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Comment by rlonn | Hacker News Reader

Seems there actually is a fair amount of research pointing to prohibiting corporal punishment for kids leads to better mental health, lower suicide rate, etc. and it does seem like a no-brainer to me that less violence leads to more stable individuals, and a more stable and happy society in general. In medieval times there was a lot of physical punishment, and society was violent, dangerous and unhappy compared to now. Singapore may be modern in many respects, but in this area, they're a bit of a backwater.

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Sometimes you don't need to make a study showing some number to act on something.

It can be a simple chain of logic saying: % of children try to test their boundaries. Of those children some get away with it, some don't. Of those who get away with it, they carry on doing it, and it has reprecussions down the line. If you look at the problem this way, it's a rational take on caning - to tighten the net against bullying.

Posted more context here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48059470

I am as asian and I was at the receiving end of pretty severe (trust me you dont wanna know the details) physical abuse as a child. It did leave some lasting damage but surprisingly it didnt affect my academic outcomes and I dont feel like someone who would ever ever consider suicide for anything whatsoever.

Just to state what I hope is obvious - every serious person, on any side of the smacking debate, agrees that physical abuse of children is wicked and wrong. The disagreement is about smacking; some people think that it is physical abuse by definition. Others may not think that, but believe that smacking is still a bad idea. Those on the other side believe that you can distinguish between reasonable corporal punishment and physical abuse. I'm sorry for what happened to you!

I've read a lot of this literature. I don't believe there is any research that shows this with a credible research design. But I'm happy to be challenged on this, so go ahead.

> a fair amount of research pointing to prohibiting corporal punishment for kids leads to better mental health, lower suicide rate, etc

But is that research of high quality?

Consider: not hitting kids is much easier than hitting kids, and also free. Ergo, if we're gonna be hitting kids, we need really strong research to show that it's effective. Which we don't have. The default should be DENY, not ALLOW, just like good security practice.

> The default should be DENY, not ALLOW, just like good security practice.

This argument could be applied to anything. I'm glad it is not.

> not hitting kids is much easier than hitting kids

These two are not the alternatives in question, so the following conclusion is invalid.

You basically didn't address anything I wrote - this is one of the most worthless comments I've written in a while.

I will reiterate. If you, or others, want to hit children then that's something you need to justify with cold hard studies. Not me. The default is not hitting people.

Acknowledge the reality: if I do these punishments to another adult man, I will:

1. Probably get my ass handed to me.

2. Go to jail and be prosecuted for assault and battery.

Given that, why then does it magically become okay to do it to kids?

The answer is it doesn't, fucking obviously. So, if you want to do that, justify it. And it better be a good justification backed by science, not some pussy-footing "reasoning" I'm sure you're going to bust out.

The default is hitting people. We are afforded the not hitting people personally because law enforcement and therefore hitting people is delegated to the government. Government doesn't do much law enforcement when it comes to children behavior.

We live in a civilized society, the default is not hitting people and you won't convince me otherwise. Again, I don't want to hear some pussy-footing bullshit, so if that's all you have then stop commenting.

> stop commenting

I will do that, because as you stated yourself you are planning to ignore arguments you don't like:

> you won't convince me otherwise

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