Subject:
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Re: Corporal punishment (was rah rah, canada!
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Wed, 4 Feb 2004 18:13:07 GMT
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Viewed:
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457 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Larry Pieniazek wrote:
> but I'm not totally following why *all* corporal punishment,
> in any form whatever, is bad.
There are two basic thrusts that I'll take with this.
First, and what I expect to me more convincing/interesting to the "pro-spank" or
"parents' rights" crowd, is that it produces long-term deleterious motivational
effects. It seems that children (and probably all people, it's uncear),
unconciously hold a grudge against being manipulated. That is, the more that a
person is coerced, the more likely that person is to find any way at all cause
harm to their "opponent." This, as DaveK points out about time-out, is true for
non-violent punitive measures as well. The more deeply that a person is
effected by the treatment, the more resentment (as measured by their likelihood
to enact (often subtle) rebelious behavior) they accrue.
Extrinsic motivators are very often perceived as successful because in the short
run, they achieve the controler's desired effect. In the long run, they hinder
it. In fact, children have been shown to be more likely to exhibt many
different antisocial behaviors when motivated with mild physical violence. So
the most important point (from the perspective of trying to convince you) is to
show that it does more harm than good. Though, this argument does leave room
for very occasional uses in response to extreme situations (so don't bother
cooking up some cockamamie scenario with which to hit me :-).
(Thus far, I'm reporting stuff that's been studied a great deal. By industrial
efficiency folks early in the 20th century. By educators for the past forty
years. And is an ongoing field of inquiry in psychology and education, at
least. If you want reference to specific studies from me, you're out of luck.
But I'd suggest reading Alfie Kohn for tons of well supported reading along
these and similar lines. The stuff in the next section is based on my personal
observations, seeking out many, many conversations with others, and only a
little "serious" reading. But I realize the plural of anecdote is not data and
you may be less convinced.)
The other facet of this (which is the one more important to me, personally) is
the nature of a power relationship. The effect of living day to day in a
relationship in which one person has more rights than another, and enforces
their will on that other, is a subtle and corrosive thing. To both people.
Most western adults can't even conceive how raising children without such a
power relationship is possible. I've been working hard to actively change my
assumptions on this matter for about six years and still find myself assuming
the superior role with my kids. We are _deeply_ programmed to assert the power
relationship.
But it's not neccessary. The last time I advocated something like this here,
Tom Stangl attacked me for raising whiney brats and John Neal mocked my desire
to be a "best friend" to my kids. Larry (and a few others who may or may not
read this), you met my son last summer at the absolute worst of his behavior (we
were foolish to neglect his sleep and nutritional needs). We don't impose our
will on him. We negotiate and try to build consensus. Are we failing?
The use of physical violence is the ultimate step in the imposition or
expression of the power relationship. The child grows up knowing that "you
should do your homework" really means "go do your homework or I'll get a stick
and beat you until you submit...like last time." And before anyone starts
harshing me for this, the fact that you haven't used that measure of force
doesn't mean any of: a) you would not, b) your child knows that, or c) you have
a plan for when whatever level of violence you are comfortable with doesn't
work. It is liberating to have a relationship that is not based on coercion.
My son and I can really talk in ways that I couldn't with my father (Yeah, yeah
countless confounding variables make this a pretty wild implication, but I'm
reporting how it feels.)
And so that I'm painting a complete picture, I have used physical coercion on my
son, prior to adopting this philosophy. I also sometimes socially coerce
behavior from him, as I would with any of you if we lived together. And the
most problematic chink in the armor of my high-horse is that I have to force
certain things out of my two year old daughter all the time. She usually
doesn't want to have her diapper changed. Sometimes I can negotiate her
acquiescence, but I have to change her whether or not that happens. This
requires that we examine 'power relationship' a bit. I am more powerful than my
daughter. It would be silly to assume anything else. Yet, the kind of power
that I object to comes from the application of might-makes-right as a
philosophical ideal. When I hold Kivi down and change her diapper against her
will, I believe it is more akin to pushing someone out of the path of an
oncoming bus. Sure it's an expression of physical force, but any dominance
involved is inherent in the situation. And there is no threat involved at all.
So, because: violent motivation does more harm than good, we're capable of
raising kids as our social equals with no degradation in quality and certain
gains, the combination of the power relationship with violent manipulation
increases the likelihood for instilling passive-aggressive methods of
conflict-rebelion rather than conflict resolution, and we live in a society that
purports to protect the weak from the strong, I see no reason why violence as a
parental tool should be tolerated.
Scott is correct about not being able to reason with horses and cats, but more
importantly I think, we don't really care about their emotional health unless
their unhealth becomes extreme, and we do about that of humans. You can't
really reason with very young children either, but they have a great potential
for being obviously screwed up, so we try harder.
> So if my child, say age 5, is screaming and throwing a tantrum in a public place
> for no good reason and it's not feasible to remove him from the situation but
> the screaming HAS to stop (stipulate that for the sake of the argument) is a
> slap or a splash of water not an acceptable way of getting attention to the
> point where the message to discontinue the bad behaviour will be received?
"For no good reason" is equivalent to "for a reason I dislike" right? So it's
sounding like you're using the slap as an attempt at enforcing your adult
aesthetic on your child. And I can't help but question why it HAS to stop.
Usually, it doesn't. And when it does, how is carying the child out, force
certainly -- but not violence, insufficient?
Whenever I used that kind of violence, it was a failure on my part to handle the
situation with enough attention and/or creativity. And almost always pointed to
my failures to interact with my son properly leading up to the incident. Many
parents ignore the goals/wants of their children in order to attend to their
own. That's usually what leads to these situations, in my experience.
Chris
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: Corporal punishment (was rah rah, canada!
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| In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Christopher L. Weeks wrote: <snip lots of weel thgouht out and implemented stuff> (...) Wow Chris, that's a whole different slant that I hadn't considered. Nicely done. To continue the discussion with maybe a specific (...) (20 years ago, 4-Feb-04, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
| | | Re: Corporal punishment (was rah rah, canada!
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| > But it's not neccessary. The last time I advocated something like this here, (...) desire (...) not (...) behavior (we (...) our (...) I was there also. I was impressed with the visible results of your parenting. I had one eye opening experience (...) (20 years ago, 4-Feb-04, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Corporal punishment (was rah rah, canada!
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| (...) Careful there, Chris... he's been seen going around asserting that the sun rises in the east again. (...) er, oops. Nevermind. :-) Now, a bit more on track, we're not much on hitting our kids, and we didn't, much, especially now that both of (...) (20 years ago, 4-Feb-04, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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