Spanking on Google

It's all over the Internet. The fact is, sometimes it's faster to get what you want by using violence than by using peaceful means. Faster, I can agree, but the long term consequences just aren't worth it. That is one of the most important messages we have to deliver.

Julia Tourianski inspired me to check out the 24 links Google provides when I search for "raised without being spanked". I might try some other versions that express this most excellent condition of some portion of our species who, I suspect, might be a bit better suited for living peacefully than the rest of us.

1. Reframing Bullying Prevention to Build Stronger School Communities By James Dillon. In his book, right where I found "raised without being spanked," Mr. Dillon writes about the idea that sometimes you have to hurt people to help them. A man made a youtube video that Mr. Dillon watched. He tells us that the man who made the video assumed that some boys were raised without being spanked. According to Mr. Dillon, the man says these boys bullied an aide on a school bus because they had not been disciplined or spanked enough by their parents. Mr. Dillon goes on to point out that the underlying logic, that in order to stop someone from doing wrong, you might have to hurt them, may be a calculation shared by both the man and the boys about whom he made the video. After all, the boys were bullying the aide for doing something they didn't like.
2. A post at whisper.sh shows an image defending the raising of children without spanking with a hashtag designed for people with poor arguments.
3. A book by Barbara Nicholson and Lysa Parker called Attached at the Heart: Eight Proven Parenting Principles for Raising Connected and Compassionate Children contains this phrase in chapter seven, Practice Positive Discipline. The authors recognize there, on page 195, that some who have never known anyone who was raised without being spanked will have skepticism and doubt about what the authors call Positive Discipline.
4. Trudi Mitchell Bartow wrote The Twelve Greatest Gifts We Give Our Children. At the end of chapter four, The Gift of Rules, Structure, and Discipline, she urges parents not to spank their children. All three of her children were raised without being spanked and she is apparently quite proud of how they turned out.
5. A member of Webmaze, Kimba~, calls those under 25 years old (as of July, 2010) the Spankless Generation and bases this appellation on her understanding that most people born after 1985 were raised without being spanked. She laments that these young people were not "chastised for being clearly wrong," which is what she really means by "spankless."
6. This one was entertaining right from the start. Many who spank suggest that they were spanked and they turned out just fine. Gemgem at cafemom contends that she was raised without being spanked and she turned out fine too.
7. This one seems to be a joke by Sam Gipp as "A Friend to Church Ministries" on Facebook. He suggests that some who rioted in response to Trump's presidential victory were anarchists and were raised by parents who were deceived by "Dr. Spook" into not spanking their children.
8. Back in 2007, a user named DocM wrote that good kids and responsible adults can be raised without being spanked. The discussion following his comment is here for your review. He was responding to a post about a bill in California that would have established punishments for parents who choose to spank their children.
9. A cute lady named Allison wrote a post in which she points out that many parents were not raised without being spanked. She used the double-negative, so you wrestle with that if you need to. Her post provides alternatives for those who have decided against corporal punishment but find themselves unprepared in certain situations.
10. Disney provides a forum in which Alyssa88 writes that she was raised without being spanked in response to a post attempting to discuss California's proposed law to make spanking illegal.
11. This one is a response on qfak.com to someone who still believes in a good old fashioned spanking. The respondent (response #5 - there are no names) suggests that "parents and children who were raised without being spanked" were taught "a much higher level of responsibility."
12. This one was a discussion about the proposed law. A user named Erik provided a link to a study (I didn't read) that suggests that spanking reduces intelligence.
13. In an Amazon health forum, there is a discussion about spanking children for misbehavior. In it, self-described as a Licensed Professional Counselor, Lois McClain points out that she is successful and was raised without being spanked. I didn't read the whole discussion. It's 501 posts, and probably more by the time you read this.
14. The phrase came up in a (very) long discussion about a study that says spanking children causes long-term developmental damage, lower IQ. The phrase was on page 14 of the comments, for those who are curious about my methodology.
15. A discussion on straightdope has almost 200 responses. One of them refers to hearsay about children raised without being spanked not knowing how to respect authority, the commenter suggesting that this is BS.
16. A post on reddit in which many anarcho-capitalists suggest that the importance of the Non-Aggression Principle in anarcho-capitalism requires ancaps to avoid spanking their children.
17. This one is another reddit discussion, but for the whole site ("askreddit") instead of just the ancaps.
18. This one is a discussion from 2001 in a newsgroup about families in Canada coming to the USA to escape persecution for spanking their kids. Child welfare services in southern Ontario removed seven children from their homes because the parents spanked their children as a form of discipline.
19. This one is a discussion on Circle of Moms. The phrase raised without being spanked isn't on the page, but I guess Google does some effective semantic analysis to find hits with language that matches the search term. Neat!
20. This one is from a discussion of what Stefan Molyneux's utopia would be like, so of course one of the differences would be that everyone there would have been raised without being spanked.
21. This instance is from a discussion on babycenter.com about spanking in which ProudMamaXOXO recognizes that she has seen all four instances - sweet kids that have been raised without being spanked, sweet kids that haven't, nasty kids that have, and nasty kids that haven't - but doesn't indicate that she noticed any correlation.
22. This one is from the wtfblog89, in which blogger "cherry blossom," writes about some comments in which one lady said her grandmother was raised without being spanked but proceeded to "beat the shit out of this woman's mother". Cherry did not provide any links so we'll just have to take her word for it.
23. This one comes from the Ask the Bowers blog. A "log time lurker," EIJ, reaches out to admit that she also spanks her children, but knows that finding a better way is possible and even desirable because she knows parents who have kids that were raised without being spanked and she considers them all to be great kids. She asks if the spanking might be the only way for those who don't know how else to achieve the desired result (a child not doing a particular bad thing).
24. This last occurrence comes from a discussion on newrider.com about "Natural Horsemanship." De_Stille_een suggests that children raised without being spanked "don't really have the same respect that spanked-kids do."

I agree that ignoring it when others are clearly wrong (from #5) is a bad idea. I'm not sure that hitting them is any better. Kimba~'s lament in number 5 is what I was seeking. I often seek out writings that disagree with my views in order to test them and change them. If I can find enough evidence that failing to use spanking for disciplinary purposes allows children to grow up into horrible (or even below-average) adults, then I'd have something to think about. I didn't.

I believe that spanking children teaches them that the short-term effect of violence - that it solves an immediate problem - justifies using the violence, and that the long term effect - that we get more violence and suffering - is not something to consider.

Sam Gipp's little joke (from #7) reminded me that the only rioting I was aware of was reported to me by anarchists, probably because I don't bother paying much attention to people who feel they need to be governed.

Touching on the similarity in logic between the man who made that video (#1) and the boys about whom the video was made, the discussion from #8 suggests to me that the state of California was, for a time, considering fighting fire with fire. I don't think the bill passed.

A little note about #15, where a commenter refers to the idea that children raised without being spanked don't know how to respect authority. I believe the claim would be more accurate if the word fear were used instead of respect. The fact is that the kind of authority that commands fear is based on violence, has short-term benefits, and long term costs (which generally outweigh the benefits), while the kind that commands respect (and not fear) has short and long term benefits and almost no costs. This difference is referenced in #24 as well, where De_Stille_een most like does not realize that "the same respect" really means "fear instead of respect." If you'd like an example showing that kids raised without being spanked are more likely to treat useful authority (the kind that comes from expertise and experience rather than public sanction for the use of violence) appropriately than those who were spanked, just add a comment and I'll get to it. It seems relatively intuitively obvious to me, as long as you understand the two different uses of the word "authority".

I believe the state opened itself up a can of worms with that proposed law, as people recognize that the foolishness of resorting to violence is a foolishness that the state shouldn't be trying to prevent using the same tactic (see the discussion at the Disney forum in #10). James Dillon is the only one in this list of 24 search hits who has pointed out the similarity. I believe Stefan Molyneux also points it out, and I've also heard Brett Veinotte talk about it in his School Sucks Podcast.

Regarding the last hit on my search, it seems appropriate to mention that "horse breaking" and "horse whispering" can be compared for nuggets of wisdom that may help human beings deal with each other, especially in the realm of raising children.

Suggestions for better posts are always welcome. This article was brought to you by the creator of CHOSE.