You may have turned out fine, but that
doesn't justify hitting children.

U.S. sports continue to struggle with the controversies
surrounding Ray Rice’s domestic violence case, and the arrest of
Slava Voynov on suspicion of domestic violence. But what has
not been a matter of debate is where the line is for men hitting
women.

The media and the public have been nearly uniform in rallying
around the idea that no man should ever hit a woman,
including Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts Jr, who wrote:
So this is not just about Palmer, but about all our
mothers, sisters, daughters, lovers and friends and the
violence against them that is still too common and too
commonly ignored.

However, after it was revealed that Minnesota Vikings player
Adrian Peterson had been indicted for injuring his four-year-old
son, in the wake of the NFL fumbling domestic violence, debateis
exactly what we have witnessed.

Barely a week after posting the words above based on his own
experiences with domestic violence, Pitts offered a much different
view of spanking, in substance and tone:

No, I don’t believe all spanking is abuse … A parent
must be loving, accessible, involved, but also an
authority figure, the one who sets limits and imposes
real and painful consequences for kids who flout them.

‘I was spanked as a child …’
Pitts offered what has become the distinctly different view of
adults hitting children, when compared to men hitting
women: my parents spanked me and I turned out fine, which is
exactly the explanation Peterson has offered for his actions
leaving a four-year-old battered and bruised.

I grew up in the rural South in the 1960s, and my parents
smoked heavily with my sister and me in the house and car
(windows up). We also were not secured with seat belts. We
rode bicycles without wearing helmets. Like many white children
of our time and region, we were raised in an environment of
racist language and beliefs.

That I turned out fine does not justify those practices, just as my
parents spanking me does not justify corporal punishment of
any kind or degree.

Unsupported by science

Beyond the failure of logic in these defenses of spanking,
as Jessica Samakow of the

Huffington Post highlights:
The word ‘debate’ should be left out of the spanking
conversation, because the science against it is so clearly
one-sided.

When drawing a line between spanking and abuse, Pitts noted
research on corporal punishment: “A 2001 study by Dr. Diana
Baumrind — a psychologist who opposes spanking — found that
mild to moderate corporal punishment causes no lasting harm,”
he wrote. But his point is incomplete because even so-called
“mild corporal punishment,” while possibly not harmful, is
recognized as ineffective when compared to alternative practices.
Referring to more than 60 years of research on corporal
punishment, Elizabeth Thompson Gershoff of the National Center
for Children in Poverty at Columbia University concluded:

Until researchers, clinicians, and parents can definitively
demonstrate the presence of positive effects of corporal
punishment, including effectiveness in halting future
misbehavior, not just the absence of negative effects,
we as psychologists can not responsibly recommend
its use.

Corporal punishment in schools

Corporal punishment remains a part of homes and parenting in
the U.S., but it also continues to be allowed in public schools by
law in 19 states. As The Washington Post’s Valerie Strauss
reports:
According to an analysis of federal data from
2009-2010, the Children’s Defense Fund reported in
2014 that 838 children were hit on average each day in
public school, based on a 180-day school year, which
would be 150,840 instances of corporal punishment a
year.

Many adults consider themselves to have reached a safe and
happy adulthood, but in many cases we are “fine” not because of
how we were treated as children by our parents and our schools
but in spite of those practices.

A culture of violence

Over the past two seasons the NFL has raised public awareness
about bullying, domestic violence, and child abuse. But we have
mostly failed to acknowledge the cultural embracing of violence
in the U.S., often for entertainment, or our willingness to tolerate
harsh and punitive attitudes toward children we will not accept
among adults.

“Our social programs for children are the hands-down worst in
the industrialized world, but apparently that is just what we
want,” lamented author Barbara Kingsolver in an essay on child-
rearing.

The personal and professional consequences facing Rice and
Peterson remain in question and worthy of debate. But corporal
punishment itself does not. It’s very simple: we must reject
adults hitting children both at home and in school.


Link:www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/10/28/the-debate-about-spanking-children-is-over-its-just-wrong/?TID=SM_FB

I love my little niece to death
More than anyone in the world.......

But,

milychocs:
I love my little niece to death
More than anyone in the world.......

But,

but what?

Do you have a child at all? If you do you will know that light spanking is almost a must to put them in check.
The government is not the one training the child so they don't know what parent go through everyday.

Peterken05:
but what?

I give her ice cream when she misbehaves
In fact, I let her spank me instead

I want her as un-traumatised as possible
SMH

My point @ poster is, no one loves her more than I do
So when I beat her...(not pummelling her to crumbs obviously)


It is from a place where love is unquantifiable
So excuse me oyibo people with research while I spank her a bit
Thanks

This NFL thing is over blown to me. No, you shouldnt spank your child till there are marks on them. And no, you dont HAVE to spank your children at all. some children's temperaments do just fine with other punishments. But I dont think its harmful to spank if you make sure you are not angry while spanking them and definitely dont leave marks on them.
Perhaps this is because i was a spanked child. And yes, i think i grew up all right. Not because i was spanked but because i was sure my parents cared for me.
I just feel that a lot of this discussion is made by people who don't believe in punishing children at all, whether it is by withdrawing money or other benefits or by spanking. They just dont like seeing children distraught. Like criticizing a father for shaming his daughter by making her wear girly pink clothes as punishment for having a boyfriend at 10 years of age. In my family, that stuff will get you spanked, and then having no rights until you are 15 and then publicly shamed by wearing pink clothes.

Spanking a child is completely unnecessary and an act of barbarism. There are better ways to correct a child without hitting them with your fist, shoe, belt buckle, tree branch, etc.

It's also teaching them that violence is the way forward and that is just so wrong.

EfemenaXY:
Spanking a child is completely unnecessary and an act of barbarism. There are better ways to correct a child without hitting them with your fist, shoe, belt buckle, tree branch, etc.

It's also teaching them that violence is the way forward and that is just so wrong.

you 're on point sir/ma

2good:
Do you have a child at all? If you do you will know that light spanking is almost a must to put them in check.
The government is not the one training the child so they don't know what parent go through everyday.

no, i dont. Infact i'm still a child.

Spare the rod nd spoil the child... So children must be spanked...

I don't spank m children, but as a parent I reserve that right.
Every parent should have to punish their children commensurately.
Parents have been spanking their children from the beginning of time and there exists no evidence that it harms society.

plaetton:
I don't spank m children, but as a parent I reserve that right.
Every parent should have to punish their children commensurately.
Parents have been spanking their children from the beginning of time and there exists no evidence that it harms society.

of course there are evidences that it harms the society