Spare the rod, spoil the child

[Napoléon]

Wow! Another religious type argument. An absolute statement claiming evidence, a request for that evidence followed by "go find it yourself". Are you sure you haven't converted?

Give me a motherfucking break dickhead. The evidence is so easily accessible it shouldn't even need to be presented, like I said several pages ago. You're the one being ignorant here. You're the one being intellectually dishonest and lazy. Go fuck yourself.

Notwithstanding, I read the Wikipedia article . Some interesting stuff supporting both sides of the debate, but scarcely definitive.

Both sides were represented but if you think the evidence and research was anything but one sided you must have been reading a different fucking article. Read the section on "Research on parental corporal punishment", it starts of with a sympathiser's point of view, but if you read the whole thing it's overwhelmingly damning of corporal punishment. Just the amount of psychological and children's organisations that oppose spanking in any circumstances should be a fucking indicator it is bad. But fuck them right, fuck the scientific research laid out time after time in that article saying it causes psychological issues. All that research must be wrong.

You sit there and say I'm the one using a 'religious' type argument. Can you hear yourself? You're doing exactly what the religious do when pointed towards the evidence for evolution. "La la la can't hear you, not good enough".

Whatever dude, if you can't be arsed to actually address this issue with some integrity, I really can't be arsed arguing with you.

And again we have the problem that an open slap across the legs to underline a point is considered in the same light as hitting a child with an object or a closed fist. The latter is clearly going to colour any research data. If you considered obesity risk, including all those who can't get off the bed, you couldn't apply those same risks to someone with a bmi of 26.

Your analogy is ridiculous.

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Findings Give Some Support To Advocates of Spanking

The studies cited by opponents of corporal punishment, Dr. Baumrind contended, often do not adequately distinguish the effects of spanking, as practiced by nonabusive parents, from the impact of severe physical punishment and abuse. Nor do they consider other factors that might account for problems later in life, like whether parents are rejecting or whether defiant or aggressive children might be more likely to be spanked in the first place.

Dr. Baumrind described findings from her own research, an analysis of data from a long-term study of more than 100 families, indicating that mild to moderate spanking had no detrimental effects when such confounding influences were separated out. When the parents who delivered severe punishment -- for example, frequently spanking with a paddle or striking a child in the face -- were removed from the analysis, Dr. Baumrind and her colleague, Dr. Elizabeth Owens, found that few harmful effects linked with spanking were left. And the few that remained could be explained by other aspects of the parent-child relationship.

''When parents are loving and firm and communicate well with the child,'' Dr. Baumrind said, ''the children are exceptionally competent and well adjusted, whether or not their parents spanked them as preschoolers.''

The study drew upon data from the Family Socialization and Developmental Competence Project, which followed families in the Berkeley, Calif., area over 12 years, from the time their children were preschoolers until they were adolescents.

Dr. Baumrind argued that, without compelling evidence that spanking is harmful, parents should be free to rear their children in accordance with their own values and traditions.

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Interesting. It appears to me her research had more to do with parenting style than spanking itself.

http://www.positive-parenting-ally.com/d...mrind.html

Many researchers disagree vehemently with Baumrind (and many countries have also banned physical punishment both in school and at home).

They claim that the more a parent uses physical punishment the greater the likelihood of this punishment escalating to abuse.

Some experts also believe that punishing a child using physical aggression will encourage them to become more physically aggressive themselves.

And the bottom line is - does it make sense?

Isn't spanking a child for something such as throwing a toy at a friend, biting, or hitting another child an oxymoron? ... I'm going to hit you to teach you that hitting is wrong? Even as an adult, that makes no sense, so how can we expect our children to understand?

Baumrind doesn't seem to take into account that minor physical punishment often escalates into abuse, and many studies have proven that this is the case.