If you do it, it makes you a less successful parent.
It's unnecessary, generally borne of anger and ignorance, and teaches that violence is an acceptable response to conflict.
It should be a united aim to get rid of it in society, but those self-concerned morons who got spanked, and who are too proud to admit their parents and childhoods were flawed, will prevent it.
I completely disagree on this. Frankly, your post is insulting and offensive. My father is very calm, very peaceful, very tolerant. He is NOT a violent man and I never learned or felt like I was being taught that violence was an acceptable response to conflict.
I was taught, and it was instilled in me, that sometimes violence is the only answer. But that didn't come from spankings. That came from when my dad sat me down at the dinner table and explained that he had to go away to a place far, far away because people were killing each other and wouldn't sit down and talk with each other to work through their problems. So he was going over there to stand between them so they couldn't hurt each other. I asked what he'd do if they tried, and he said if he had no other choice, he would defend people who couldn't defend themselves, but that he was hopeful that people would see reason and realize that now that he was there to protect them, they didn't have to be violent.
It was spring of 1993. A few months after he left, he was involved in Operation Medak Pocket, the first firefight for Canadian soldiers since Korea. He came home almost a year after he left, we talked about it, and he sat me down to try and explain (I was less than 10). I didn't quite get it, why did we have to fight? So we watched a WWII documentary and he explained how we tried to talk to Hitler, we tried to convince the Germans to stop, but sometimes, when no one will listen and people are being killed, good men need to stand up against violence with violence.
That's right, I was a kid that had been spanked, many many times, I didn't understand why anyone would need to go to war to solve a problem, I didn't understand why violence was necessary. My spankings weren't violence. They were punishment. A little painful, but it's not like I took a backhand across the face or fractured my orbit from roundhouse. I never saw them as violence, he never handed them out as violence. He used them when I refused to respond to anything else. ANYTHING else. And trust me, he and my mother tried.
He wasn't a less successful parent, he was a hugely successful parent. He raised a kid that stood up to bullies in high school, even when it was his teammates, even when he wasn't even their target. He raised a kid that managed to get straight A's while playing a multitude of sports and participating in volunteer activities and a fully funded university education (plus salary while attending) with a guaranteed job on graduation in a field he loved. I never once started a fight except once with my cousin when I was 4, though I did end up in a few others (won some, lost some) but only after trying to deconflict the situation. Like I said, the only kid on my block that was an ass and liked to use violence was the only one that didn't get spanked. You can tell me what your experience says all you want, it will reflect your experience. For reference, my cousin was never spanked, he never needed it. He responded well to other forms of discipline. He started about a dozen fights with me, and had some issues with fighting in school. Like I said, he didn't need to be spanked, and he was disciplined and has grown up to be a fantastic young man. My point is that he was more violent as a kid than I was, yet I'm the one that was spanked and not him.
This is about people. That means there's no "one size fits all". You can't argue that those that spank are always doing it out of impatience, or ignorance, or failure as a parent, and you can't argue that those of us who disagree are doing it because we're too "proud" to admit our childhoods were flawed. Find a flaw in mine. I dare you. My sister was supposed to take me to the park once but didn't want to wait for me to put my shoes on, and I sat on the porch crying because I couldn't go on my own. That was pretty shitty. My dad leaving to go overseas on 5 different occasions kinda sucked but I always knew why he was going and what the issue was. I didn't make the basketball team in Grade 7 and that broke my heart. I had a crush on a girl in grade 10 who ended up dating my best friend. I wanted to take this super hot track athlete to prom but she had a different date which made be sad, but I took 3 cheerleaders instead so I can't complain too much. Aside from those isolated incidents, I really can't think of anything negative in my childhood. All the shitty parts of my life happened as an adult, and my dad has always been and still is there for me. Go ahead, call him a shitty parent. I dare you. Do you know what I will do, as a child who was spanked? Not threaten to beat you up if you do, that's for sure. I was taught better than that, even if I was spanked when I was bad. I will pity you though. Pity you as someone so closed-minded they are unable to accept that someone can be a good parent and spank their kids, so closed-minded they assume everyone that was spanked had a flawed childhood.
What group are you going to pass judgement on next? How about sex workers, strippers and promiscuous women? Let me guess, they don't like sex, they just weren't shown enough love growing up? I was spanked. Don't pretend that knowing one single thing about me means you know anything about the quality of my childhood or my parents.
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