Life /
Anti-spanking law in Poland? [76]
Oh, wow. This one really riled me up. And I am home sick today, so I have all the time in the world to tell you why.
Someone pointed to Sweden, as if the lack of spanking in kids there means they have an ideal society, where all children are cherished and rainbows and marshmallows come out of their rears instead of poo.
Sorry.
Sweden may not have psychotic serial killer-babies running around in diapers, but Sweden DOES have serious societal issues of its own, many of those problems coming from their own youth:
nationmaster.com/country/sw-sweden/cri-crime
Swedes commit suicide more often than Americans (and Aussies and Brits) and have higher rates of extreme alcoholism, too. Is their practice of not spanking the kids creating those problems later on? Is the lack of physical discipline creating behavioral monsters?
Stupid questions, right? But since there has been no conclusive or properly scientific study done there, that shows that NOT spanking kids prevents their youth from creating the types of probems they are already having (nor has there been such a study done anywhere), I can't advocate the Swedish way.
Swedes are ranked much higher on the UN scale of total crime (meaning that across the board, more Swedish citizens are victims of crime than, say, people in the US or Austria).
nationmaster.com/graph/cri_tot_cri_vic-crime-total-victims
Is all crime in Sweden perpetrated by non-Swedes? Some is but not all. Or by those over the age of, say, 18? Most is committed by those under age 24, I think the UN figures said. Who commits all those crimes? Who are the victims? Where, when and how does a criminal in Sweden begin their life of crime?
I also need to say this: studies in the USA do NOT prove that spanking begets abuse nor that spanked children become violent, or in turn abuse their own children. Those studies clearly differentiated between spanking and abuse--and spanking was not defined as abuse for those studies. So to say that studies have proven that spanking causes abuse in kids, is incorrect. To say that abuse causes abuse, yes. But spanking has not been proven to.
Many kids who are bullies have been spanked, that's true,. But those same kids are often exposed to severe, disabling punches, slaps, verbal abuses, even torture at home. And no one ever separated out the spanking from the torture in that study--to be able to say that kids that are spanked (versus those who are abused) are more often bullies than not.
My kid is being bullied at school nearly every day here in Poland, teased and picked on by a kid twice his age and his younger sister, who's a few years older than my kid. We have a meeting, which I asked for, at his school tomorrow. I observed and I asked and those kids do not ever get spanked. They aren't even told, when caught at it, to stop. Neither do most of the children at this school. And you should see what they're like, as a rule, as a result of that lack of discipline.
Back-talkers, pushers, shovers, tongue-sticker-outers, nasty words flung around all over the place, poking, teasing, not sharing, open defiance of bus drivers, teachers, and even their own parents. It's sickening.
Now, can you say well, they aren't spanked, so it's the lack of spanking that
is causing their bullying? No you can't. No more than you could say, if they were spanked, that it was the spanking that caused the bullying.
(I suspect it's a generalized lack of discipline in any form in that home that is at the real heart of this; that and some anger at their upheaval to be here in the first place and also, perhaps, the constant absence of one parent and maybe too much money thrown at them to "make them behave").
A recent study, not longitudinal, not repeated and widely criticized, says that kids who were spanked often have sexual dysfunctions as young adults or are more likely to coerce sex from their current sexual partners. It is being criticized because they surveyed college students already engaging in the noted behaviors/having the problems, and relied on the students (who were paid to be in the study and many of whom were enrolled as students in the department in which the study came from, ie: were dependent for their grades on the professors asking the questions) to self-report. Ie: the professors asked the students face to face certain questions and expected the kids to respond honestly and openly about spanking done to them as children, which in some cases, took place decades before being asked to answer the questions.
They did not look into childhood sexual abuse in the kids who reported having engaged in these behaviors (which many experts believe is at the root of problems like these).
They did not look into their backgrounds over time, interview their parents or guardians, doctors, teachers, etc. They also did not differentiate between spanking and abuse. Nor did they verify or attempt to verify that spanking actually occured in the homes of these college kids early on in their lives, nor determine where, how, how often, etc, as the students reported that it did.
The respondents (the students answering the questionaires) included in their responses that "spanking" included abuse like punching, striking the face with a backhand slap, using objects to beat the entire body with, etc---and also included the fact that the reported "spanking" occured to them up to and over age 13.
So, I have more than few problems with that so-called scientific "study" that is really more of a survey or poll, with loaded questions and very little scientific method being applied. I'd say at best, it's anecdotal evidence--and that's if you can believe the students and their motivations for answering the questions as they did.
I don't.
Studies in the US (and around the world) show that extraordinary punishments, those that are extremely violent and abusive, and that occur frequently over time, do tend to create dysfunctional kids who go on to abuse others and their own kids in future.
We're not talking about hand slaps and butt spanks, here, we're talking about extreme cruelty to kids.
Also, I do need to point this out: I have seen a lot of virulent (and sometimes, virulent to the point of abject hysteria) posts online about being anti-spanking. The posts sometimes--surprisingly often, it seems to me, come from people who reveal, only after they've passionately defended the no-spank idea, that they themselves were horrifically abused as children and are now on a worldwide crusade to outlaw spanking and teach everyone alive the perils of spanking their kids. I can see why they would be the ones most ardently supporting the no-spank idea. I get where they are coming from.
To them, any physical discipline is too much, a bad idea, wrong, damaging, etc. I totally get that. Same thing with people who were never abused themselves, but have witnessed the effect of horrific abuse on kids they know, who now fear that telling any one it's ok to discipline their kid means that it gives parents and others the license to beat their kid unmercifully.
But their confusion over what a spanking is, versus what abuse is, and their fears should not take precedence over my need to teach my child when he gets seriously out of line, or requires more than a "now now, Johnny, don't do that". Over society's need to have productive, responsible citizens surrounding them, using their superpowers for good, not evil, instead of out- of- control wild animals with no understanding of what correct or civilizing behavior is.
We use the time outs, too, and we take away toys when he won't share them; we also do a lot of positive reinforcement, but I am telling you, some kids DO need more than that. One of your kids may be a goody-two shoes who never acts up (well, maybe not when you are watching them they don't), and another may be a tasmanian devil. Different kids require different approaches.
Someone asked, how do you define mild punishment, versus abusive punishment? Who makes that call? Isn't it better to outlaw ALL physical discipline, rather than use judgment and differentiate between the two types?
In the US our laws are clear. Social service workers, and police, teachers, doctors, firemen, etc, are all taught what abuse is (and that kind of manual, which I have seen, does NOT include spanking)
They are required by law to inform authorities when they believe abuse is occurring. So are nurses, physician assistants, dentists, day care providers, etc. They can lose their license to practice their profession for life, go to jail or pay very heavy fines, be sued in criminal or civil court, etc, if they see what they suspect could be abuse and don't do what's right.
Those laws are newer and weren't in place when we were kids. More protections exist for kids now than ever before. Fewer people are resorting to habitually spanking their kids, even once, even just a hand slap.
Some studies say 90% of Americans spank their kids. Others say that is a very misleading number, and I agree, because the most famous of those studies was a poll done over the phone and it asked one question: have you ever spanked your child? Not whether or not the person answering the question routinely or regularly did so, nor how they did so, nor did it even define the word "spanking". It was actually a survey or poll, not a study.
I was born in the US and lived there until age 40; I now live in Poland and have for almost 9 months. I have spanked my five year old and will continue to do so, as and when required. If that metters to anyone reading this or causes you to think my views stem from my background and experiences. I was spanked as a child and so was my husband.
Having seen a new generation of ever-bolder, defiant, angrier and less honest kids being born and "raised" over there, I have to wonder why no one has ever studied the LACK of spanking or the LACK of discipline on kids. If they have actually studied it, where are the results?
I again admit that studies (since about the 1970s) in the US and elsewhere ,have shown a correlation between violent, abusive and aggressive discipline and kids who later are violent and abusive themselves.
That's why pediatricians back home say that for most parents, it might be better to try other forms of discipline before resorting to physical punishment. They do not know the past home life of a parent who brings their kid in to see them for care. If they say it's okay to spank and the parent happens to be an abuser, or to have been abused as a kid, they could be legally liable for having advocated harsh disipline against the child--that they never even knew was taking place.
So I get why a few years ago, the pediatric physician's association in the US gave a statement that physical punishment is not the first recourse of a parent in disciplining their kids.
I agree with that message. But I also know how to read and think, and I understand what that message says and means.
BTW, I saw the types of things they were talking about in those studies that showed a correlation between physical punishment and later bad behavior in kids:
severe and injurious spanking with belts, and fists; forcing kids into dark closets and locking the door on them for long periods of time, sometimes days; incest or violent sexual assault used as punishment; humiliating namecalling/verbal abuse/shaming; forcing other kids in the house to torture the scapegoated child; witholding food and water, or oversalting their food and forcing them to regurgitate till they collapse; forcing them to kneel on broomsticks or plastic pvc pipes and pray for hours on end, etc.
The studies suggest that there is a correlation between the two things, abuse and later violence in kids. I tend to agree that extreme violence in childhood does make some kids violent towards others and does make some kids grow up to be abusive to their own kids.
But the same studies, IIRC, could not rule out that some of the dysfunction in the kids both present-day and as they studied them over time, came from periodic homelessness, lack of a bond since infancy with either parent, extended alcoholism or drug use in the home, verbal and physical abuse directed toward the mother figure in the house, mental disease or defect in the kids being studied, bullying directed toward the kid by other kids, learning disabilities/serious educational deficiencies that weren't addressed when young, physical disabilities which were not corrected and later caused socilaization problems, etc.
In other words, no direct correlative study that has stood up to any sort of scientific scrutiny has EVER said that normal discipline makes for warped, messed up or violent/aggressive kids.
Only that among kids who are horrifically abused, a few do go on and do that, too.
Other studies have shown that it is a combination of psychological abuse plus the physical beatings in habitually abused kids, that really makes for messed up kids, harmed for life.
I tend to agree with that one, too.
But to across the board say, that a parent who spanks risks creating a sad, depressed, violent, badly behaved kid, who can't play well with others, or is harmed for life? Are you kidding me? That's as crazy an idea as advocating never spanking your kid!
Even California, known to us in the USA as a state which has many rebels, new agers and stoners, who tend to be extremely tolerant in all things good and bad, has legislation pending that states that age-appropriate spanking in young children should not be part of a state-wide ban against abuse against children. ie: spanking kids is not abuse and will not be on the ballot listed as behavior that we need to ban.
NO state in the US has ever successfully passed legislation banning spanking. Some municipalities (towns, cities or townships) have tried, however.
