though I have put into the subject and calling it political correctness is incorrect unless careing about whether or not people use pain and fear to shape children is just political correctness.

> Parenting is complicated, psychology is complicated

...

> Is everyone who was born before 1950 irretrievably fucked up?

I don't know if "irretrievably", but I think almost everyone is psychologically damaged in some way or another.

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Well, you are trying to add unearned emphasis with

No, it's fully earned. I am a parent. I have witnessed first hand the moralizing, judgement and mutually contradictory universal expectations that random people have about how childrearing should be done.

You don't know how much though I have put into the subject and calling it political correctness is incorrect...

Fair enough, you may have put substantial thought into how parenting should work from a theoretical perspective.

...unless careing about whether or not people use pain and fear to shape children is just political correctness

Reframing the debate in terms so negative that anyone would appear insane to disagree with them is classic political correctness.

I don't know if "irretrievably", but I think almost everyone is psychologically damaged in some way or another.

Which raises the question, is your duty as a parent to prevent any and all psychological damage to your child?

If the goal is to minimize suffering, then is it better to indulge your child and raise an entitled spoiled individual that will never be satisfied for the rest of their life. Or is it better to "use fear" (the fear of consequences, whatever they may be) to raise a child that has some notion of negative cause and effect?

> No, it's fully earned. I am a parent. I have witnessed first hand the moralizing, judgement and mutually contradictory universal expectations that random people have about how childrearing should be done.

I don't doubt you are an intelligent person, but it's not showing. I hope you consider it as a possible description and not an insult.

Let's go by parts:

> No, it's fully earned

it is objectively unearned. To earn the complaint of "moralizing about every single aspect" I need first to moralize about every single aspect. I moralized about one aspect.

> I have witnessed first hand the moralizing, judgement and mutually contradictory universal expectations that random people have about how childrearing should be done.

From me? please justify.

> Reframing the debate in terms so negative that anyone would appear insane to disagree with them is classic political correctness.

Please justify how is it that hitting causing pain is not using hitting and pain to shape children.

> Which raises the question, is your duty as a parent to prevent any and all psychological damage to your child?

you changed the subject from causing pain as a value in parenting to preventing psychological damage.

> If the goal is to minimize suffering, then is it better to indulge your child and raise an entitled spoiled individual that will never be satisfied for the rest of their life.

What? you are so far from being able to think about this subject.

> Or is it better to "use fear" (the fear of consequences, whatever they may be) to raise a child that has some notion of negative cause and effect?

I'm done. You could tell yourself I'm quitting because I don't have an answer. I just realize this subject turns brains off for very good reasons.

> you may have put substantial thought into how parenting should work from a theoretical perspective.

Condescension aside, perhaps bobbin is simply familiar with some of the scientific literature on the subject, such as: http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2002/06/spanking.aspx

> Reframing the debate in terms so negative that anyone would appear insane to disagree with them is classic political correctness.

This is only true if the attempt at reframing is disingenuous. What else is corporal punishment but the application of pain in order to elicit fear?

> is it better to indulge your child...Or is it better to "use fear"

Not hitting a kid is not the same as indulging them. One can be among the strictest of parents without laying a hand on a child.

Hello. I am a parent. I am quite familiar with how schizophrenic you will quickly become if you try to do what everyone else tells you to do. I have put considerable thought into corporal punishment. And in my case the thought is both theoretical and practical.

While I grant that there are lots of people who are against corporal punishment as a matter of political correctness, there are also very good reasons not to use corporal punishment that have absolutely nothing to do with political correctness.

The first, and simplest, is that children model their behavior on ours. If you hit your kid, your kid will try hitting other kids. And, according to statistics, they are also more likely to hit other people in their lives, including spouses and their own kids. If you don't want to encourage that behavior, you need to not model it.

The second is that children who experience corporal punishment become more focused on avoiding the punishment than on internalizing the lesson they were supposed to learn. The classic example is the kid running out on a street looking around to be sure that mom isn't watching, and not looking for the car that is coming. Other forms of discipline have much less of this problem.

Corporal punishment also toughens the child's response to punishment. This makes them much less likely to respect alternate forms of punishment. Which makes them less likely to respect attempts at discipline in other child care settings, such as detentions at school.

Now you can try to solve problem 3 by supplementing others' punishment with your own corporal punishment. But only at the cost of worsening problems 1 and 2.

All of this wouldn't matter much if it weren't for the fact that other forms of discipline have been observed to be just as effective in altering children's behavior, and do not have the same drawbacks. Luckily those forms of discipline (and in many cases alternatives to discipline!) exist. And therefore there is no good reason to use corporal punishment.

Thank you for your response.

If you hit your kid, your kid will try hitting other kids. And, according to statistics, they are also more likely to hit other people in their lives, including spouses and their own kids.

Your kid will almost certainly hit other kids no matter what you do. (At least if your kid is a boy, I'm not so sure about girls.) Of course you should punish it when it happens, but you shouldn't be surprised, and you certainly shouldn't despair that now your kid is going to grow up to be a wife-beater.

Which makes them less likely to respect attempts at discipline in other child care settings, such as detentions at school.

As it turns out, by the time I went to school I was well-behaved enough that I never got detention. I can't give all the credit to corporal punishment for that one... or can I?

And therefore there is no good reason to use corporal punishment.

Out of curiosity, what punishments do you give to your kids? Do you have a "reserve" punishment saved up that you've never had to use? One so powerful that the mere threat is enough to get 'em to behave?

I am aware of that, and don't despair. But I'm still going to make common sense steps that reduce the odds of that.

As it turns out, by the time I went to school I was well-behaved enough that I never got detention. I can't give all the credit to corporal punishment for that one... or can I?

According to the statistics, you cannot give credit to corporal punishment for that. There is a great deal of variability in kids, but _on average_ corporal punishment doesn't result in better behavior. (No matter how many people personally believe otherwise for themselves.)

Out of curiosity, what punishments do you give to your kids?

Diversion. Talking to. Counting. Time outs.

Do you have a "reserve" punishment saved up that you've never had to use?

Skipping the regular Friday treat.

This "cause and effect" argument strikes me as incredibly shallow thinking. Do you seriously believe that the only way people learn cause and effect is from spankings? Appealing to cause and effect is extremely misleading because a punishment is not a natural effect of the cause of misbehavior. This is true almost by definition - you have to create a punishment because there is no natural negative consequences to whatever they did. That's why no-one punishes kids for falling and skinning their knee - the effect proceeds naturally from the cause. So the punishment is by definition an artificial manufacturing of a negative consequence to enforce the behavior of the parent's choosing -- not only is this objectively true, every child knows this. If you ask a kid why they get punished, how many would say "That's the way the universe works, it's like gravity."? None. They all realize that it's the parent's decision and choice, and are well-aware that other parent's make different decisions.

The reason this is important is that attempting to elide the parent's choice in how and when to punish is an attempt to avoid responsibility for being an authority, with all the questions of legitimacy, responsibility, transparency, appropriateness & fairness that that entails. Saying your actions are natural consequences like gravity means you are making yourself into a tyrant who cannot be questioned. This failure to accept the responsibility of being an authority is also a mark of the permissive parent, who refuses to set any limits at all. Even though they seem like opposites, they have something in common.

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