| | Thanks for the comments, Marcus, Duncan, and Jennifer.
Duncan, as an adult, if you started moving towards my hot stove, I'd say "Careful! That's hot". The obvious difference is that I don't feel any need to physically restrain you because you're not capable of understanding that it'll kill you.
Adam, you claim that treating a child like an adult is a straw man. That's a great way of ignoring the point. But let me just reply that that summary of my post is itself a straw man. As I pointed out, and you ignored entirely, the arguments offered against spanking are based on an untenable principle.
Unless your example of burning your child's flesh is your attempt to prove that you never need to resort to force, faith, or authority? Well, obviously it is a use of force. And you don't quite have the luxury of letting a child run through the consequences of his actions every time either. That's why I mentioned an electric outlet, a child running off a cliff, or into traffic. Your example of you running into the street misses the entire point. Parents aren't concerned that their children might trip and scratch themselves when they say don't go near the street. It's getting hit by a car that's the problem. I also gave explanations why the effects of a behavior may be difficult to explain to someone with a vocabulary of three words, such as why you shouldn't hit your sister. Now are you really taking the position that you can always use persuasion to get the child to behave correctly, no matter their age? I realize you haven't said this directly, but I see that as the only possibility of rationally discarding my first post.
Scott, you bring up an excellent point in your post. Michael M. brought it up earlier by suggesting the pro-spankers were all pro-war as well, with the implications that the anti-spankers are anti-war. Pacifists. Principles that are true in society as a whole are often true in more personal relationships. Pacifism is one. We know it doesn't work in practice because as soon as a criminal realizes there is nothing stopping him, he can do whatever he wants. A child is the same way. And that is exactly why so many non-spanking parents have such horrible children. The child realizes they can't/won't do anything to him, and you're left with parents begging and pleading for good behavior.
I've seen the behavior you describe. The child that realizes that he'll never be spanked. Time-out is a sham. He runs around screaming and kicking and breaking things. And when he finally gets bored, he might go sit down for 60 seconds. If he gets bored. The same kid, one fine X-mas day, found out that since it's X-mas, he wouldn't get punished for bad behavior. You can imagine the results.
MH, I don't even know where to start with you. Your comments so far are so stupid, I've just tried to ignore you. Barbara made the comment that nobody is claiming that people should go to jail for swatting their kids. She must have been thinking "nobody in their right mind would." And here you are. If that weren't bad enough, you've twisted and turned to try to pretend you're not taking the position you're taking. Yes you want child-spankers to go to jail. But then it's only if they have been forewarned. And you don't have the guts to admit you want David in jail for his actions.
Now, as for your comments, most of my post was concerned with the ethical arguments against spanking. I dismissed the legal/political aspect because most of the people here get it, and it's not interesting. But if you want, fine. Grabbing an adult and immobilizing them is a violation of their rights. If I did it to you, I could go to jail, even though I never actually smacked you. If a child has the same rights, as you argue, then your argument means that parents should also go to jail, even if they did it for a good reason. We don't accept that the government can violate our rights even if they say they're doing it for our own good. And your notion of "exercising the child's rights" is devoid of meaning. How does one exercise the rights of another? If I exercised your right to private property, I would in fact be violating your rights, not exercising them. Is this enough to convince you that your initial position is flawed? Or will you keep beating that dead horse?
As for time-outs, etc., those are in fact punishments intended to create emotional distress. But then again, so is a spanking. The goal of spanking your kid is never about doing physical damage. You don't break their legs so they don't move around so much. You slap them on the behind so they know what they did was bad.
And although you claim to have explained everything in reply to my comments, you've explained nothing. You've explained that you'd like to throw people in jail for not treating a child like an adult, but then you've also flipped and flopped to the point where you want it illegal, but nobody actually punished. Forgive me for not being utterly convinced.
Has anyone else explained why spanking is bad? So far the best arguments have been that it teaches bad mental habits by not treating them as adults, which is what I've argued against. There has been ridiculous ideas that spanking will make the child grow up to be murderers or something, but the countless counterexamples and complete lack of confirming evidence make this one hard to take seriously.
Now what's a justification for spanking? Ultimately, like any interaction between people, force sets the limits. If a child lives in your house and breaks the rules (i.e., violates your rights), there are three things you can do. One, call the police and let the courts handle it. Anyone want to argue that position? Two, the parent uses retaliatory force directly (i.e., you hit your sister, you get a spanking). Three, the parent never uses force, and tries persuasion on a barely rational hedonist.
Of course, there are all kinds of intermediate steps that obscure the use of force in number 2. You can send them to time-out. You can take money or toys from them. You can ground them. But it's all like the IRS saying taxes are voluntary. Force, or the threat of it, hides behind each of these. If you're unwilling to use force, you have to pray that your kid doesn't realize that he's in absolute control of the situation. It all depends on your ability to bluff. But you're living on a lie.
Let me add to what Marcus said. You can't teach libertarianism via pacifism. Libertarianism is a system of retaliatory force, not just a lack of initiation of force. You can't teach a child to be a libertarian by refusing to retaliate (i.e., punish them). That's actually the quickest way to teach a child that force is the proper means of dealing with other people. They learn through first-hand experience that people won't stand up to them, and all they have to do is bully their way through life.
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