Is it OK to smack, spank or physically punish your children? Billions of parents have a deep interest in this question. But answering it is very difficult, because it comes with horrible methodological problems. Obviously, there is a huge problem of reverse causality. Suppose children who are regularly spanked are naughtier. Did the punishment make the kids worse? Or did the bad behaviour get them spanked?
“tense, distressed, and remarkably aggressive parenting of the poor Irish Catholic mothers and fathers.”
it’s like he met my forebears
Making yourself useful DHJ I applaud
I can’t speak for Smacking bans elsewhere but was given to believe the ban here in NZ was a mere change to close a “reasonable force” legal loophole in cases of child deaths/cripplings, and doesn’t give scope to prosecutions of parents whose children are intact.
So ban away, poke that intrusive govt right in
We’re waiting eagerly for Momma KPH’s book on Punishment
I think this is missing the main point. We know since Skinner that punishment, not just corporal punishment, doesn't work. It doesn't work because it is aimed at reducing a certain behaviour, and that's difficult to target. The schoolmaster may flog children for not doing their homework, but the children will learn to avoid school despite the schoolmaster's intentions. Reinforcement (positive or negative) of desired behaviours is more effective.
As a side note, I'm also missing an obvious response to the evolutionary argument. We like sugar although it's bad for us. Not much mystery there, though. Perhaps the dangers early on were so great, and behaviour less complex, that corporal punishment was selected for. If the child needs to learn not to go out of the cave at night because a bear will eat it, any method will be fitness enhancing. Our caves have doors with locks, and no bears roaming the staircase.
That seems like a silly argument. We punish to stop people doing bad things, not just to get them to do good ones. Why wouldn’t that work?
Re evolution, there isn’t much punishment among hunter-gatherers in the Pleistocene, it genuinely increases with more complex civilisations. And it’s not usually related to self-endangering behaviour but to selfish behaviour. Now maybe civilisation no longer needs to sanction some kinds of selfishness (cf “The Manlet Dorian”) but I wouldn’t say that story is *generally* true quite yet.
A reward and a punishment is actually the same thing differently framed! An employer might announce that people who arrive to work at time every day get free pizza once a week as a reward.
Or the company can have a free pizza for all at Friday policy, but exclude those who came late as a punishment.
You could in theory beat a child every day as an expected normal baseline, but reward them when they were good all day by skipping the beating.
I am paying around €300 per year in speeding tickets. The state could just raise my taxes by €300 and tell me that every year I was not caught speeding I am rewarded with a €300 bonus.
An adoption study might be interesting - but NB adopted away children may be strongly selected, e.g. what if they were taken away by the court because the biological parent was violent? Another approach is this children-of-twins study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2964497/. It shows effects of harsh punishment but not of corporal punishment in general, which is the Larzelere line.
“tense, distressed, and remarkably aggressive parenting of the poor Irish Catholic mothers and fathers.”
it’s like he met my forebears
Making yourself useful DHJ I applaud
I can’t speak for Smacking bans elsewhere but was given to believe the ban here in NZ was a mere change to close a “reasonable force” legal loophole in cases of child deaths/cripplings, and doesn’t give scope to prosecutions of parents whose children are intact.
So ban away, poke that intrusive govt right in
We’re waiting eagerly for Momma KPH’s book on Punishment
I think this is missing the main point. We know since Skinner that punishment, not just corporal punishment, doesn't work. It doesn't work because it is aimed at reducing a certain behaviour, and that's difficult to target. The schoolmaster may flog children for not doing their homework, but the children will learn to avoid school despite the schoolmaster's intentions. Reinforcement (positive or negative) of desired behaviours is more effective.
As a side note, I'm also missing an obvious response to the evolutionary argument. We like sugar although it's bad for us. Not much mystery there, though. Perhaps the dangers early on were so great, and behaviour less complex, that corporal punishment was selected for. If the child needs to learn not to go out of the cave at night because a bear will eat it, any method will be fitness enhancing. Our caves have doors with locks, and no bears roaming the staircase.
That seems like a silly argument. We punish to stop people doing bad things, not just to get them to do good ones. Why wouldn’t that work?
Re evolution, there isn’t much punishment among hunter-gatherers in the Pleistocene, it genuinely increases with more complex civilisations. And it’s not usually related to self-endangering behaviour but to selfish behaviour. Now maybe civilisation no longer needs to sanction some kinds of selfishness (cf “The Manlet Dorian”) but I wouldn’t say that story is *generally* true quite yet.
A reward and a punishment is actually the same thing differently framed! An employer might announce that people who arrive to work at time every day get free pizza once a week as a reward.
Or the company can have a free pizza for all at Friday policy, but exclude those who came late as a punishment.
You could in theory beat a child every day as an expected normal baseline, but reward them when they were good all day by skipping the beating.
I am paying around €300 per year in speeding tickets. The state could just raise my taxes by €300 and tell me that every year I was not caught speeding I am rewarded with a €300 bonus.
An adoption study might be interesting - but NB adopted away children may be strongly selected, e.g. what if they were taken away by the court because the biological parent was violent? Another approach is this children-of-twins study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2964497/. It shows effects of harsh punishment but not of corporal punishment in general, which is the Larzelere line.
In that one study!