Spanking Is Not Hitting

I have actually entered into conversations with friends and we begin talking about spanking and they revert to using the term hitting. There is a psychology behind this. Hitting is what you do when you are fitting. Hitting is what you do when you want to hurt some one. Spanking is a loving act of discipline. I read an online news article recently with the intent of upping the ante. Discipline and domestic violence expert Murray Straus. He is also a professor of sociology and co-director of the Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire. According to him, "The more spanking, the slower the development of the child's mental ability." The difference in IQ development of 700 children surveyed was 2.8 points. Even one of the fellow researchers admits that there are so many outside factors that it is difficult to isolate them all.

The reality is spanking has been under fire since the time of Jean -Jacques Rousseau and his novel Emile: On Education. This work was one of the inspirations for the famous Dr. Spock whose book caused a revolution in American child raising in the 1950s and 60s. So what is the root of this movement that says do not discipline your children? Rousseau fathered five sons with a maid. In his time this was a impossible cross class relationship so they were not married, but this did not stop him from having children with her. He was unable to support any of the children so each of them after they were born were placed on the street to fend for themselves. Yes I mean infants set out in the gutter. Later he began to wonder what happened to his five sons so he searched orphanage records, but could not find any evidence of any of them. After his failed search he wrote a book on parenting in which he says that we should just watch our children fend for themselves and learn from them because they are untainted and discipline impresses on them our barbaric values. This to me sounds more like a defensive justification for a man who could no longer deal with the fact that he abandon his infant children to their demise. Of course who knows better how to raise children then a tormented philosopher who completely failed to parent his own children.

We cannot operate under the premise that people are basically good. The purpose of spanking is to help teach children obedience which must in fact be learned. Straus says that this is not possible that any hitting will lead to less and less controlled hitting, and that it is all abuse. I contend that a well placed and properly controlled spanking can be the object lesson followed by an explanation that will help in learning. That is right two firm spankings on the behind and then look your child in the eyes and say, "I said no. If you do that you will get hurt. Please listen when I say no."

As we continue to believe ourselves growing in intellect we make claims like cognitive development is stunted when you force you child to obey. What about the flip side of this argument which says that if your child will not obey they will not make it to the point that they will be informed enough to make a decision? We are trading obedience and discipline for free thought at the price of boundaries. Do not tell me I am hitting my child, I am disciplining my child so that he will learn obedience so he will be equipped to learn.

***Disclaimer: Everything can be taken to an excess. I am not claiming there are not people who hit instead of spank, but the exception does not prove the rule. Do not let abuse and misuse, as in any matter, scare us from proper use.