Spanking Children is Immoral and Ineffective
How is this controversial?
I assumed 80% of people who read me don’t spank children, and believe spanking is wrong. Cernovich readers are higher consciousness and higher IQ than average. Maybe fame has skewed the audience, as people were furious at me for this obvious observation.
All of your arguments in favor of spanking are wrong.
Let’s start with the most honest one. This is central to spanking culture.
“I want my kids to fear me.” - Spanking advocates.
Niccolò Machiavelli said in The Prince, “It is better to be feared than to be loved, if one cannot be both.” Maybe that’s proper logic for a world leader.
This Substack, however, is The Other Side of Fear. What other methods might one use?
Programming Children for Fear.
Spanking a child deeply imprints a fear response in them. Even the spanking advocates admit this. They want their kids afraid of them.
When parents hits a child, the child learns to associate making a mistake with physical violence.
But we all make mistakes in life. Most consequences to these missteps are psychological. Going home and beating yourself up mentally. Almost always we are our own worst critics.
“The other side of fear” is that it was always fake.
We were afraid of nothing.
That’s how we want to raise our children. 99% of fear is fake. There are real risk in life, learn to avoid those (and practice self-defense, own a gun, have street smarts), but mostly we live in fear of bullshit.
Why make us also, even if unconsciously, fear being beaten up over an error?
Spanking causes the child to be risk averse later in life, due to the central nervous system becoming fear-based.
My biggest surprise as a parent.
Do you know what surprised me most about becoming a parent? How smart and quick kids are. They are like little adults when you talk to them. I can have full-on conversations with my six-year old, though we keep it from straying into anything that is above their relative maturity level.
Children have logical reasoning abilities. They recognize patterns. They can communicate and respond to incentives.
“Children are born persons - they are not blank slates or embryonic oysters who have the potential of becoming persons. They already are persons.” - Charlotte Mason Principle #1
I had no idea, because as a kid growing up, adults had their world, and they talked down to kids.
Parenting went like this:
Wait until your dad gets home!
My house, my rules!
Because I said so, that’s why!
You didn’t learn how to discover the mysteries of the universe because you couldn’t ask questions of adults generally. You were told to OBEY.
My Gen X and millennial parenting buddies often wonder aloud how much more we could have if our parents had been more active. We certainly wouldn’t have had to spend our 20’s (and sometimes 30’s) “figuring life out.”
My generation had to waste SO MUCH TIME learning basic stuff that my kids understand intuitively. We had our spirits beaten out of us because it takes a lot of energy and patience to parent properly.
Then we got tossed to be raised by our peers. (Read this article for more on parenting.)
My kids piss me the eff off sometimes. We still don’t spank them or use physical violence of any form. Not going to say voices are never raised (even though this isn’t ideal as a loud voice is startling). No one is pretending to be perfect here, least of all me.
Common defenses of spanking / insults to Cerno.
A number of people have said I am clearly a weak father and basically pathetic beta male. Stuff like that is funny to me. Grr grr grr you guys are so tough!
I don’t market to teenage boys, so not going to flash my success. Because it doesn’t really matter when we meet God, anyway.
I hope, since you’re so tough, that you have objective achievement to point to.
“My parents spanked me and I turned out OK.”
Did you? Or are you living in a state of fear, being held back from living the life you imagined would be possible?
“The Bible Told me to Beat my Kids.”
This is illiterate.
The rod is a what a shepherd uses to guide his flock. It’s not your paddle.
“The kid will only listen to violence.”
Let’s say hypothetically you had a “demon child.” A kid who tortures animals and tries to murder a newborn in the crib. (Such cases do exist.) I have 0 idea what you should do there other than seek professional help early and often. You have a real challenge. All empathy for you. It’s going to be a long walk.
99.999% of the spankers don’t have those kinds of kids.
You have children who want to argue. They want to pester you. They offer deals that they won’t keep. “Let me have this and I will ___,” and then they go back on their word. They don’t want to go to bed.
It gets tiresome. My children are raised Socratically. “Why? Why? Why?” Sometimes you’re tired. I get it. We’ve all been there.
“Stop asking so many questions!”
That’s how tyrants rule.
It’s really interesting to me that so many people who read me are Christian, conservative, or libertarian - while being fans of ruling by violence and fear.
I can imagine what would happen if Joe Biden said you can’t have guns, and he will take them from you. Cuz “spare the rod, spoil the child!”
You’d flip out. You’d point to your Spartan tattoo or Grunt Style t-shirt. Don’t Tread on Me.
Great.
Now use that same logic to become a more patient parent who leads his children using logic, reason, and other peaceful incentives.
Parenting this way is hard. Again, I get it. I cast no judgment on people trying to figure it out.
I’m right there with you.
:)
I’m with you, but I think this is why it’s still surprisingly controversial: what the older generations got wrong, like spanking, was so relatively small compared to what newer parents get wrong (screens, lack of free play) that the kids raised the old way are still so clearly better off psychologically than many kids raised by nonspankers today. Even though it’s the social media and over parenting that’s ruining kids today (and the adderall), not the lack of spanking. But that’s confusing and hard for some to separate out, so they just think “kids these days, should’ve had a good beating”…
Anyway, thank you for this post, good stuff!
Gaty.substack.com
I’ve literally never heard anyone who spanks their kids use a single reason you quoted. Spanking isn’t lashing out or violence and isn’t done to hurt/harm. That’s called abuse.
My kids are grown - 26-36 in ages now. We rarely spanked any of them but we did, judiciously, not in anger, when called for. When they were old enough, consequences were enough.
My parent used “psychology” for me - “we are so disappointed...” and that left a lot of crap for me to sort through later. Much better for me to have been spanked.