Grayling defending smacking

[seventiesgirl]

Never did him any harm apparently. The tory party are such a bunch of tossers. Whatever next?

What is to be gained from denial or fudging the issue? Two generations ago there wasn't even a linguistic concept for marital rape because the concept of a woman being the chattel of her husband still dominated thought. That particular crime had to be named before it could be explained and in naming it a sea change in the chattel concept took place.

Avoiding condemnation and trying to say there are two sides to every story when one side is a grown adult and the other is a small child is making excuses and hiding from examining the values that lie behind smacking.

What is to be gained from overegging the souffle and using a phrase like 'the need to view every smack as some sort of heinous crime or abuse.' ?
When that sort of language is used victims of abuse are silenced, because you transform the issue into some problem of the victim (the 'need' of the victim) instead of judging the actions of the adult who chose to smack. When you use language like that you choose the value of empathy for the adult who smacked over empathy for the child whom the adult smacked.

The more people who say 'I was smacked as a child, and I don't agree with it, and won't do it to my children' the better.
While you get this view of 'it didn't do me any harm' it will continue. It obviously did harm if the person thinks it didn't harm them-because they are perpetuating it.

It is quite understandable that people might smack in the heat of the moment BUT they should apologise and explain, once they have calmed down, and recognise that it was very poor parenting. Not have the view 'you made me do it'-it is ridiculous that the behaviour of a 2 year old should 'make' the parent do anything-they are the adult and they have choice.

Can the pro smackers answer the questions
-should everyone be free to smack children -teachers, childminders, nannies, grandparents who are babysitting?

If the answer is no-only the parent -the next question is -why?
(If the answer is yes at least it is consistent.)

I can see where you're coming from, Exoticfruits - if people think smacking is good for children then everyone should be allowed to do it, not just the parents.

But not many people would say it is actually good for children. Even those who were smacked as kids say it didn't do them any harm, not that it made them better people.

The most effective way to make our kids behave in the way we want them to is by example, surely.

Math,

The study you referred to has to be the most spurious that I have ever seen. The ASB numbers were 50 (mean) +/-20 (1 sigma). They decided not to separate out spanking over 3 times per week into separate categories and made no effort at all to separate out a smack from a beating. So for those who smacked (or beat) < 2 times /week (and most people on this thread smack

Larry, are you saying more than it didn't harm you and you don't think it harms other people? You had a fantastic childhood in spite of the smacking, or because of it, or it made no difference?

Because when I 'fessed up to being a crap parent above, the point I think I was making was that in my case, my children seemed to grow up in spite of me, not because of me.

We try so hard to be good parents, and that is exactly what we should be doing. But the downside is that we are so hard on ourselves when things go wrong. We seem to think that we control everything when our children are young, but in fact they are already their own people, and ime it's hard to say whether what you did or didn't do to them when they were tiny, had X, Y or Z effect.

So the only thing we have to go on is the research that has been done. We are lucky enough to have all that knowledge and collective experience available to us nowadays, and we should use it.

So smacking is bad, say the experts. I believe them. Everything in me revolts at the idea of a big person hitting a little person (or anyone else).

I think people who do not think they were abused or damaged have some sort of need to convince themselves of the premise that 'it was always fair'.

I think Larry has suggested it is not ok for non-parents to smack in his most recent post there, ExoticFruits. He hasn't made it clear whether it was the ruler across the knuckles, the hurting quite a bit, or the lack of warning that was wrong about it.

If he is complaining about something really hurting as opposed to the claim he makes that smacking he inflicts on his children does not hurt, it seems he has contradicted his earlier admission that smacking is useful precisely because it hurts. And if it is useful because it hurts then he shouldn't be complaining about it hurting when he was smacked/rapped across the knuckles as the end justifies the means.

It seems to me that boys who play a game whose only aim is to hurt or dodge hurt (as opposed to a game involving a ball and a target where getting hurt may be a by product of offence or defence) have been damaged by the experiences that have brought them to the point where they could see something like this as fun. Somewhere, somehow, there has been a short circuit in the empathy department or the moral development.

Solo,

As I pointed out above and where I totally agree with you, parental angst is way overdone. According to Freakonomics, the only factor (and smacking was included, I think) that had any strong statistical correlation to outcome was the number of books in the house.

"So the only thing we have to go on is the research that has been done. We are lucky enough to have all that knowledge and collective experience available to us nowadays, and we should use it."

I am afraid I don't believe this. It is an area which is fraught with difficulty and they had plenty of studies and statistical tools in the era when smacking was normal. Getting grants for studies is highly politicised and (thanks to Maths for providing it) if you actually look at the quality of some of the studies that get published, they are really worth little more than toilet paper. Parenting theories go with the zeitgeist and I would not be in the least bit surprised if I read, when I am an old man, that the generation who discarded smacking were deluded and it has been shown to be effective and the kindest available (according to the latest "scientific" studies).

And never forget that all punishments (even if you term them "consequences") are about big people using their power to cause either physical or emotional distress to smaller ones. It is always used emotively about smacks but a little smack could be a lot less painful (in the full meaning of the word) than, for instance, being sent to one's room to "think about things" if that is really where one does not want to be.

Thunk - I really don't agree with your points re. abuse, empathy etc.

I just typed a long answer, then read mathanxiety's reply to you and she has summed up what I am trying to say and much more clearly, so I will just say I agree with Math!

But you believe in Freakonomics Larry? No zeitgeist there?

"It seems to me that boys who play a game whose only aim is to hurt or dodge hurt (as opposed to a game involving a ball and a target where getting hurt may be a by product of offence or defence) have been damaged by the experiences that have brought them to the point where they could see something like this as fun. Somewhere, somehow, there has been a short circuit in the empathy department or the moral development. "

Math, you really don't get it. So, all rugby players (especially those in the scrum lack empathy? The scrum is a pain game, ask any prop. And they love it, and share a beer and a laugh afterwards. Maybe, we are all just not built the same.

But pain is not the only aim of the scrum.

Math,

Ironically, considering your name, the guy who wrote freakonomics is a fantastic economatrician. He really does the stats properly (unlike your top quality paper!).

He had a towering reputation as a statistical data analyst a long time before he became popular. You may not like what he says, but he does not start from an agenda.

"But pain is not the only aim of the scrum."

Nor is it in slaps. It is about bluff, reactions, psychological skills.....

However, I am too old for it now, I feel!

I have made the distinction between pain as the only aim of a game vs. pain as a by product of offence or defence Larry. The scrum is part of a game that features a ball and a target. So is running, and throwing and catching the ball. The scrum is not the sum of the game.

I am pleased that someone has at least acknowledged my question -but is anyone ever going to answer it?

I think people who do not think they were abused or damaged have some sort of need to convince themselves of the premise that 'it was always fair'.

- where have I said this in my post, for example? I think it was unfair/unjust/not right but beyond all that, I think it was human (which in my mind, encompasses all things, in the manner of Walt Whitman's "I contain multitudes"). You don't have to like/accept/think things are fair to believe that they are not fundamentally abusive. Sometimes they are, as I said. Often they are not and just examples of human mindlessness and fallibility.

I think people who think they were abused or damaged by general smacking in response to clearly pushing the boundaries of behaviour (and by this, let me be clear, I am thinking of a smack on the hand in a controlled and disciplined fashion by someone who believed it was the right thing to do and really genuinely believed they were doing it and being a good parent in doing so, not hitting of an excessive or frequent nature or beyond what the average person on the street in 1960 would have deemed acceptable e.g. NOT a beating) have some sort of need to convince themselves of the premise that humans are perfectible and they would never have behaved in the same way as they are superior to the person who caused them pain.

There is nothing quite so distasteful to me as someone saying "oh but you were abused, you just won't let yourself believe it". It is absolutely something drawn from trashy daytime TV. There was a point where it was practically fashionable to have been abused - how horrendous!

Just seen this:
"
What is to be gained from overegging the souffle and using a phrase like 'the need to view every smack as some sort of heinous crime or abuse.' ?

Overegging the souffle!!!! Ha ha. What does that even mean? I have explained at some length why I don't think it's helpful, using personal examples that I feel illustrate my understanding of it. I think it's actually quite divisive and very often about someone implying their moral superiority to another. Personally I don't think that's to be lauded either. There was a random comment in the middle about this about how sad it was that someone threatened to rehome a gerbil ffs.

Victims of abuse, marital rape, yadayada. These are not the same as a smack on the hand. They're just not. I think it is extremely disturbing to equate what the general concept of smacking under discussion is to these which are clearly violent crimes that do create long term damage. Seriously, have we got to Godwin's Law yet? Where are the Nazi's in all of this, I ask you? I can sense they are just around the corner...

I have an issue with people trotting the book out as some sort of bible that 'proves' their opinions are right on everything from 'chavvy' baby names to ex post facto justifications of things they do to their children for reasons they have not fully examined. Laziness habits of mind, lack of imagination and citing of Freakonomics tend to go hand in hand.

LOL at the idea that a professor in the University of Chicago does not start from an agenda.

'He really does the stats properly' There has been plenty of questioning of his stats and also his conclusions.

You have misread my posts where I have used the analogy of naming crimes and not naming them to illustrate the negative consequences of not naming abuse, Thunks.

What I was posting about was refusing to label abuse as abuse. Not to say that a smack on the hand is the same as rape.

You didn't say that in any of your posts Thunks. LG wrote that in his opinion every occasion when he was smacked as a chld was always fair, with one exception.

But to take you up on elements of your post of Sat 09-Feb-13 18:34:52:

How can you extend the benefit of the doubt to an adult who smacks but obviously the child who gets smacked has not had the same benefit of the doubt extended to him or to her by that adult, when rationally an adult can be expected to accept that a child is a prime example of 'human mindlessness' and 'fallibility'?

Thin line there, Math. If you are using the analogy, you are automatically creating associations and using those analogies to strengthen your argument .

I just find the lack of empathy on this thread quite astonishing. For some strange reason, you seem to think convincing LG he is an "abuser" and me that I was "abused" is terribly important. What a strange, strange way of showing that you are the sort of caring person whose primary focus in this discussion is the prevention of emotional harm to others. A lot of what you write implies that you feel you can define others' experiences for them, which to me implies laziness and lack of imagination in understanding that everyone does not feel the same thing about the human experience.

Thunks:
Use of the word 'heinous' and suggesting that all opponents of smacking think of in the same way that they would see flogging is overegging it.

And as you are advocating the (moral) value of extending empathy to smackers vs. condemning, where does that leave you in the 'I'm superior' stakes?

I think people who think they were abused or damaged by general smacking in response to clearly pushing the boundaries of behaviour (and by this, let me be clear, I am thinking of a smack on the hand in a controlled and disciplined fashion by someone who believed it was the right thing to do and really genuinely believed they were doing it and being a good parent in doing so, not hitting of an excessive or frequent nature or beyond what the average person on the street in 1960 would have deemed acceptable e.g. NOT a beating) have some sort of need to convince themselves of the premise that humans are perfectible and they would never have behaved in the same way as they are superior to the person who caused them pain.

I think the perfect smack scenario you envision is a great example of the 'humans are perfectible' theory. The sort of completely controlled adult completely on top of his or her emotions delivering the exactly perfect amount of force in the exactly perfect spot at the exactly perfect time not only suggests that an adult can do that but that this is the nature of smacking every time it is administered, which I must say has not been my impression of smacking.

In a perfect world there would be no 'need' for the perfect smack you think is a reasonable expectation of people you have previously described as mindless and fallible and deserving of empathy for their all too human frailty.