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Comment by skim_milk | Hacker News Reader

>Since corporal punishment is not allowed, parents tend to discipline their kids by attacking their self worth.

There's no doubt we're in this awkward generation where our parents were probably treated with corporal punishment, but still want to inflict onto their kids this which they were exposed to as a kid despite this no longer looking good/being legal. Even the anti-child-abuse book "For Your Own Good" by Alice Miller wrote "The former practice of physically maiming, exploiting, and abusing children seems to have been gradually replaced in modern times by a form of mental cruelty that is masked by the honorific term child-rearing". Of course the book pretty clearly covers the dangers of corporal punishment or any kind of attack on a child's self-worth. The point is to push through this awkward abusive phase and bring our species out the other side more self-aware by not continuing the cycle of abuse/neglect.

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How do you push through a phase with no corrective mechanism allowed on the other side? How do you propose you correct your kids? Corporal punishment is quick and decisive and both parties can move on quickly as opposed to the lifelong mental baggage that weighs down a lot of people in the western world.

What makes you say you can quickly move on?

Isn’t it the whole point to create a powerful memory that instills lasting fear and influences all future decisions?

My memory of corporal punishment — three times in my life — was a reminder of the severity of how wrong something I did was and looking back at it was completely justified. It’s not fear as much as shock to remember the moment. The pain was insignificant and so there was no fear, at least for me.

If a child is old enough to understand (usually younger than you think, judging from my friends' children), they're old enough to deserve a conversation about why what they did was not a good thing. Will they act out again? Probably, but that only requires more energy and intelligence from the parent to educate their child.

Corporal punishment is lazy, short-sighted parenting that is a "chronic, developmental stressor associated with depression, aggression and addictive behaviors" [1]. Honestly, I'm shocked this is being supported on Hackernews, of all places.

Maybe you're right that Western parents are caught between an era of corporal punishment and not knowing how to parent alternatively. Does that mean reverting to violence against children? Absolutely not. Surely it means understanding how to communicate with your children better.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2896871/?_escap...

The problem with conversations is they sometimes end up turning into exactly what I was defining in my original comment above, a long drawn out attack on the child’s self worth. Just because something is quicker and feels cruder doesn’t automatically mean it’s lazy.

Well, true. Emotional abuse is still abuse. I wouldn't say it's a justification for reverting to physical abuse instead, rather educating yourself as a parent on how raise your child in a supporting manner that guides rather than punishes.

Just like you’re drawing a distinction between a helpful conversation and emotional abuse, I’m drawing a distinction between quick physical punishment and physical abuse. It just feels like the outright excommunication of physical confrontation hurts parts of society and leaves people seething for years over something that could have been resolved over a few bruises.

Physical abuse is a high bar. You pretty much need an injury, or for the parent to lose control (e.g. drunkenness / anger management). To say any level of intensity in a spanking is too high, already puts you closer to the abolitionist position than to the US status quo.

Spanking is just low level physical abuse. There's plenty of evidence and it's widely accepted among healthcare professionals and governments (the US included) that corporal punishment of any level (spanking included) causes development problems.

Corporal punishment of children was outlawed in the US in 1969. That is two generations ago.

Here's an fairly solid statement that should suffice:

"By 2000, research was proliferating, and the convention had been ratified by 191 of the world’s 196 countries, 11 of which had prohibited all physical punishment. Today, research showing the risks associated with physical punishment is robust, the convention has been integrated into the legal and policy frameworks of many nations, and 31 countries have enacted prohibitions against the physical punishment of children.1 These three forces — research, the convention and law reform — have altered the landscape of physical punishment.

The growing weight of evidence and the recognition of children’s rights have brought us to a historical point. Physicians familiar with the research can now confidently encourage parents to adopt constructive approaches to discipline and can comfortably use their unique influence to guide other aspects of children’s healthy development. In doing so, physicians strengthen child well-being and parent–child relationships at the population level. Here, we present an analysis of the research on physical punishment spanning the past two decades to assist physicians in this important role."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3447048/

I guess we are talking about different things. Parents of traditional/conservative households in my neighborhood would routinely strike their kids with heavy implements, over and over for at least several minutes, inflicting serious pain. Kids would adapt and their pain tolerances would increase, they'd try to hide it, their parents would find out and escalate. It was a whole thing.

Oh yeah, there’s no excuse for that.

Not the OP, but I think it’s not the slap on your bottom that should scare you as a kid, but the fear when thinking about the slap, and even more so, the thought that you made your parents so upset that they now have to slap you, even though they don’t want to.

Of course, that only works with parents who don’t resort to slapping their kids’ bottoms like it’s nothing (after a while you become accustomed to it as a kid, it doesn’t scare you anymore), and also parents who genuinely love their kids and who have a close and warm relationship with said kids, that way when the kid sees that he has upset his parents he knows he did something bad even before the slap (and in that way avoiding it altogether).

Trying to only use reason with kids who are 4 or 5 years old won’t work.

> How do you propose you correct your kids?

It's not hard. You just talk to them. It takes a little bit of patience and self awareness. Sometimes they're still gonna fuck up. But then, so are you.

I'm not in the camp of saying all corporal punishment is abuse, but IMO it's quite limited in the ages and situations where it's applicable.

Has everyone on this thread forgotten about non-physical punishments?

These should take the form of natural and logical consequences whenever possible.

Make sure the kid understands what's expected of them, and how they failed to meet the expectations. Then, if needed, reinforce this with natural consequences (when it makes sense). Classic example is taking away possessions or privileges when they're misused.

Punishments can certainly be arbitrary or disproportionate (which tends to spark resentment - and possibly the mental baggage you mention) so it's important to do it thoughtfully. Done right, it's effective and non-traumatizing.

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