July 13, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
06:14
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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| This is from the Huffington Post. | |
| Why does everyone pretend that there's a spanking debate? | |
| Spanking was a subject of debate on every parenting website on the continent during the past week and I don't understand why. | |
| Yes, I know why it was a topic of conversation. | |
| The prestigious journal Pediatrics released a study early in the week showing a possible link between childhood spanking and mental health struggles later in that child's life. | |
| And that was news worth talking about. | |
| What I don't understand is why it was a debate. | |
| By definition, that would require two sides. | |
| I see only one. | |
| At what point does something become simple fact? | |
| The Pediatrics article was just the latest in a decades-long march of studies showing that spanking, defined as hitting with an open hand in order to correct or punish, to be ineffective at best and psychologically harmful at worst. | |
| In April, an article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal analyzed two decades of data and concluded that spanking has no upside. | |
| And its downsides include increased risk for depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and aggressive behavior later in life. | |
| A few years earlier, another pediatric study, this one by researchers at Tulane University, Concluded that children who are spanked as often as twice a month at age three are twice as likely to become aggressive, destructive, and mean when they are five. | |
| And it has been a decade since Columbia University psychologists went through more than 80 studies over 62 years and found that there was a strong correlation between parents who used corporal punishment and children who demonstrated 11 measurable childhood behaviors. | |
| Ten of the behaviors were negative, including such things as increased aggression and increased antisocial behavior. | |
| Only one could be considered positive. | |
| Spanking did result in immediate compliance. | |
| So we're pointing a gun in their general direction, but that does not make it the right thing to do. | |
| And as other research points out, if that temporary compliance comes at the price of long-term depression or defiance, then what has really been gained? | |
| In spite of this mountain of data, though, polls and studies find that up to 90% of parents spank their children. | |
| And each time we parenting reporters write about the latest studies, our comment threads fill with practitioners whose remarks range from outrage, I was hit and I turned out okay, goddammit! | |
| to despair. | |
| I don't want to hit, but it is the only way I can get them to listen. | |
| I am continually amazed at what it takes to redirect parenting opinion. | |
| It is dizzying how quickly one study or article can sometimes change our ways. | |
| We started placing infants on their backs rather than their stomachs when there were hints of correlation, but not proof of causation, with crib death. | |
| Pregnant women stopped having sushi, soft cheese, caffeine, and even a sip of alcohol on the remote but striking possibility that a small amount could have consequences. | |
| BPA bottles disappeared in certain circles overnight when there was an unofficial link to cancer. | |
| But other times, we just don't want to know. | |
| In that way, the spanking conversation is like the vaccine debate. | |
| In spite of no credible evidence of a link with autism, and many studies that tried and failed to find such a link, there are some minds that just won't change. | |
| Your parents hit you, and you were okay. | |
| They probably smoked around you too, and they didn't make you wear a seatbelt either, but we know better now. | |
| Also, might I respectfully ask, How you know that you're okay? | |
| Perhaps if your parents hadn't hit their kids, you wouldn't feel a need to hit your own. | |
| It is the only thing that works when your children won't listen. | |
| Swedish children are not running. | |
| A mock in the streets and spanking has been illegal there since 1979. | |
| Sweden was the first of 32 countries, including Costa Rica, Israel, Kenya, and most of Europe, to approve such a law. | |
| Some questions really don't have two sides. | |
| Is it okay to do something to your child that would land you in jail if you did it to a stranger on the street is one of those. | |
| You can phrase it other ways too, like Is it okay to hurt your child because it serves your immediate goal when science shows it can lead to long-term harm? | |
| But there is still just one answer. | |
| And yet we keep seeing it presented as a disagreement. | |
| To spank or not to spank was the headline on both the CNN's report yesterday and the Good Morning America segment on Thursday about the latest pediatric study. | |
| The Today piece added the tagline, Mommy Wars, Raging Parenting Debate, and a Babble Blogger was found to represent each side. | |
| But there aren't two sides. | |
| There is a preponderance of fact, and there are people who find it inconvenient to accept those facts. |
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