Hacker News Reader

Comment by Trombone12 | Hacker News Reader

Or maybe its just the childless Americans (raised in a culture where spanking is widely accepted) that upvote the tough line on child discipline.

I mean, your original post was really about how to enforce rules, though you spent most of it conjuring up the image of publicly annoying children and then assuming their parents don't set any rules.

Somewhat surprisingly you also describe how the same parents that supposedly don't set rules clearly trying (but failing) to enforce said non-existing rules...

Just say what you mean: you make your children obey you by physical means.

View on HN

I hope I'm misreading your implications when you say "you make your children obey you by physical means", because it sounds like you're accusing the parent commenter of child abuse. I'm sure that's not what you intended but I wanted to make it clear how that could come across.

Spanking isn't considered abuse in American culture. But you can make children obey physically without spanking. There is snatching from them, picking them up, etc. Those are physically asserting yourself over them to enforce a specific outcome. Not saying that's good or bad, just showing how the poster didn't imply abuse.

The original commenter didn't mention physical discipline though - in fact, they explicitly stated that the parents in question wouldn't even raise their voice, which I took to mean that the solution was to verbally discipline misbehaving children rather than trying to explain the rules to them as you would an adult peer.

Sometimes these other attempts do not work. (I had to use medieval methods exactly once for very good reason: electric sockets. Child safety and covers only go so far.)

>Just say what you mean: you make your children obey you by physical means.

You say this like its inherently a bad thing. Do you think children are abused by their nervous system that keeps them from biting their tongue and chewing on their jaw by causing them pain when they do so? Does this process cause them mental trauma? If not then why do we act like using a proportional amount of physical means to instill correct behavior in young children is inherently a bad thing? This "enlightened" parenting movement has really jumped the shark.

Does it seem brutish or incivil to stoop to physical means to adjust your child? Maybe you should cultivate reason. I wouldn't have written this comment except your comment about the enlightened parenting movement jumping the shark seriously rubbed me the wrong way.. as if to say we should not try and do better, we should just do things the way theyve been done for most of time. Its such a backwards and harmful perspective. We see problems that we can fix, why wouldn't we? Does it threaten your parenting style? Will your kids not respect you if you withhold violence?

>We see problems that we can fix, why wouldn't we?

Because we don't know its a problem. We have ideas that may or may not be sound. But we push them on the world with a fervor far beyond that which is justified by the facts, going so far as to criminalize non-abusive spanking in some places.

>Does it seem brutish or incivil to stoop to physical means to adjust your child?

These just aren't the types of judgments that a make sound basis for widespread forcible change of parenting styles.

>Because we don't know its a problem. We have ideas that may or may not be sound. But we push them on the world with a fervor far beyond that which is justified by the facts, going so far as to criminalize non-abusive spanking in some places.

We should operate on our best understanding, no? You're right we don't know it, as we don't know anything. I suppose we should not act like we know it, as you say, and should not punish people too severely for such things. Thats not to say we shouldn't use our best judgement, which is that such parenting styles are perhaps "savage" (i hesitate to use that word in particular, but maybe you get the meaning). If verbal conflict is enough to be incredibly stressful, can you imagine physical conflict? Verbal conflict already gives me immense anxiety.

>These just aren't the types of judgments that a make sound basis for widespread forcible change of parenting styles.

Why not? And then what types of judgements would? THis sounds like a comment just intended to resist change, and the kinds of judgements I imagine you supporting are ones that dont cause change.

I just think widespread change should be instigated by sound science, not by unproven ideas about how things should be or what we think is ideal. There is a lot of information encoded in current practices, we should not wholesale toss out convention without fully understanding the consequences. There is the potential for immense damage if our ideas about how to best raise competent adults is wrong.

>Thats not to say we shouldn't use our best judgement, which is that such parenting styles are perhaps "savage"

My concern is the value of these judgments in getting at the truth of the matter. Judging corporal punishment as harmful because we as a society have decided that violence is savage, is just an invalid deduction. But we've become so accustomed to reasoning-by-emotion that its hard to push back against loud voices that declare corporal punishment no longer acceptable. But the risks are too high to let our emotions overtake the science on the issue.

This topic is very hard. What would be harmful? We have to agree about that first.. somehow it seems putting your child into an awkward position is harmful, and itd be awkward if your child was normalized to corporal punishment.. Thats probably not that severe of a harm to the point that it should prevent you from considering corporal punishment.

Harmful in the sense of raising children who have never had any real boundaries growing up and so don't respect a parent's authority, are impulse-driven, are unable to delay gratification, have no work ethic, etc. These traits are detrimental to academic careers and job prospects.

That isn't to say that all children who aren't spanked grow up into these sorts of adults. But some children inherently have more behavioral issues, or are brought up in bad environments with a lot of negative influences, and they can grow into serious deviant adult behavior if not properly addressed when they're young. Corporal punishment is an effective tool and it needs to be on the table unless proven otherwise.

I didnt know we were still concerned about deviant adult behavior in 2017 lol.. Seems like deviance is fine to me and everyone is free to live a life according to their own wishes and priorities

You misread me. I mean deviant as harmful, not deviant as alternative.

> Just say what you mean: you make your children obey you by physical means.

This comment badly breaks the HN guideline which asks you to "respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize." I know it's not always easy, but please follow it when commenting here. Otherwise we just end up with misplaced outrage compounded.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com