Physical Punishment

[Richardgrant]

There can be no suffering or pain that I can experience in this life time without me first creating it. Everything starts with self and finishes with self. everything I see out there is a reflection of my own consciousness. Richard

[Quatl]

Law can have some influence on ethics, though I think the usual flow of ethical thought is circular. Law, cultural norms, authoritative and peer opinion conspire with our existing temperament and thought to determine our views.

We tend to have predispositions towards a particular view, we then look out into the world and find things to confirm out feelings about the way things "should" be, this reaffirms our views, which begins the cycle again. It seems rare for folks to question their initial premises in a critical way.

I think this pattern is very difficult to avoid. It is something I find particularly frustrating in my own life. I notice myself falling into this trap from time to time which makes me wonder how often I don't notice. I guess it's an epistemic problem as well as an ethical one for me.

I tend to think that the rest of humanity is at least as stupid as I am myself, but this maybe a logical error on my part

To bring it back to your questions however, I think you are right to think that violence is easy to abuse. I hold non-violence as one of the primary Ideals of my personal ethics largely for this reason. (By this I really mean not initializing violence, sometimes it seems necessary in defense.)

Violence, especially when motivated by feelings of righteous anger is very emotionally rewarding, and thus can become seductive. I don't think I'm alone in having felt the profound feeling of Properness that accompanies righteous punitive violence, though I rarely hear people speak of it that way.

I speculate that people need to believe they are acting out of justice and the acknowledgment of the pleasure involved prevents them from maintaining their illusions, so they actively ignore these influences. Motivations aside; it is easy to be lead into disproportionate (that is immoral) action by these emotions, even as we feel we are dispensing justice.

Is it ever "right" to use violence to dissuade a person from an undesirable, but non-violent behavior? I'm sure that it is not! However my certainty of this is emotional primarily. There is a certain irony to using the Law (that is violent coercion) to prevent parental coercion. Degree is obviously important here, a slap is clearly less damaging than a beating, and I think all would agree that some take beating their children to an extent that is morally wrong beyond all reason.

Where these lines of distinction are drawn is inevitably variable. I'm not one to impose my own norms of behavior on others via violence, but I'm in the minority with that opinion. Most people are just fine with doing that. Violence is in fact still endemic, it's just more polite these days. Lawyers are the hired thugs of our modern age.


I have no solutions; but, as you say, the questions themselves and our experience of them is often more useful than a definite answer to any of them.

[Aedes]

It's been pretty clearly shown in the pediatric literature that spanking is ineffective in changing childrens' behavior.

So if we know that spanking won't work, shouldn't that make spanking ethically outrageous? I mean clearly beating a child isn't a good end in itself -- it's justified based on the idea of correcting misbehavior through discipline. But if we know the latter is unachievable by this technique, then how could we possibly explain or justify spanking other than as an expression of exasperation (or laziness!) by a parent?

[Didymos Thomas]

Does the literature show that corporal punishment is never an effective form of discipline? Does the literature leave room for such punishment to be effective under certain circumstances?

I've never been one to think that physical punishment is effective - of course, I'm also not sold on the carrot and stick strategy in the first place.

[Quatl]

My understanding of "the literature" is that corporal punishment is effective if all of the following are true, and otherwise mildly to significantly counter-productive. Just to be sure, in this context "effective" means that a decrease in the offending behavior occurs, even when the person is unobserved.

1. The punishment must be immediate.
The more time between the offending act and the punishment, the less effective it is.

2. The "crime" must be specific, and understood by both parties.

4. The punishment must be consistent.
The punishment for the "crime" must be the same, and administered identically regardless of the amount of anger the punisher feels about the situation.

Even very small variations make the punishment less effective. It is extremely difficult to maintain this level of precision. I don't think most folks are actually capable of meeting these requirements. Even if they are met, the result is not large, and children don't necessarily learn not to do what ever it is, in general. They merely learn not to do it within the punisher's sphere of control.

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I personally don't care what the research says, I don't hit children. Because I don't feel it's appropriate for me to do so. I also suspect that my belief that it is ineffective is based entirely on my emotional feeling that it is in inappropriate.

One rational reason I have is that slapping misses the point of the goal. The goal with kids is presumably to instill them with ethical and/or pragmatic values against the behavior. That is to educate them in avoiding the behavior.

Spankings and such seem most likely to instill a Taboo based morality at best. I'm not a fan of this moral structure, as it isn't easy to intelligently apply their "lessons" to future, related, situations which may be more complex or subtle.

Then again I don't have kids of my own, so I don't yet suffer from the particular insanities of parenthood I try not to judge others too harshly, unless they are injuring or torturing their kids.

[NeitherExtreme]

Originally Posted by Aedes

It's been pretty clearly shown in the pediatric literature that spanking is ineffective in changing childrens' behavior.

Haha, as funny as it seems to talk about it now that I'm an adult... My parents use of spanking really worked very well for me. So the rest of your argument kinda falls apart for me...

I think my parents did an amazing job with discipline. They made it a point never to spank out of anger or frustration, but only in a calm controled manner, away from puplic humiliation, and after the knew that we clearly understood what we did wrong. They were also vey consistent in their rules and application of them. And they had this thing of counting to 3... They'd say 1...2...3, and if they got to three it was a spaking, and no two ways around it. And they wouldn't start counting unless they were going to finish. It really was pretty pointless trying to disobey!

Really, I think they did a good job at following the guidelines Quatl laid out. Personally, I hope my wife and I can do as good of a job as my parents did...

[Aedes]

Originally Posted by NeitherExtreme

Haha, as funny as it seems to talk about it now that I'm an adult... My parents use of spanking really worked very well for me. So the rest of your argument kinda falls apart for me...

Well, you're an anecdote without a control group, so you actually haven't the foggiest idea whether spanking worked as compared with not spanking.

Be that as it may, whether you believe it or not, you certainly can ponder my points as hypotheticals regardless of your own memories of being spanked.

I've got Pubmed open in another window -- there's one article here from Johns Hopkins showing spanking of children under age 2 is statistically significantly associated with behavior problems later in childhood; another study is a meta-analysis that shows behavior effect size was equal between spanking and non-spanking techniques (i.e. equivalence). A third study significantly associated spanking with physical injuries. These studies only looked at spanking, not at corporal punishment in general.

But spanking is MORE likely to cause harm than alternative techniques, and it at best is equal to non-spanking in behavior effects. That seals the deal for me. Would you buy a pill for headaches if I told you it was no better than Tylenol but it costs more and has more side effects?

With respect to Luke, we can all tell that you're very well disciplined. But that's the reason we do studies -- because n=1 is meaningless when you're trying to generalize a recommendation.

[NeitherExtreme]

Good points... It's very true that I'm not a scientific study! Still, I have 3 siblings, and have paid attention in life to a number of other families where my parent's same (basic) policies and attitudes were present, and the results (IMO) are very good and healthy, moreso than any other basic approach I've witnessed. (That's not to say that no other approach is valid!) My criteria for observation is much more specific than any scientifc study I've heard of, or maybe could even be possible (parental attitudes don't show up on data sheets too well!), so I don't expect that every study has to intuitively match with what I've experienced. As Quatl metnioned there's probably more than one interpretation out there, even among the experts. Also, statistics can say many things (even from similar or the same data), and the way that the statistics are gathered has a huge impact as well...That's not to say they're not worth carefully considering, but for me careful observation and experience are more important in this case.

[Aedes]

Originally Posted by NeitherExtreme

Also, statistics can say many things (even from similar or the same data).

Ehhh, not really. Statistics are only as good as the underlying data, and you need to choose the right test for your type of sample set. But basic tests like comparing the means between two groups, and determining statistical significance, and performing correlations and regressions, etc, are very basic things. The issue is never really the statistics -- it's 1) the doubt that statistics leaves you with if the study is underpowered to show a difference, and 2) the practical application of the derived statistics.

For instance, if I took a million men from New York, and a million men from Boston, it's possible that I might find that the men from Boston are 1/4 inch taller on average with a very high degree of statistical significance. But who gives a damn about 1/4 inch? A statistically significant difference is not necessarily practically meaningful -- so for something that may be subjective like behavior / punishment of children, then you need to choose your sample and your methods very wisely.

[NeitherExtreme]

I probably should have said:

Also, statistics can be used to say many things (even from similar or the same data).

But you're right, if reported honestly, data is data.