Let me ask you a question Roland... why do you think we now have this epidemic with all these idiot's running around shooting up movie theatres and schools... and i am in no way attributing that to lack of spankings and more time outs.. i'm asking it to get your thoughts on it..

is it just a fad, product of the media glamorizing these bafoons... well i'm a nobody now and nobody likes me, but i bet if i go shoot some people, they'll know me now.. why are kids acting like this ...

Lack of fathers in the homes ? just curious on your take..

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Spanking, of a very limited kind, is not "that bad" but Roland is right, it ain't that effective. The difference is that more kids had two parent homes "back in the day", and parents who discipline their kids, even with less effective means are better than ones who let them run wild. It's not the spanking that had kids behaving, it's the fact that the parents expected their children to behave and took the time to parent, where today, many do almost no parenting at all.

Add to that that we just know about all the acts of violence. There is less violence per capita now than "back in the day" it's just thanks to changing attitudes about speaking up, and global instant mass communication, make it easy for old codgers to ignore reality and say the world has gone to hell, when in truth it has improved on the whole.

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And you have how many children? Studies have used correlational evidence to suggest that corporal punishment leads to higher risk of certain traits in children. As we know correlation does not mean causation. A lot of the studies out there that are often cited have asked parents if they have "hit, slapped, shoved, etc." their kids and the ones that responded "yes," well their kids are more likely to have mental disorders, such as depression or anxiety. Then the media takes that story and says "Spanking Leads to Mental Illness." In other instances the studies lump together the subjects, you have either been "spanked" or "not spanked." There's no "I have been spanked 10 times" or "I have been spanked every other day for 15 years." Obviously some of this "evidence" will be skewed. There's more to the story. If people take time to dig deeper into the scientific studies there is evidence that infrequent, controlled spanking is effective as a behavioural disciplinary tool. There is also evidence that spanking can lead to worse physical abuse.

Positive reinforcement and non-physical punishments should always be admininstered first and you should never hit your child out of anger. There are instances where spanking is necessary, and I do believe most Americans agree.

The ease with which they can go out with a bang. The ease with which they can put their own egos on a pedestal in death, in other words. Call it a God complex, or what have you; you literally have probably 100, maybe even 1,000 times more coverage & more people knowing of a horrific event nowadays as compared to even just 30 years ago, with the advent of the internet and social media. I think there were just as many sick pieces of shit 50 years ago, but less motivation for them to do what they kind of wanted to do on a deeper level. I don't have any science to back this up, it's just what I think, and I don't claim that it's fact. I think that on a percentage scale, there are no more people wanting to do this stuff; they just have more motivation to do it now than they did in the past.

Being hit, spanked, and beaten are very different things. I was never hit or beaten as a child. Not once. To lump them together is very bad science.

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Because I have to have a million dollars to know how I'd spend it, right? Look, I don't have kids. The extent of my parenting experience is having babysat my 3 male cousins from 7am-5pm 5 days/week for 3 months during the summer when I was in high school for a couple of summers, they were aged 6, 8, and 9, if I recall correctly. One of those summers, the youngest one JUST ABOUT got creamed by a semi on my watch. It terrified the shit out of me. We were riding our bicycles to summer school, and the youngest didn't stop at a point we stopped at every single day to cross the only highway going through town. He kept riding his bicycle and I yelled at him to stop. I saw a semi coming (the speed limit there's 35 mph, but people regularly went 40-45 until it turned to 25 closer to downtown) and at that point I screamed at him to stop, and he did, with a surprised look on his face due to the anxiety that was no doubt in my voice. He skidded to a stop on his bike and stopped on the white line, partially into the road, and the semi went by him with maybe 18 inches to spare. The semi driver apparently wasn't paying attention, because he never hit his horn or swerved toward the middle of the road, despite nobody around in the oncoming lane right then.

He would have been killed if I hadn't screamed at him to stop in a panic. It's a moment I remember well. I was scared to death that moment. Well, later that night when his mom got home, (my aunt; mom's sister) I spoke to her about it and I was floored that she didn't care very much. She was just like "ok, glad nothing happened" and basically shrugged it off. She wasn't going to speak to him about it, or anything. I was floored. I went home and discussed it with my mom, and my mom was of the same mind I was; that he needed to be spoken to about it so the seriousness of what almost happened would be understood by him.

Well, 5 months ago, I drove back to Wisconsin with my mom and sister and attended his funeral. He died at the age of 20 in a car accident as a passenger, and it was 100% the fault of the other driver. They just got t-boned at a 4-way stop that a teenage girl driving a pickup did not stop at on a road outside town where the speed limit is 55 mph. My cousin was stupidly not wearing his seat belt, and he was thrown from the car a ridiculous distance. We found his keys in the field about 60 feet from where the car was, which is near where he landed when he was thrown from the car when we visited the site after the funeral. It was the most heartbreaking thing I've ever experienced in my life.

The reason I bring this up is that I've thought many times since he died that if his parents had done what should have been done, and spoken to him in a serious manner about the incident, I can't help but think he'd have been the kind of person that would always have worn his seat belt and he would have survived the wreck that night like the driver and other passenger did, and they were wearing their seat belts. Looking back, bad parenting seems to have been the indirect result of his death. Now, as an adult he certainly should have known and been diligent about wearing his seat belt regardless of what habits he was raised with, and their whole family wears seat belts, but Spencer was always a stubborn one and it doesn't surprise me that he wasn't wearing it that night. If he was my kid, he'd almost certainly have been alive right now because I damn sure would have done the right thing much earlier in his life. Even at 15, I knew it was wrong, how my aunt reacted to the incident on the way to summer school. Maybe it would have made a difference, and maybe not; but I'm inclined to think it would have.

Throw out everything I think because I don't have kids, if you want; but I do have some experience in taking care of them, and I think I did a better job than a lot of parents do. This incident has only made me think it's more important than ever to take the time and do things the right way when it comes to raising kids, and teaching them important lessons.

agreed, my dad never spanked me out of anger, i was controlled, still hurt like hell, but i never feared for my safety... and that is a key to spanking/vs hitting... to physically abuse a child out of anger or say punch a kid in the face is disgraceful and downright wrong... my mom would slap the taste out of my mouth from time to time, but i deserved every one of those and then some..

and roland i think everything you said is true... couldn't agree more.. and i'll go deeper.. i feel with the lack of fathers in the household, mothers getting younger and still out clubbing instead of home raising the kid, that is a huge problem. parenting is at an all time low.. and without that diciplinary in the house, the kids are free to run ramped and do as they choose with little to no consequences.

seahawker4life.. gotta disagree with you, this world is a shit ton worse than it was 50 years ago.. when i got a 13 yr old boy flippin me off for honking at him for taking his sweet ass time getting accross the intersection , that tells me society has changed for the worse..

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i mean that's obviously tragic Roman, and maybe a good talking to would have prevented his death.. but at the same time, as a 20 yr old , how many seatbelt commercials or seatbelt horror stories did he see... dozens upon dozens.. i agree it's important to instill behaviors at a very young age, and continue to reastablish those behaviors when they start to step out of line.. that's part of being a parent.. but it's no gurantee.

i told my daughter several times, to wait to have kids, go to school get an education, you're young , you have plenty of time to start a family.. i was there for her as a father should be, and engrained right and wrong as a father should. but in the end they are adults and they're going to make their own decisions.. all you can hope is that they at least take into account the life lessons you taught them before they make the decision.. some times it works, sometimes it doesn't..

as a result of all my so called good fathering , i am now a 46 yr old grandfather.. what are ya gonna do.

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Bingo. There really is no defense of spanking, beating, corporal punishment, whatever you want to call it. It's just simply not any more effective than other means of discipline and can result in the formation of deeply rooted resentments which are acted upon in adult life.

It's a barbaric practice. Old school. We're smarter than that now. Any parent who does this to their child is living in the stone age and needs to wake the fuck up.

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I'm going to spank my future children just to raise your blood pressure.

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You're the one lowering their IQs...Go for it...

According to what? That wide-scale, study-based, way-too-many-factors-to-make-firm-conclusions practice that passes for science these days? File that away under "stuff that has neither the authority nor the credibility on how to raise my own flesh and blood". Right up there with the theory of evolution, idiocracy, and Brian Burke thinking that teams should be passing 85% of the time to maximize scoring.

I got spanked. Pretty sure my IQ is just fine. (Though I'm sure you'd be happy to take exception.)

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Growing up experiencing violence will lend itself to a violent adult. Teaching a child that violence gets respect is ridiculous. It's why in no other situation is violence to another human acceptable.

I doubt it effects their IQ, unless you determine IQ by threshold of ability to solve a problem without violence.

MontanaHawk, out of anyone that has credibility in raising your children it certainly is not you. In fact, all of us as individuals are incredibly incapable of raising a human to the standards of today. It takes the aggregate knowledge and experience to really effectively raise a child. To dismiss scientific study is at least barbaric and at most detrimental.

Yes, you love your child more than anyone else on this earth, but love doesn't raise a well-adjusted adult.

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I have the credibility of personal experience from the other side. My parents spanked me and my brother (not hauled off and hit, but spanked), and I did not suffer any kind of tragic or irrecoverable harm. And I know a great number of individuals who can say the same thing. (I don't claim that either I or my parents are perfect, but I can trace the failings of my childhood back to a dozen things before spanking even comes to mind.)

I will accept science when it actually chooses to be science - when it offers me clear, direct, comprehensive, and irrefutable evidence that spanking universally harms children, beyond just a bunch of studies and trends that are seriously undermined by their "blanket statement" nature. That's not science.

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Is that why you play the lottery? Because not everyone loses?

Science isn't only universal truths. There are an incredible amount of factors that complete a specific result. You're not speaking on an elemental level so you're not going to be able to get a black/white situation.

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Have you even come within a mile of attempting to look up potential correlation between spanking and IQ? If so, what'd you look at, and where? I assume you have not, though. Correct me if I'm mistaken. Also, how would you know if your IQ was 10 points less as of right now than it would have been if you hadn't been spanked as a kid? Theoretically speaking, assuming there is a drop in it for the sake of the argument/question.

Spanking certainly didn't help him become a millionaire.

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to call controlled spanking barbaric is taking it a bit far, and to say it decreases IQ, i'll believe that when the proof is printed in black and white... i'm not buying it... and you don't spank kids to try and gain some type of respect from them you spank them to show them there are consequences to misbehaving... totally different..

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Correlation is not cause; it's a false dichotomy that causes us to make inaccurate assumptions. Could it be the correlation is there because there is a lot more physical violence among populations that are less wealthy and educated? That growing up in the trailer park is far more associated with physical punishment than growing up in an Ivy League environment? That the IQ portion of things just happens to be hereditary, and that spanking or not spanking had nothing to do with their intelligence, but rather as a result of upbringing associated with their social status?

Also, spanking and physical violence are not the same thing. Those who lump them together are A) being completely disingenuous, and B) promulgating false data with regard to the "science" behind these studies.

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Show me where I lumped them together, and also, I agree that correlation doesn't equal causation. It certainly can and does in many circumstances, but also it does not, in many circumstances. The two are not mutually exclusive or inclusive. You're kind of falsely representing what I've actually been saying in this thread.