That kind of logic is skewed and flawed. Spanking (not beating) has always been part of human history, it cannot be said with 100% certainty that it causes increased aggression or impulsiveness. Using that logic aggression and impulsiveness would increase with every generation exposed to spanking. Instead we see less spanking and less forced used when giving a spanking then ever before.
Not
exactly. I'm a big fan of the behavioral genetics field, so I'm very aware of the role (or lack thereof) environment plays. I've on many occasions pointed out here the fact that the "cycle of violence" theory has been all but debunked by the study of behavioral genetics. That said, when factors are controlled for, testing the effects of spanking is a fairly straightforward study with reliable results. You're describing this as though it would be some cumulative effect in regard to aggression, but that's not quite how it would work. Well, that
is how it would work if there weren't social safeguards in place to diffuse the increased aggression. Education and counseling both act to mitigate the effects of increased aggressiveness in children and adults, so spanking
can lead to greater impulsiveness and aggression, but that effect can conceivably be undone as well, which is why it doesn't grow and grow and grow.
But, speaking of logic, it doesn't manifest more plainly than the assumption that, when physicality is used to control a child's behavior, that child is going to be more likely to use physicality to control the behavior of others. More likely, not guaranteed.
Most grown adults have been spanked and they don't turn out to be impulsive asshats who beat their children. The people who beat children have anger issues that go a lot deeper then being spanked when they were little.
No one is saying that the impact of spanking is so wildly disproportionate as this. I am simply saying, there is documented harm associated with the frequent use of spanking. There is no documented benefit associated with the use of spanking at
any frequency. And the fact that it is legal does appear to contribute to scope-creep. You give parents an inch, they take a mile, so to speak. If you condone physical discipline in a household containing a parent who lacks self-control, it can (and does) snowball.
If you draw a line and say that hitting your child will no longer be tolerated in any capacity, sure, there will still be people who abuse their children, just as there are men who still abuse their wives. But I believe it will be less (
this is a great article), because condoning physicality to begin with is the thing that starts
some people down the path. Once upon a time, what we recognize today as domestic violence could be found in a far greater percentage of homes, because it was a perfectly legal and widely advocated method for controlling wayward wives. Perhaps that's what disturbs me the most. The arguments men used to make to justify hitting us, we are now making to justify hitting our children. And the studies clearly suggest that we're lying to ourselves when we fool ourselves into thinking the effects are less if we hit here instead of there, or at this age instead of that.
Can we just stop hitting people?
A friend of my mom, who was in no way abusive, went to swat her four year old on the behind. He squirmed, she missed and by complete chance hit him just wrong. He had to be hospitalized with some sort of kidney lesion.
Ugh, that's terrible.
Similarly, I got my sister to stop flicking her child fairly quickly, before her child turned 2. My sister saw flicking as less severe than a good ol' fashioned spanking, and she used it more often than she would spank as a result. I shamed her out of flicking by showing her over a period of time that it was not correcting the behavior it was intended to correct (and threatening to start flicking her, because I'm the older sister and totally would to make a point, lol).
Shortly after she gave it up... daughter was identified as autism spectrum.
Crushing guilt on the part of my sister. She had been flicking her child for behaviors her child couldn't control like other kids.
