How will the future remember you? Will society look back upon the life you have lived and believe you to be a hero or a villain? How are slave owners viewed today? How are those who opposed equal rights for women viewed in modern times? Are you doing something which the future will view in a similar light?
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| Hi everybody, it's Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain Radio. | |
| So this is a message to the people who have been relentlessly emailing me and Facebooking me and commenting on the necessity of corporal punishment with regards to children as the moral pinnacle of excellent parenting. | |
| So I'm going to take a few of the arguments at face value and just have a look at them and then give you a bit of a warning shot about what the future may hold for you should you continue down the path of using violence in the raising of your children. | |
| So first, of course, is the traditional, it's the one-two punch of your child is running into the street. | |
| You must smack your child so that your child is averse to running into the street and that keeps them safer. | |
| A smacked bottom is better than a crushed cranium from an 18-wheeler. | |
| And, of course, the other is, your child is reaching for a pot of boiling water on the stove, and therefore you smack the child's hand to make sure that the child does not, blah-de-blah-de-blah. | |
| Well, so first of all, let's say that we accept these arguments at face value. | |
| Well, if spanking works then it only needs to be applied one or two times in the child's life. | |
| In other words, when there's some Unavoidable, unpreventable, hair-triggered, death-dealing catastrophe about to happen, and you then hit your child as an aversion technique, and then that stops. | |
| So how many times are your children regularly bungee jumping over crocodile pits or viper sewage tunnels or something? | |
| Well, of course not. | |
| So even if we accept this argument to be true, it should only happen very, very rarely In your child's life. | |
| But the reality is that in a recent study, moms spanked their children 936 times a year. | |
| So unless you live next to the candy and marshmallow and Disneyland highway where your children are just constantly drawn to it like salmon going upstream to spawn, it really is not believable that it is only in the case of extreme imminent emergencies that you spank your child as an aversion technique. | |
| This is not house spanking. | |
| Actually works. | |
| These women and occasionally men were hitting their children about three times a day from the age of about a year to about four years of age. | |
| So first and foremost. | |
| So secondly, of course, it's your job to keep your child safe. | |
| If your child is in a dangerous situation, I don't see how the child would get hit for your negligence as a parent. | |
| If you wish to boil water, use the back stoves. | |
| Put little fences around. | |
| The stove so that the child can't get there. | |
| It's really not that complicated to keep your children safe. | |
| Build a fence. | |
| Have them play in the backyard. | |
| Be with them and teach them all about roads from the very beginning. | |
| Have them hold your hands when you're in parking lots. | |
| This stuff is not that complicated to deal with as far as parenting goes. | |
| If you're close enough to the child to hit the child, then you're close enough to the child to keep the child safe. | |
| Safe from whatever danger is occurring. | |
| But remember, as a parent, it's your job to keep your child safe. | |
| So you could take a toddler and smack the child every time the child got close to the top of the stairs, or, say, alternatively, you could simply buy one of those gates that goes at the top and bottom of stairs to keep your child from going down the stairs. | |
| So these things are eminently avoidable. | |
| The second Standard that is often put forward is, well, you can't reason with children, you gotta hit them. | |
| Well, that is simply a confession from the part of the parent, the adult, that you, as the adult, were not reasoned with as a child. | |
| And so, if you don't reason with children but hit them, guess what? | |
| You can't reason with them because you're not teaching them how to do it. | |
| It's like refusing to teach your children sign language and then hitting them because they don't know sign language. | |
| If you're hitting them, by definition, you're not. | |
| Reasoning with them. | |
| And so saying, I hit my child because my child can't be reasoned with, no. | |
| That's entirely backwards cause and effect. | |
| Your children do not respond to reason because you're hitting. | |
| And again, 70 plus percent of mothers in England, for example, are hitting babies before they're even a year old. | |
| I think we can excuse the children for not following the proofs of the Pythagorean theorem, or, say, one of the Socratic dialogues, because remember, they're babies. | |
| So, anytime you hit a child that young. | |
| Now, you can, of course... | |
| Do the research anytime you want, that babies are very good at statistical reasoning from the age of seven months onwards. | |
| They're capable of moral reasoning from about 14 months onwards. | |
| And so the idea that you can't reason with children is just false. | |
| The rational capacities of children have been less able to imprint themselves upon us because we keep hitting them. | |
| It's like in the Antebellum South, before the end of slavery, most blacks weren't allowed to read, weren't educated to read, and then saying, well, they're only fit to be slaves because they can't even read. | |
| Well, of course they can't read because they're not allowed to read. | |
| And so if you hit your children rather than reasoning with them, that's why it seems to you that they're not able to reason. | |
| Now, either children have the capacity to reason And you're hitting them, which is obviously wrong, or they don't have the capacity yet to reason, and you're hitting them, which is even worse. | |
| I don't get to hit a six-month-old for not pooping in the toilet every time. | |
| He's not really able to do that as yet, right? | |
| And, you know, you can't slap a baby for farting some talcum powder up your nose. | |
| Because they don't have really that sense of personal politeness yet. | |
| They haven't been raised on the Queen's good graces quite as yet. | |
| And I don't think that any of us would feel particularly comfortable with hitting a child who's, say, five for not getting a heavy dish from the very top shelf in the kitchen because they can't physically reach it. | |
| That would be an excuse for sadistic abuse. | |
| That would not be any kind of discipline. | |
| So, If your child can reason, but you're hitting instead, then that's an incredible failure as a parent. | |
| It's morally wrong, but the rough equivalent of keeping your child in diapers up to the age of seven or eight instead of toilet training them. | |
| And if your child can't reason, but you're hitting anyway, then that literally is like Hitting a dementia patient for forgetting where she put her keys. | |
| She's not physically able and capable of remembering where she put her keys. | |
| Now, children, of course, are born extremely immature. | |
| It's just one of the lovely tricks of the fourth trimester of human development. | |
| And so they have, let's say, they have a physical incapacity to reason on the level of an adult, of course, right? | |
| In which case you're hitting a child for the physical limitations of their brain. | |
| Would you feel comfortable hitting a child who had some form of mental retardation for an inability to understand algebra? | |
| Well, no. | |
| They have a physical inability to do so as the result of developmental handicaps or delays in the brain. | |
| So hitting someone for a physical incapacity is brutal, is obviously abusive. | |
| So When we get old, right, it's called the senior moments, right? | |
| So when we get old, we forget things. | |
| Now, is it acceptable for our adult children, when we get to be 70 or 80 or 90, is it acceptable for our adult children to pull down our pants and spank us on our bare bottoms because we forgot where we put our keys? | |
| Well, brains are getting older, there's some deterioration that's natural. | |
| It's madness. | |
| Would you accept that, as an elderly person, to be spanked because of a physical limitation of your brain when you were forgetful? | |
| Of course not. | |
| But it's exactly the same with children. | |
| So these arguments simply don't work at all. | |
| I have been a stay-at-home dad, lo, these five and a half years. | |
| I have never hit my daughter. | |
| I've never yelled at my daughter. | |
| I've never punished. | |
| My daughter. | |
| And she is polite. | |
| She is peaceful. | |
| She is delightful. | |
| She listens. | |
| We have great conversations. | |
| She's great at negotiating. | |
| A skill that seems to be doubling at approximately the rate of every 16 minutes. | |
| And she's just a fantastic company. | |
| And that's exactly as it should be. | |
| Hit your children. | |
| I mean, it's madness. | |
| They didn't choose to be with you. | |
| Then why would you hit them for the physical limitation called childhood? | |
| So, I've made these arguments, of course, before, and I'm sure I'll make them again because it takes a while for repetition to overcome defensiveness. | |
| And it's my hope, of course, that people will do the research and you can look at my video, The Facts About Spanking, or my interviews with a number of subject matter experts on the matter of spanking. | |
| It is incredibly damaging to the child. | |
| It damages the parent-child bond. | |
| It reduces IQ. It increases irascibility, irritability, and social conflicts among children. | |
| And it makes parenting into kind of like this endless, on patrol, quick-handed, open-or-closed-fisted prison guard torture chamber where you're just not having a whole lot of fun. | |
| So, I do want to mention something, though. | |
| So, there's the three groups of people, right? | |
| There are those who see, there are those who see when they are shown, and there are those who steadfastly refuse to open their eyes. | |
| Love the first group, have even more respect for the second group, who see when they are shown and change their ways and avoid using these kinds of aggressive techniques and violent techniques with their children. | |
| But for the third group, I call down upon you an ancient Egyptian gypsy curse. | |
| Which is what you're doing by continuing to use these brutal and violent methods with your children is you're hoping that the future will be the same as the past. | |
| Aren't you? | |
| Aren't you hoping that? | |
| Aren't you hoping that myself and all of the other advocates for the peaceful parenting of children, the peaceful treatment of children, that we're just wrong? | |
| We're proven wrong and society is just going to slip backwards into the old spare the rod, spoil the child stuff and all that. | |
| You're just hoping that that's going to happen. | |
| That is not going to happen. | |
| However awkwardly, however stumblingly, however blindly, humanity moves forward. | |
| And we extend the privileges of humanity to formerly excluded and despised groups. | |
| That is the inevitable progress of mankind. | |
| Virtue is a spilt bucket of white paint. | |
| It spreads. | |
| It spreads. | |
| With the internet, I'm telling you, it spreads even faster. | |
| So, just as blacks and other minorities had personhood extended to them, just as women had personhood extended to them, so will children have personhood extended to them. | |
| It's inevitable. | |
| It cannot turn back. | |
| The science is too clear. | |
| The effects are too clear. | |
| The morality is too obvious for words. | |
| It's going to happen. | |
| And you're either going to be on the right side of the moral development of the species or you're going to be on the wrong side. | |
| And I'm telling you, by going out on the internet and saying how modern kids are pussies because they're not smacked enough, well, you are putting yourself very publicly out there on exactly the wrong side of history. | |
| And you will be viewed in 10 or 20 years, in your lifetimes, maybe even by your children, you will be viewed As brutal and sadistic because society moves forward. | |
| Look, there were huge numbers of people who resisted the end of slavery, right? | |
| In the middle of the 19th century in the South, 97% of people were pro-slavery, 3% of people were working for abolition, and the 3% won. | |
| And the anti-spanking, anti-child hitting, all of the advocates of peaceful parenting, we're going to win. | |
| Because in a long enough time frame, the most consistent position will always win. | |
| 50, 100 years ago, people were much more accepting. | |
| Of slapping your wife around. | |
| Now, no decent moral person advocates such a thing. | |
| But the change is much faster now than it used to be. | |
| So in 10 years, 20 years at the outside, you will look to your children and to anyone around you who's decent, you will look Like somebody like Bull Connor in the Old South. | |
| You will look like a bigot. | |
| You will look like a racist. | |
| You will look like a misogynist. | |
| You will look like a sexist. | |
| And you will have publicly put out many statements, easily traceable, easily findable by anybody with a care to look. | |
| You will have put out many statements in favor Of the hitting of defenseless and helpless children for all the world to see. | |
| And I'm telling you, I'm telling you, I'm telling you, no matter what you do with your life, I don't care if you headline for Live Aid 3. | |
| I don't care if you write the most beautiful orchestral movements the world has ever seen. | |
| I don't care if you win gold medals. | |
| The only thing that anyone will remember about you is where you stood and how you snarled in this division between the peaceful and respectful treatment of children and the violent and aggressive destruction of a child's mind, heart, soul, and integrity. | |
| Mankind is going to split in two over this issue And the future will swell with those on the right side of issue. | |
| And the only thing that will be remembered of you, my friends, and of the people on the wrong side of this issue, is where you stood on this crucial divide. | |
| That will be all people remember about you, no matter what your achievements. | |
| That will be what is written on your tombstone. | |
| In a kind of Pink Floyd planetarium laser light playing out on the belly of clouds. | |
| Here lay the child abusers. | |
| And it will take generations to take that stain away from Eugene Poole. | |
| We are moving forward. | |
| The change is at this point irrevocable. | |
| Science, reason, morality and evidence are consistently 100% on the side of peaceful parenting. | |
| And the internet has allowed us to bypass all of the entrenched child abuse interests that run society, both politically and in the military and in the church and you name it, in the public schools. | |
| The internet has allowed us to bypass that. | |
| I can't be threatened with boycotts. | |
| I can't be threatened with, I'm going to take away your advertising. | |
| I'm going to make people not listen to you. | |
| I can't be threatened with those things. | |
| This is a one-on-one communication with the world about the value of peace and negotiation over violence, aggression, and hitting. | |
| You will not get away with it. | |
| The court of history is always in session and is absolutely unforgiving. | |
| There was an old poster in the Second World War where a child was asking his father,''Daddy, what did you do in the Great War?'' Your children will ask you the same thing when they grow up, and your children's children will ask you the same thing. | |
| What did you do in the Great War? | |
| Which side were you on? |