My 99th Debate: Kids and Corporal Punishment

In my family, we don't do punishment. I was never grounded, had my allowance stopped, or spanked. When issues of behavior came up, we sat around and discussed them. This is consistent with the morality of my family, and the type of community I grew up in, and I have every intention of raising my children in this same way, since it's my culture and I like it.Nevertheless, I'm not playing devil's advocate on this debate. I really do believe the resolution is right. It's not a strong belief, but on balance, all things considered, I come down on the side of the resolution rather than against it. I feel that my reasoning has a lot of parts to it, and it will be a challenge to lay out all the parts of it simply in a debate, so thank you to bsh1 for this opportunity to try it out.Parental ignorance theoryIn the nice, vaguely privileged world I grew up in, everyone goes to college and everyone agrees that corporal punishment is wrong. There are lots of reasons - the use of force on someone weaker is in itself abhorrent - and what lesson does it give children about power and relationships! - positive reinforcement is better than negative reinforcement, people should behave well not because they are afraid but because they are engaged with the consequences of moral behavior etc.And yet, most parents use corporal punishment. I am going to pause for a moment to lay out some evidence for this, because it's important.***************************************A study of parenting found that in 7 out of 9 countries, a large majority of parents had used corporal punishment in the previous month. Most parents in China, Kenya, Thailand, Colombia, Italy, Jordan, and The Philippines reported using corporal punishment. Just under half of US parents reported corporal punishment in the previous month, and only Swedish parents reported very low levels (keeping in mind that corporal punishment is illegal in Sweden, and so respondents may have felt constrained in answering the questions). (1)More than 70% of Americans agree that spanking children is an appropriate punishment (2).****************************************There are two ways to interpret this:A. On balance, corporal punishment is bad for children, but most parents around the world are ignorant/cruel and do it anyway. (Con's position)B. On balance, corporal punishment isn't bad for children. Parents know what they're doing. (Pro's position)I find it very difficult to accept position A because it runs contrary to something I believe to be true: that in general, people act in their own best interests and in the best interests of their children. Also, that people are more engaged in the problem of their own best interests than anyone else, and so are most likely to know what's best for them. Of course, we can all think of individual instances when people act against their own best interests, but here we are talking about global population trends. All around the world, the large majority of parents are using corporal punishment to raise their children. Con thinks they are misguided at best. I think that parents are biologically designed to care for their children, that in general they can't help acting in their children's best interests, that every society in the world recognizes parental expertise in raising their own children (if there are any exceptions I can't think of them). No better means of raising children has ever been found than trusting parents and supporting parents to do it. Therefore, I think we have to reject the theory that most parents around the world are wrong, while we are right.Which leaves us with interpretation B. Parents know what they are doing. But what about all the evidence about how bad corporal punishment is? What about all that stuff about it teaching aggression and the links to mental illness? I don't want to anticipate Con's arguments too much, but most research on corporal punishment comes from Western countries and it's done by college-educated middle-class types like me. The research is biased, and that makes a huge difference when it comes to interpreting the results. Authoritative vs Authoritarian Parenting Styles: How we got it wrongDiana Baumrind described four parenting styles in the 1960s, and the typology subsequently became very popular. There are four types, but for the current discussion only the first two are important:1. Authoritative Parenting: "attempts to direct the child's activities but in a rational, issue-oriented manner...encourages verbal give and take, shares with the child the reasoning behind her policy, and solicits his objections when he refuses to conform"2. Authoritarian Parenting: "values obedience as a virtue and favors punitive, forceful measures to curb self-will at points where the child's actions or beliefs conflict with what she thinks is right conduct. She believes in keeping the child in his place..." (3) In the decades after this typology was described, research paper after research paper showed that of the types, the authoritative style was most closely linked to good outcomes for children, from happiness to results at school. For example on this site, The Positive Parenting Centre, (4) makes it clear that the authoritative type is the good one, it is described as "a warm, nurturing, accepting manner", which contrasts with the authoritarian type which is "extremely strict" with "little or no input from the child" and is associated with strict rules and punishments. On the site Parenting Science, the writer states that "authoritative parenting is associated with the best child outcomes" and this conclusion has been common (5).It has only been very recently that the truth has been revealed: authoritative parenting is indeed associated with the best outcomes but only in specific Western cultures. For example, a study in the US, Hong Kong and Australia showed that the authoritarian parenting style was associated with high academic achievement for children in Hong Kong and for those in Australia and the US whose parents did not have a college education. (6)This is worth repeating. Strict, rule-based, punishment focused parenting styles were linked to the best outcomes for non-Western children and for Western children whose parents didn't go to college.Whereas among the Western middle-classes where I grew up, this type of authoritarian parenting style is linked to poorer outcomes.As this study explains (7), parents from different countries and social groups relate to their children in different ways. In the western middle-classes, closeness between parent and child is a mediator in enforcing discipline, but this is not always the way that it's done elsewhere. Therefore, we cannot take conclusions about best parenting practices from our own culture and apply them universally.Corporal Punishment and OutcomesCorporal punishment is effective in improving child behavior in the short-term. Even opponents agree that this is true.(8)However, it is the long-term effects that opponents are worried about, including increased aggression, mental health problems and difficulty internalizing morality.Here's the thing. African Americans are three times more likely to endorse corporal punishment than are other Americans.(9) African American children are more likely to have "mental problem" status (10) and be arrested and coded as delinquents (11) than are other types of American children. So yes, you plug all that into a data analysis and you will get a correlation. Corporal punishment. Mental health problems (depression and anxiety mostly). Aggression. Failure to internalize those moral values.Could it be that black parents are simply more ignorant, or just worse than the rest of us? Could it be that a simple process of disciplining children could unleash such a range of terrible outcomes?Obviously not. It's just another example of how correlation mistaken for causation and mixed up with racially biased data collection. It's possible that not all black parents are gagging for their children to internalize a conforming morality. Maybe some parents want their children to develop a healthy disrespect for authority while realizing that breaking the rules can lead to harsh consequences because black people are six times more likely to go to prison than white people (12). Maybe there's more going on here.SummaryWe need to choose. Is it that:A. Parents who aren't white or who don't have a college education are just ignorant and bad; orB. All parents are doing their best in different circumstances, and when our theories are based too narrowly on our own circumstances, we can get it wrong.I don't think we can dismiss the the opinion of the majority of Americans and the actions of the majority of parents around the world as ignorance and cruelty. I don't think we can conclude that college-educated Westerners simply know better than everyone else about raising children, because we really don't.It goes against everything I was raised to believe, but I'm forced to conclude that on balance, when it occurs, parental use of corporal punishment is beneficial for the child.(1) http://downloads.hindawi.com...(2) http://fivethirtyeight.com...(3) http://www.devpsy.org...(4) http://www.the-positive-parenting-centre.com...(5) http://www.parentingscience.com...(6) http://www.jstor.org...(7) http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...(8) http://www.endcorporalpunishment.org...(9) http://www.honors.ufl.edu... (10) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... (11) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... (12) http://www.naacp.org...