After getting into a heated argument with WaterBomb I decided to make this post in cong to gather the opinions of the masses and to try to educate people.
Specifically, our conversation was about spanking or beating your child in order to produce results and curb certain behaviors. I strongly take the stance that any form of beating is detrimental to the growth of the child and that there are far better methods of discourse in raising your child and changing their behavior.
To start with I will define the differences between reinforcement and punishment, and negative and positive variations of both of those. Reinforcement is the idea of rewarding good behavior in order to reproduce future good behavior, while punishment is the idea of dissuading bad behavior out of some fear of reprisal. The positive and negative variants have to do with what you either add or take away in the reinforcement / punishment. An example of positive reinforcement would be something like feeding your dog a treat every time it does the trick you are attempting to teach it. The core concept of operant conditioning is that the brain makes associations between the action and the reward. A dog does the trick because it anticipates a treat, until the bond is so strong that you can move on without ever giving it a treat (although this link can degrade over time, so give your dogs their treats!) Since you are "adding" the treat to the equation, it is a form of positive reinforcement. Negative reinforcement would be the idea of taking something away in order to reward behavior or avoid an aversive outcome; an example would be a parent saying that they will only allow their child to stay out past 10pm IF they get all As and Bs on their report card (in this case, the child's behavior is attempting to influence an otherwise negative stimulus - a curfew). Punishment is the idea of attempting to dissuade bad behavior, rather than reinforcing the good behavior. Negative punishment is taking away something that is valuable to the individual; your child bullies others at school, and so to curb that behavior you ground them or take away their toys and games. Positive punishment on the other hand is when an individual adds something to the equation to dissuade a behavior. Your child frequently skips school and so to make sure they know it is a bad behavior your decide to spank them, reinforcing that skipping school will lead to pain in the future.
Now, this brings me to the overwhelming use of positive punishment, specifically corporal punishment, on children in order to curb their behavior. Sometimes it might be necessary (though I would disagree) and sometimes it is zealously used. In a 2016 study, polls found that 76% of men and 66% of women all agreed that spanking was necessary for development of their child's behavioral techniques. Around 41% of the United States actively spank their children, with certain spikes in areas such as the deep South that rise up to above 60%. This is a good trend, because it has been on the downslope since the 1980s and further, and a vast majority of people agree that corporal punishment in schools is not a permissible, but in my opinion it is still far too high.
Let's talk about the upsides to spanking your child first. The positive notes are that it is an immediately effective method of curbing behavior in the moment. In the moment is key, because positive punishment does not absolve the behavior at all, only deters the child from getting caught or doing the behavior in the near future. There are some arguments to be made that this form of physical punishment helps to instill fear into the child, and promote obedience in the future; while this is true, there are far better methods of instilling obedience into the child. For one, fostering a trusting relationship through rational discourse is one non-violent method of gaining the child's obedience. There are very few studies that have shown that spanking and an authoritative mindset ends up resulting in well-adjusted individuals, mostly by the same 2-3 researchers; in particular Larzelere's punishment studies, long since the go to study for concerned parents who spank their children, found that in the short term "punishments were the least effective tactic for negotiating and whining children" and that punishment was only effective "less than 16 percent of the time" with respect to long term iimprovements of behavior. One of the biggest arguments for spanking is that every child is different, and no child responds to the same method of behavioral modification, and that physical punishment is immediately effective.
Now, on to the downsides. Possibly the most comprehensive and recent study done, Elizabeth Gershoff compiled a meta-analysis critique of spanking, taking data from the previous Larzelere study among a plethora of others. The results have been empirically sound and consistent with an overwhelming negative view of spanking. In particular, spanking has been found to be less effective than other methods of behavioral modification, such as time outs or reasoning / negotiating with the child. In short, for immediate compliance to demands spanking is not actually an effective tactic at eliciting those reactions. Many people associate obedience to be not a short term effect, but a long term consequence; i.e. if you spank your child they will grow to be more obedient and well-adjusted to society. This was the main consensus of the previous Larzelere study as well as the Baumrind study that found an authoritarian style of parenting was best suited to controlling your child. This is just simply not the case based on the overwhelming amount of empirical data compiled, that has found that the long term effects of spanking introduced "a cycle of violence in intergenerational homes". Basically, if you grow up being spanked / physically abused, then you are more likely to continue that cycle in future situations, especially if you have kids. Additionally, children rely heavily on modeling in order to learn and adapt their behavior. When they see adults resort to violence to solve their issues, children are more likely to adopt that behavior and use violence as a primary method to solve their methods, leading to maladaptive social aggression. Disregarding the irony of parents using aggressive tactics in order to facilitate a decrease in the aggression their child shows (as aggressive children is one of the biggest reasons parents have been found to hit their child), spanking seems to show a strong correlation in being ineffective as a disciplinary and teaching method.
IQ is one of the most terrible inventions of mankind to accurately test for the intelligence of an individual (an entirely separate discussion that revolves around intelligence being incredibly difficult to accurately define from a philosophical standpoint, as well as IQ tests namely testing for short term memorization of patterns, spatial recognition, and mathematical ability but disregarding key core intelligence concepts such as willingness to learn or critical thinking and abstract thinking skills). That said, IQ is a very good indicator of the traditional science (to a degree) and mathematics oriented mind; and studies have shown that physical punishment, specifically spanking, leads to lower IQs worldwide. Moreover, spanking leads to a reduced amount of gray matter in the prefrontal cortex of children, a vital part of the brain that has been linked to reward and decision making, personality expression, as well as the person's will to live. From a neuroscience perspective, violence is abhorrent and only helps to stunt the emotional and psychosocial development of children, both in long term longitudinal studies as well as in biologically based neurological studies of the physical brain structure.
Increasingly, spanking your child has been disavowed by professional organizations, not just academia. The American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and more. Despite this overwhelming amount of available empirical research, with descriptive statistics to back up the claims, a vast majority of parents and families in the United States support spanking their children, a minority of those support corporal punishment or excessive spanking for minor misconduct, and worldwide the consensus is far worse, especially in developed countries. African American, Hispanic, and Asian families are more prone to being pro-spanking than other ethnicities, although the rates are only around 10-20% more support; families that are lower on the socioeconomic classes support it more as well, and physical punishment has been strongly correlated with education levels of parents (with post graduate having the lowest support, and high school graduates having the highest support); and men in particular favor physical punishment over women.
This, in my personal opinion, has to do with a severe lack of education on the topic. There is an old adage that you end up becoming your parents, and this is certainly true. Modeling is a powerful tool for learning children at the developmental stages, and it is vitally important that you exercise alternative means of discipline for your children, ESPECIALLY for younger children (newborns to <2 years old). My general rule on this matter is that you have to ask yourself if your child is capable of associating the spank with a consequential action. If they are too young to actually comprehend that they did anything wrong, then physically punishing your child is pointless as they will never make that link (you wouldnt hit your dog 6 hours after they chewed up your favorite pillow, because they simply won't make the link between their action and the punishment, they just perceive the punishment and are left confused as to why their owner is hitting them). If the child is old enough to associate the punishment with their behavior, then WHY ARE YOU NOT JUST EXPLAINING TO THEM WHY THE BEHAVIOR IS WRONG IN THE FIRST PLACE?
Please feel free to discuss this topic, anything from child rearing tactics, to specifically spanking, to developments of obedience or behavioral mechanisms. Please refrain from no content posts that say: "oh well I was hit as a kid and I turned out fine"
Specifically, our conversation was about spanking or beating your child in order to produce results and curb certain behaviors. I strongly take the stance that any form of beating is detrimental to the growth of the child and that there are far better methods of discourse in raising your child and changing their behavior.
To start with I will define the differences between reinforcement and punishment, and negative and positive variations of both of those. Reinforcement is the idea of rewarding good behavior in order to reproduce future good behavior, while punishment is the idea of dissuading bad behavior out of some fear of reprisal. The positive and negative variants have to do with what you either add or take away in the reinforcement / punishment. An example of positive reinforcement would be something like feeding your dog a treat every time it does the trick you are attempting to teach it. The core concept of operant conditioning is that the brain makes associations between the action and the reward. A dog does the trick because it anticipates a treat, until the bond is so strong that you can move on without ever giving it a treat (although this link can degrade over time, so give your dogs their treats!) Since you are "adding" the treat to the equation, it is a form of positive reinforcement. Negative reinforcement would be the idea of taking something away in order to reward behavior or avoid an aversive outcome; an example would be a parent saying that they will only allow their child to stay out past 10pm IF they get all As and Bs on their report card (in this case, the child's behavior is attempting to influence an otherwise negative stimulus - a curfew). Punishment is the idea of attempting to dissuade bad behavior, rather than reinforcing the good behavior. Negative punishment is taking away something that is valuable to the individual; your child bullies others at school, and so to curb that behavior you ground them or take away their toys and games. Positive punishment on the other hand is when an individual adds something to the equation to dissuade a behavior. Your child frequently skips school and so to make sure they know it is a bad behavior your decide to spank them, reinforcing that skipping school will lead to pain in the future.
Now, this brings me to the overwhelming use of positive punishment, specifically corporal punishment, on children in order to curb their behavior. Sometimes it might be necessary (though I would disagree) and sometimes it is zealously used. In a 2016 study, polls found that 76% of men and 66% of women all agreed that spanking was necessary for development of their child's behavioral techniques. Around 41% of the United States actively spank their children, with certain spikes in areas such as the deep South that rise up to above 60%. This is a good trend, because it has been on the downslope since the 1980s and further, and a vast majority of people agree that corporal punishment in schools is not a permissible, but in my opinion it is still far too high.
Let's talk about the upsides to spanking your child first. The positive notes are that it is an immediately effective method of curbing behavior in the moment. In the moment is key, because positive punishment does not absolve the behavior at all, only deters the child from getting caught or doing the behavior in the near future. There are some arguments to be made that this form of physical punishment helps to instill fear into the child, and promote obedience in the future; while this is true, there are far better methods of instilling obedience into the child. For one, fostering a trusting relationship through rational discourse is one non-violent method of gaining the child's obedience. There are very few studies that have shown that spanking and an authoritative mindset ends up resulting in well-adjusted individuals, mostly by the same 2-3 researchers; in particular Larzelere's punishment studies, long since the go to study for concerned parents who spank their children, found that in the short term "punishments were the least effective tactic for negotiating and whining children" and that punishment was only effective "less than 16 percent of the time" with respect to long term iimprovements of behavior. One of the biggest arguments for spanking is that every child is different, and no child responds to the same method of behavioral modification, and that physical punishment is immediately effective.
Now, on to the downsides. Possibly the most comprehensive and recent study done, Elizabeth Gershoff compiled a meta-analysis critique of spanking, taking data from the previous Larzelere study among a plethora of others. The results have been empirically sound and consistent with an overwhelming negative view of spanking. In particular, spanking has been found to be less effective than other methods of behavioral modification, such as time outs or reasoning / negotiating with the child. In short, for immediate compliance to demands spanking is not actually an effective tactic at eliciting those reactions. Many people associate obedience to be not a short term effect, but a long term consequence; i.e. if you spank your child they will grow to be more obedient and well-adjusted to society. This was the main consensus of the previous Larzelere study as well as the Baumrind study that found an authoritarian style of parenting was best suited to controlling your child. This is just simply not the case based on the overwhelming amount of empirical data compiled, that has found that the long term effects of spanking introduced "a cycle of violence in intergenerational homes". Basically, if you grow up being spanked / physically abused, then you are more likely to continue that cycle in future situations, especially if you have kids. Additionally, children rely heavily on modeling in order to learn and adapt their behavior. When they see adults resort to violence to solve their issues, children are more likely to adopt that behavior and use violence as a primary method to solve their methods, leading to maladaptive social aggression. Disregarding the irony of parents using aggressive tactics in order to facilitate a decrease in the aggression their child shows (as aggressive children is one of the biggest reasons parents have been found to hit their child), spanking seems to show a strong correlation in being ineffective as a disciplinary and teaching method.
IQ is one of the most terrible inventions of mankind to accurately test for the intelligence of an individual (an entirely separate discussion that revolves around intelligence being incredibly difficult to accurately define from a philosophical standpoint, as well as IQ tests namely testing for short term memorization of patterns, spatial recognition, and mathematical ability but disregarding key core intelligence concepts such as willingness to learn or critical thinking and abstract thinking skills). That said, IQ is a very good indicator of the traditional science (to a degree) and mathematics oriented mind; and studies have shown that physical punishment, specifically spanking, leads to lower IQs worldwide. Moreover, spanking leads to a reduced amount of gray matter in the prefrontal cortex of children, a vital part of the brain that has been linked to reward and decision making, personality expression, as well as the person's will to live. From a neuroscience perspective, violence is abhorrent and only helps to stunt the emotional and psychosocial development of children, both in long term longitudinal studies as well as in biologically based neurological studies of the physical brain structure.
Increasingly, spanking your child has been disavowed by professional organizations, not just academia. The American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and more. Despite this overwhelming amount of available empirical research, with descriptive statistics to back up the claims, a vast majority of parents and families in the United States support spanking their children, a minority of those support corporal punishment or excessive spanking for minor misconduct, and worldwide the consensus is far worse, especially in developed countries. African American, Hispanic, and Asian families are more prone to being pro-spanking than other ethnicities, although the rates are only around 10-20% more support; families that are lower on the socioeconomic classes support it more as well, and physical punishment has been strongly correlated with education levels of parents (with post graduate having the lowest support, and high school graduates having the highest support); and men in particular favor physical punishment over women.
This, in my personal opinion, has to do with a severe lack of education on the topic. There is an old adage that you end up becoming your parents, and this is certainly true. Modeling is a powerful tool for learning children at the developmental stages, and it is vitally important that you exercise alternative means of discipline for your children, ESPECIALLY for younger children (newborns to <2 years old). My general rule on this matter is that you have to ask yourself if your child is capable of associating the spank with a consequential action. If they are too young to actually comprehend that they did anything wrong, then physically punishing your child is pointless as they will never make that link (you wouldnt hit your dog 6 hours after they chewed up your favorite pillow, because they simply won't make the link between their action and the punishment, they just perceive the punishment and are left confused as to why their owner is hitting them). If the child is old enough to associate the punishment with their behavior, then WHY ARE YOU NOT JUST EXPLAINING TO THEM WHY THE BEHAVIOR IS WRONG IN THE FIRST PLACE?
Please feel free to discuss this topic, anything from child rearing tactics, to specifically spanking, to developments of obedience or behavioral mechanisms. Please refrain from no content posts that say: "oh well I was hit as a kid and I turned out fine"
