Do you believe that corporal punishment should be used on children?

I do not hitting people is a good idea, especially children.

I was hit when I was a child. And not just the kind of spanking you get for coloring on things that aren’t supposed to be colored on. The abuse went on from when I was younger, to the day I moved out of my mother’s house.
I do believe that children should be punished for doing “bad” things, but I believe that kind of punishment has it’s limit.
I was choked and punched for responding to my Mom saying “Okay” instead of “Yes Mom”. That was my freshman year of high school.
The abuse has effected me so much so that it’s sometimes even hard for me to make simple decisions, I was so used to not having a say in anything. I was taken out of High School my Soph year because I started running away (because of the abuse) and my mother put me in an outpatient program at a “mental hospital”. I was there for months every day from 7–4. Since then my personality has changed a lot. I’m less outgoing, way more reserved, and sometimes I feel like I’ll never fit in.
Also I was sheltered, I wasn’t allowed to hang out with any of my friends, go to social events, etc. The only place I was allowed to go was school. I was also left home alone a lot. Because of that, I hate leaving people alone. If I’m going out somewhere and I know that I’m going to be leaving someone alone, I feel horrible for it, and I constantly think about it. It eats away at my mind until the only thing left to do is go and keep that person company.
I constantly have horrible nightmares about being beaten and running away, and I do believe it all stems back to my childhood.
I can’t handle confrontation, even if it’s the good kind of confrontation, I constantly just walk away. It’s hard for me to talk to people face to face because I’m afraid of what they may say or think of me.

A lot of this is a result of how I was raised, and by a lot, I mean all of it.
Sorry for the horrible quality I’m falling asleep.

No. I’m going to be frank about it and admit that I have used it on a few occasions. Once or twice for dangerous situations, and a few times on one of my children because no other disciplinary measures seemed to work with her. FYI, the spankings didn’t work either. That just reinforced my opinion that it is a poor solution. I think hitting a child teaches the child that hitting is acceptable in some situations (if you are bigger, if you are ‘right’, etc.). That’s not a message I’d like to send.

If it doesn’t work for dogs/cats, why would it work on children?

Discipline is not something that needs pain to be reinforced.

After all, my will was broken by my mother without resorting to violence.

It’s just a matter of not bending. You have to say something and stick to it. Always. No exceptions. (Sort of like, don’t make a promise you can’t keep.)

@chelseababyy, I feel for you. I hope you have some loving people around you now.

“How important is it that children learn instant, automatic and unquestioning obedience?”

That depends, if you want to create the perfect corporate slave, then it’s crucial.

But really, if you’re so unconvincing and unauthoritative that you need to resort to violence to make your kid listen to you, then maybe you shouldn’t be a parent in the first place…

Then again we don’t issue licenses for breeding and parenting…

Addendum: @chelseababyy: you know you could send your father (i assume the beating came from him rather than your mother, but i may be wrong) to jail if he so much as tried to do that shit after you reached the age of consent… And i would strongly support that idea…

I have a great love for children, so I will try to avoid hitting my own. I’ve never lifted a finger against the little cousins I’m frequently taking care of. When I was younger, I was beat on a little bit by my parents, and I beat on my brothers a bit (nothing serious). For the most part, we all came through unscathed, though one of us has scars (emotional/mental) that we have not discovered the origin for. I suspect he’s just a jerk.

And despite all that, I still think I might smack my kid around if he’s really earned it. Different children need different levels of discipline, and sometimes you just have to take it there.

No. But raising children can at times drive parents nuts.

I think there’s always a better option than corporal punishment. I don’t believe that there are some kids who only learn from a spanking, although I do believe that some kids are “easier” than others. My kids don’t fall into that “easy” category, but we still manage without spanking them. The trick is to tame the beast without breaking the child. Now, I have to go make breakfast for my beasts!

yes, beat that ass when needed

I think it is abundantly clear that wise, obedient, motivated, fully normative high-achieving people can be the product of a home where no corporal punishment was ever used, which raises the question why anyone would ever want to use it, when it inflicts pain upon a child, and is demonstrably unnecessary.

It is also clear that while it is not always the case that children who were hit become adults who hit, there is enough of a measurable correlation that it seems clear that it is wiser not to do anything that would help manufacture an abuser.

Disciplining a child is important, but it must be done by a parent or loved one.
Teachers, principals, and nuns, I am looking at you!

This debate has been going on for years. Apart from the moral implications, corporal punishment simply doesn’t work. I always managed to discipline my daughter without ever having to even raise my voice. She always did whatever I asked her to do. With a smile. Her mother beats her up several times a day, burns her with cigarettes and wips her with wires, and still doesn’t get her to stop crying. Go figure.

@Jack79 I would get cps involved with that for child abuse, and I am pretty against calling cops for anything or cps unless someone is killing or beating someone or raping, that is just plain abuse what she does to her. To the question, NO never ever ever hit your child!! It would teach violence and that violence is the best way to solve things. Beside that there is never a reason to inflict pain on your children.

I used to get hit but it was always for a good reason and only when we did something wrong. And it wasn’t in public, only at home. I don’t see a problem with that. I deserved it. It taught me my lesson.

Absolutely not. Corporal punishment is primitive. Disciplining children should be done in a non-violent way.

@blueknight73 Did you not read my answer? Do you really think your answer is appropriate?

@Thammuz I really only met my father a few times, he left my mom and never came back to see me. All of the abuse was from my mother. And while it was all going on I had the NJ Division of Youth and Family Services involved. They really didn’t help. Whenever they would come they would talk to my mother first, and they would never believe me. However, the first time she ever choked me, my soph year, my grandma was there to witness. That was the only time I was taken out of my mothers custody. I was living with my aunt and my mother had to go back to court to regain the custody of me. The judge literally told her “No more corporal punishment”. She agreed, but never followed that through.

@evegrimm I do, since I’ve moved out of my parents house, nearly two years ago, my life has been fantastic. And while I’m trying my hardest to rebuild my relationship with my mother, she’s actually trying to, which is nice.

@chelseababyy – thank you for sharing your experiences with us regarding this question. Your answer was illuminating.

@mattbrowne- no one should determine whether or not they spank by how nuts they are as a parent.

I was spanked. Also verbally and emotionally abused. I don’t spank. I can’t remember learning anything from it as a child and I can’t figure out what I would teach with it as an adult.

@Bri_L Thank you very much. It’s great to be able to have a place to talk about things, and have people to really listen. So thank you for being so great to me!

@chelseababyy – I couldn’t agree with you more.

Yes. But the reason why it’s being used should be made clear. And it must be carried out, as @filmfann said, by someone who loves you deeply. And it should only be done as a last resort.

@chelseababyy I certainly hope that you’re getting better!

The reason I asked this question is because I am reading a book called Spare the Child which looks at the connection between corporal punishment and and fundamentalist Christianity. The two do not invariably go together, as you have all amply demonstrated. But the most enthusiastic supporters of corporal punishment, historically and today, have been evangelicals, pentacostals, and other born-again Christians on the grounds that such punishments are “Biblical.”

To quote from one 1979 text:

“Spanking is God’s idea. He is the one who has commanded parents to spank their children as an expression of love. Spanking is not optional. It is an issue love cannot compromise. The question we face as parents: do we love God enough to obey Him, and do we love our children enough to bring into their lives the correction of spanking when it is needed.”

From a 1972 text:

“Obedience is the foundation of all character. It is the foundation for the home. It is the foundation for a school. It is the foundation for a country. It is the foundation for a society. It is absolutely necessary for law and order to prevail.”

“Require strict obedience. This obedience should always be immediate, instant, without question or argument. What the father says do, the done does. He does it well, he does it immediately, and he does it without argument. The parents allow no exception to the rule. Hence, obedience is the law of the land and the child should not deem it necessary to have an explanation for the orders he has received from his parents.”

Such punishment stimulates anger, hatred and fantasies of revenge, but since these cannot be expressed openly, they have to be repressed in ways that cut the child off from his own emotions. “It is inconceivable that they were able to express and develop their true feelings as children, for anger and helpless rage, which they were forbidden to display, would have been among these feelings—particularly if these children were beaten, humiliated, lied to, and deceived. What becomes of this forbidden and therefore unexpressed anger? Unfortunately, it does not disappear, but is transformed with time into a more or less conscious hatred directed against either the self or a substitute person.”

One of the most enduring consequences of corporal punishment is the stifling of empathy and compassion. Imposing pain in the name of discipline is teaching a lesson in indifference to suffering. Depression is another. “Many evangelicals, generation after generation, voiced their anxiety and depression in their diaries, letters, and autobiographies. In some families, such as the Mathers, melancholy afflicted fathers and sons for at least three successive generations” In these instances, punishment was central to both their psyches and their theology.

In this respect, corporal punishment may become a kind of psychological Rosetta stone to enable us to decipher the feelings, thoughts and behaviors of people who have been punished out of a sense of religious conviction.

“Such punishment stimulates anger, hatred and fantasies of revenge, but since these cannot be expressed openly, they have to be repressed in ways that cut the child off from his own emotions.”

I disagree completely. The child will not feel revenge if they know that they deserve it (and if they do seek revenge even if they know they deserve it, then that’s another problem altogether). Whatever happened to that story of the child who was about to be beaten by his father, and the father told the child, “Sorry son, this hurts me more than it hurts you.”?

“particularly if these children were beaten, humiliated, lied to, and deceived”

That is not corporal punishment! Beating? Yes. Humiliation?! Deception?! Being lied to?! That goes way beyond the aims of corporal punishment!

Also, these biblical texts… Are they from the Old Testament or the New Testament? I think that makes quite a significant difference.

@Saturated_Brain You don’t think that a child being beaten hearing “this hurts me more than it does you” isn’t being humiliated, lied to, and deceived?

And isn’t “she deserved it” the excuse offered by every wife beater? How could she possibly resent being beaten? She didn’t have my dinner ready on time.

And what possible difference would it make if these quotes were from the Old or the New Testament?

@Zuma No. I don’t think that a child being beaten hearing that is being humiliated, lied to and deceived. Why is that not possible? Why isn’t it possible that a man who hates the the thought of hurting his child feels deep pain when he sees no other way to discipline him?

Wife beater? I thought we were talking about children. Children who “deserve it” because they have not responded to any other previous method of discipline. Let’s stay on topic.

And the difference is that the Old Testament is much more draconian than the New Testament, and these arguments I read in the extract sound awfully Old Testament in nature when the Jesus’ message (New Testament) was focused on love. Of course, I admit that my biblical knowledge is quite shallow so I may be wrong here though. I’d appreciate it if anyone else could give any input on the biblical place of such themes.

@Saturated_Brain I am, but there are still some things that I do that I know for sure are caused by my past. I’m trying my hardest to fix these things, but it’ll take time.

@chelseababyy I know how hurting the past can be… But you have experienced way more than I.. If there’s anything we can do to help don’t hesitate to ask (or PM)!

@Saturated_Brain Thank you so much, really. It means a lot to me.

@Saturated_Brain I’m sorry, but only someone who is seriously emotionally stunted and lacking in empathy could fail to see how being beaten is an act of humiliation.

As for the beating “hurting the beater more than the beaten,” that too is complete and utter horseshit, born of the same insensitivity to suffering of others as failing to recognize an assault as a humiliation. See the movie “Fanny & Alexander” for a case study in this exact pathology.

Humiliation, anger, hatred, and fantasies of revenge are just part of the clinical pathology associated with corporal punishment. There is also apathy, stunted empathy, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, dissociation, paranoia, sadomasochism, a predisposition to domestic violence, authoritarianism, aggression and delinquency, and a yearning for apocalyptic violence. This is not a matter of opinion put out for you to agree with or disagree with, this is what clinical psychologists deal with every day when they deal with people who have been beaten as kids.

The beater, whether it is a wife beater, a child beater, or a swaggering bully, always justifies his violent assaults saying that saying the person he beats “deserves” it. Unfortunately, “deserves” in these cases is entirely subjective, as in the case of a man who beats his wife for not having dinner on time, or his child for not obeying quickly enough, or for having a “bad attitude” or any number of self-serving excuses that we would not tolerate if it were violence against us. There are battered children, just as there are battered women who are made to feel as though they deserve it. That’s part of the mindfuck of being battered. They are robbed of the ability to feel their own authentic emotions; they are unable to acknowledge their own authentic needs and desires; they channel the anger they feel toward their aggressors inward; they feel guilt for “offenses” that are complete fictions of their batterers, and they can’t get away because they are physically, emotionally and financially independent on their batterers.

NOONE deserves to be beaten! Certainly, physically and emotionally defenseless children do not deserve to be beaten by adults who are 2, 3, or 4 times their size.

(By the way, I asked this question. I’ll let you know when we are “off topic.”)

I was beaten with these things as a child, till I even got bruises which lasted for days. I guess that therefore means I’m seriously emotionally stunted and lacking in empathy?

The age old problem of to smack or not to smack has been debated amongst high brows and common people alike for years and will no doubt continue to be discussed in each of these circles for years to come.

I think it is fair to say that most ‘normal’ people feel that hitting a child over and over again in a short period of time is wrong and is classed as abuse but a short, slap on the behind, once every blue moon, if they are in danger or NOTHING else has worked is this going to weigh heavily on a childs mind?? Who knows?

I am NOT advocating abuse at all, but perpective has to be reconcilled with here and a recognition of sensibilities towards what is abuse/corporal punishment and what is a discipline method by a parent… The debate continues…

@chelseababyy you can pm me as well, i intended to make the same offer Saturated Brain made but i thought it would have been inapropriate of me…

@Zuma I think the Christian texts you mention were simply written by humans. And humans err. They are not the word of God. Over the years, Christians have believed the Earth is flat, and said that it was God’s idea. They also said it was the centre of the universe, and that we have originated from clay, and that women should be slaves, and that gays should be punished. All of these however are human notions, not divine. I think Christian books in the future will correct these mistakes based on new evidence and say things like “it’s God’s will to never spank our children”.

I completely agree with Zuma, never ever hit a child, and the wife beater comments were still on the same topic, it doesn’t matter if you are hitting your child for “discipline” or your wife for Discipline for not making the dinner on time, you are still doing an act of violence and doing something that is wrong and that can create emotional scars and fear of the aggressor.

I remember only this, never was there a connection between what I did wrong and the spanking. Not before I did it. Not while being spanked and not after. There was no benefit. So from a purely intellectual stand point, addressing only spanking, as that is all that has been done to me, I can say I won’t do it.

It was an act onto itself.

@Saturated_Brain I’m truly sorry that you were beaten with canes that left bruises. That would be considered abuse in my book, and no child should have to go through that. I now that you are still young, so I’d just like to make a suggestion to you. Consider this: Many, many studies have shown that children who are hit often grow up to be adults who hit. I think there are a number of reasons for this.

1) We all idolize our parents, and if our parents did it – it must be ok, right?
2) Well, I turned out ok, so they must have done something right, right?
3) We have bought into the idea that we deserved it. After all, that was said or implied every time, and by someone we love and trust. If we deserved it, surely our children will, too, right?
4) In some tragic cases, abuse as a child has caused permanent emotional damage. In those cases, the adult lacks the necessary skills to deal with discipline issues in any thoughtful way and lashes out in anger.

In other words, your thoughts on corporal punishment are there because you were punished in this manner and haven’t ever paused to consider that your parents might have been wrong.

Now. Many, many studies also show that it is unnecessary and ineffective to discipline in that manner. Therefore, in general spanking a child or worse is just inflicting unnecessary and ineffective pain on that child.

Given that, and given your history (and all the ‘hidden’ baggage it may carry), do you think you might reconsider your stance as you grow? I really, really hope so. I wish you the best.

@augustlan that was a great answer, I really hope it goes through, although most people are stuck in their ways and don’t change. I hope he can change his mind for the better, I was spanked as a child, not much or anything and am fully against it no matter what, I want my children to idolize me doing the things I believe are right, not being violent and hurting others.

@augustlan I appreciate all that you’ve told me and the fact that you care is wonderful. However, I’d also like to raise the counter-point that not everyone who’s been caned has seen their own mother cry that she’s a useless mother, despite all she’s put into teaching her child, using the cane to cane herself after she’s caning you. Traumatic? Yes. Emotionally-stunting? I beg to differ.

Maybe it was a problem in parenting, I can’t rule that out. Maybe my mom simply didn’t know how to deal with me until I made her blow her top to punish me. Maybe her anger and frustration was mixed in with the punishment meted out to my bottom. But I know she hated laying the cane on me.

Again, I view physical punishment as an extremely last resort when you cannot reach the child. I know I was very hard to reach. My parents never ever gave me the impression that because they were bigger, they were right. I knew why my mom gave me the punishment. I knew that I had been warned beforehand, scolded and reprimanded many times previously. But being the stubborn child I was, I just carried on doing the wrong things.

augustlan, there’s no need to feel sorry for me. =) I know that because of all I’ve gone through, I’m now the person I am. What’s pain when it translates into life experience? The biggest pain one can ever feel from their parents is if one suddenly finds that they stop caring for you. And I’m very proud to say that my parents have never shown that their love for me will ever stop.

Idolisation? Nah. I recognise that they’re human, with their very human flaws. I sometimes get extremely frustrated with them too. But they love me and have always done what they thought was right for me. I know they made mistakes with my childhood (and physical discipline, if an issue, is nothing but a symptom), but they’ve been mature enough to admit where they were wrong and we just carry on from there, learning from the past.

Perhaps generally speaking you’re right. Perhaps what those Western psychologists have discovered relates here to Singaporean society (very Asian, in case you don’t know) where these canes are sold in stores for parents and where corporal punishment isn’t illegal, not even in jails (cultural differences probably play a significant role in this discussion here).

But even if that’s the case, I would not be very surprised if I am one of the exceptions. I may have my flaws, I may have my OCD and other personal problems. But by and large, I turned out okay. And I know that my parents did something right. They, through their years of sweat, blood and tears, managed to raise a person who strives to do what’s best for himself and others, even if he doesn’t always succeed.

As for my future? Well… Only time will tell. In the meantime, I need to focus on the present, and that involves me hauling my ass off Fluther and getting on with my other responsibilities!

@Saturated_Brain I had no idea you were in Singapore. You’re right, cultural differences probably account for most of the disconnect here. Suffice it to say, that kind of ‘discipline’ would not be tolerated here (USA), and would be a criminal offense. You’ll have to understand that that is why we were all so appalled by your stance on this issue. Thank you for clarifying. I understand much better now.

I still hope you’ll take a western stance while raising your future children. :)

@augustlan Hahaha. Maybe I will. Just like I said, we’ll have to see. But you have to admit, if cultural differences did not account for much of the disconnect (hey, it’s always possible), we’ve probably got an interesting case on our hands. Or does everyone here disagree with me?

Oh, and before I forget my manners, you’re welcome. =)

Depends on how bad the wrong was! For causing hurt to another, and I mean phtsical hurt, then a spanking is in order! But something small calls for a slighter punishment such as timeout!

@Saturated_Brain I apologize for my remark about the possibility of you being emotionally stunted, and for my judgmental tone in general (it seems I have my own baggage).

The following may help to explain why you don’t see beatings as humiliations or as producing rage and thoughts of revenge. Indeed, it also explain your OCD. According to Philip Greven, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is one of the classic symptoms of early childhood punishment:

“Physical assaults upon children through corporal punishments often result in the formation of obsessive-compulsive characters, which become defenses against the rage and revengefulness arising from the hurts experience from infancy through adolescence. Rituals, rules, rigid self-regulations and controls are always evident, along with persistent anxieties and doubts generated by contrary impulses and thoughts. Issues of control and autonomy are usually paramount, precisely because of the presence of impulses and desires opposed to control. But obsessives lack a sense of freedom in much of their lives, since they feel compelled by inner impulses and needs to think certain things and to act and feel only certain ways. ...”

“David Shapiro has described the rigid characters of obsessive-compulsives in terms of their conflicts over autonomy and will: “it happens regularly that, in their purposiveness and determination, rigid individuals misidentify what they want, what they intend, and even what they actually do want, what they think should be their intentions for their actual intentions, ideas that they think they should believe for convictions. In other words, such individuals are alienated from their own sense of self and of self-will. More extreme obsessive compulsives experience constant compulsions to say or do things that appear to be independent of their own wills or desires.”

“Maybe my mom simply didn’t know how to deal with me until I made her blow her top to punish me.”

“The associations of love, fear, and pain begin early and remain embedded in the unconscious mind for life. Children from Island Pond, Vermont, who have been beaten for disobedience, sometimes insisted that painful punishment is the proof of love. One father whose daughters had been subjected to such beatings said: “I have an eight-year-old girl who is a masochist. She equates love with beatings. He taped his children’s responses to his questions about their spankings:”

“On the tape, in squeaky, little-girl voices, the two older girls… earnestly try to make their father understand that they want to be spanked… the five-year-old who was allegedly beaten by a church elder for two days for lying about how many strawberries she had eaten remained silent.”

The famous writer and adventurer T.E. Lawrence was beaten by his mother and became a masochist in later life. According to his younger brother, “what was unique about them was that they seemed to be given for the purpose of breaking T.E.‘s will.” For the remainder of his life he was obsessed with issues associated with the will, obedience, authority, self-denial, and pain. In later life, he would manipulate other soldiers, or put himself into situations where he would be beaten, such as when he was captured by the Turks. According to his biographer, “the link to his mother’s childhood beatings is obvious, but the adult beaters were also associated with the Turkish soldiers who imposed the traumatic assault… The beatings as perverse, brutal and pathetic as they seem, are nevertheless a form of closeness, selected for the fusion of intimacy and simultaneous desecration they represent.” (emphasis added).

That your mother might be agonizing over her “uselessness” may also be acting out here own childhood issues, since it is well known that these sorts of things are passed on from generation to generation. It is very possible that your OCD is the result of rage you have repressed out of love for your mother. I am not saying you are a masochist, but the explanation in that section seemed to explain one of the many ways where something so intimate as a beating can become confused with love.

@Saturated_Brain – I think the greatest obstacle in your participation is that you didn’t make it clear you were from Singapore. That gives everyone a little more understanding of where your coming from right of the bat. I know it did me.

That is not to say they will agree with your view. But they will spend less time on some of the intangibles.

As far as your view, which you and I have discussed at great length in pm, there are examples of cultural based practices all over the world that, while used, and maybe in what would be considered a successful way, would not be considered acceptable when viewed outside that culture.

The oppression of women for example which I don’t mean to imply goes on in Singapore. I know it does here, in the business world at least.

@ShanEnri That is so hypocritical, if your child hurts another child this doesn’t sound right “here you hit another child, don’t do that” so now you are saying to hit them, doesn’t make sense there either.

@Zuma It’s no problem. I mean, where matters of the heart and mind are concerned, who knows what effect they’ll have on us?

Now, I’m no psychologist here, and I certainly don’t claim to know as much as you (I don’t have an PhD in sociology, for one thing), but I can’t help but feel that from what you’ve told me that there’s a lot of conjecture going on. For one thing, correlation does not equal causation. Just because I have OCD doesn’t mean that it was because of the beatings I went through when I was young. My childhood was a whirlwind of events, many of them emotionally affecting me a great deal, and for all I know my OCD could’ve come from there. Who knows? I might even be genetically inclined to have OCD (read the causes of OCD on wikipedia if you don’t know what I’m talking about, I just scanned through it a few seconds ago).

As for my mental processes, I know that I am often confused over what my deepest desires really are. I know that the heart is extremely difficult to understand and through personal experience I know that my heart is especially difficult to decipher at times. But you don’t need to worry, I know what I stand for. I have a strong sense of morals and I will always do my best to act in accordance to them, because they make me who I am. Also, wouldn’t you say that to a certain extent, we all misidentify what we really want at times?

And man, don’t worry. I’m no masochist. I hate pain, and I in no way will ever equate beatings with love or intimacy (a twisted thought indeed). I hated them and still dislike the thought of them. After my horrible phase in childhood I grew up and they stopped beating me. Actually, from what I see of my family, I’m the one who was beaten the most. The rest of my siblings have rarely been beaten. Maybe it’s because of a change in parenting techniques. Or maybe it’s simply because my parents did not see a need to beat my siblings (or it may be both! Argh you gotta hate causation in the social sciences!).

Painful punishments are not the proof of love, and anyone who says that it is probably needs to go and see a counselor. There are so many other better ways to prove that you love your child (I’ve experienced this so many times from my parents), and although this may be a source of contention amongst us, I do believe that if meted out in the correct way, love could possibly show through the parents’ punishment.

Whether my OCD is derived from any possible rage towards my mother which I repressed I don’t think I’ll ever know. I know that I don’t hate her for what she did. I know that I don’t feel any anger. And if there’s any repressed rage, it’s probably miles down in my heart buried in the deepest darkest corner, where all the dark stuff we humans are capable of are kept for safe storage.

The social sciences are simply fascinating, but in my opinion, the deeper and deeper we go, the murkier and murkier things become. It’s no longer possible to safely say that this thing caused that, or that thing led to this. Causation and correlation become confused, and for all we know, one day someone could reach the conclusion that a psychopathic misanthrope turned out the way he did because his mother did not breastfeed him, thus leaving his inert sexual nature dissatisfied (thank you Freud for inserting the most disturbing thoughts into my head).

@Bri_L Yeah.. I’m beginning to realise that. To be honest, I don’t like the thought of stating where I’m from. Sure, it may offer and understanding as to why I think the thoughts I do, but I hesitate to reveal the fact that I was brought up in a different culture because people may then start to use it like a windshield wiper.

Saturated_Brain doesn’t agree with us? Oh don’t worry, it’s just a cultural thing.

You see what I mean? I’m afraid that people will start to downplay the logic and the reasons I place in my arguments and dismiss our differences simply as a cultural gap, which irks me.

I like for people to judge me for who I am, not which culture I’m from. I realise that the two are intertwined but sometimes I just worry that people will place too much focus on the wrong one.

As for something as complex as psychology, it doesn’t stand to reason that just because I’m from a different culture, the same psychological theories don’t apply, which is exactly why I’m participating in this discussion, because it’s interesting. I like to expand my horizons (although it’ll involve challenging my beliefs, something always unpleasant), and it’s by doing this that I manage to do so (this question [as has the one on the slapping case] has definitely done so, in case you were wondering).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

@Zuma again, to get back to your original question, it looks like in most cases corporal punishment won’t work for children. But is it not possible that if done in the right way, it will actually work? I admit that the chances of that happening are probably quite slim, and that it also probably depends a lot on the individual being punished. I might just be the exception to the case. I have no idea. Or I might just be a victim myself.

But until I go for a true psychological analysis, I probably will never know.

Care to fly a few thousand miles to meet me? =)

As you correctly note, I am a sociologist, not a psychologist; so you would be better off with someone who is trained and experienced in treating OCD. A friend of mine I went to grammar school with is a professor of psychiatry and he tells me that if he had just one wish, it would be to end child abuse for at least one generation.

Correlation may not be causation, but correlation does establish a degree of probability that two things are related. When making decisions under conditions of uncertainty, as most of life is, it is always wise to play the odds. So, whether or not your punishments as a child have anything to do with your present OCD, it is probably wise that you avoid punishment in rearing your own children, if there is a chance that the practice could be driven by processes in your subconscious.

@Zuma Sigh… Such is the complexity of life eh? And forgive me for mixing up sociology and psychology, just that I thought that there would be some overlap (although it’s clear to me now that any overlap would be quite superficial).

Just because corporal punishment is more socially acceptable in different cultures doesn’t mean that it is the most effective mechanism for disciplining a child. If you want obedience to authority, then punishment is a good means for achieving that goal. Asian cultures tend to place more emphasis on honoring ancestors, so corporal punishment could be more useful for enforcing that tradition.

There is, of course, more than one way to achieve any goal, and it seems rather arrogant to judge that one’s own way is the best way. Perhaps that is merely a way of justifying or validating one’s own way of doing things. Despite that, it seems to me that while one can use corporal punishment to achieve various socially valuable goals, doesn’t mean that you should use it, if there are other equally effective methods. In general, I believe in the least violent method for achieving a goal.

Other cultures may have more acceptance of violence, and may think it is important to prepare children for violence by having them experience it. Other cultures may not consider that OCD or other psychological impacts of violence are negative things. They might be considered valuable things.

Perhaps corporal punishment is related to competitiveness or toughness. Singapore is one of the most competitive nations on earth, according to one measure I just saw. If you value competitiveness, then that nation must be doing something that’s working.

Anyway, the research shows that while extrinsic motivators, such as punishment, work to motivate people, intrinsic motivators last longer. People usually stop doing the thing that others desire them to do once the threat of punishment is no longer there.

I suppose extrinsic motivation can eventually be internalized, and punishment is no longer necessary to make people believe the threat of punishment. Still, I don’t see why this method should be used if other methods work as well or better. It seems gratuitously harmful in terms of both physical and mental pain.

Children can be corrected and taught values and taught how to behave in a socially acceptably manner without corporal punishment. It seems fairly clear that violence in childhood can lead to masochism and sadism in adults. Why risk that? Corporal punishment may turn out well, but it is more likely to turn out badly than other methods of child rearing. I really don’t think it is justifiable just because sometimes it turns out well.