My 99th Debate: Kids and Corporal Punishment

Con has accused me of a few different fallacies. I'll go through them one by one.Ad populumImagine a debate resolution, "On balance, vanilla icecream is more delicious than strawberry", and Pro provided evidence that 5x more vanilla icecream is sold around the world than strawberry, which is strong evidence that people prefer vanilla. Con could cite studies from "taste specialists" that strawberry is actually more delicious - there could even be a deliciousness formula that proves it. He could conclude that people around the world are wrong and ignorantly thinking they prefer vanilla when really strawberry is more delicious.When weighing those two arguments, it's not a fallacy to fall on the side of Pro. The difference between this example, and Con's Galileo example, is the basis of knowledge and expertise. We recognize that each person is an expert on what she herself finds delicious, and more of an expert than some taste specialist in another country. Each person has direct experience with tasting icecream, but not necessarily with the shape of the solar system.Indeed, I think it would be a fallacy to appeal to authority when the overwhelming evidence is that people prefer vanilla. Unless we look very carefully at the reasons for those expert opinions, they are only opinions whereas the sales of icecream are actual evidence of preference and behavior. That's why I fall on the side of Pro on this issue too. I think that parents in a better position to know what benefits their own children than are "experts" who live in another community or even another continent, who have never met the children in question. If the experts has substantial evidence to back up their opinions, it would be another matter, perhaps, but they don't for reasons I've been explaining.Ipse DixitCon argues that it's possible parents are ignorant or acting wrongly. It's true that a majority of parents around the world using corporal punishment and/or approving of its use is not proof that it benefits children, but it is supporting evidence that it benefits children. This evidence is to be weighed against the evidence against.However, when we say that parents are "acting wrongly" or against their child's best interests, we're using our own standards of comparison, because of course there is no one objective standard of benefit.Here's an extreme example to show you what I mean. Suppose a child is born into slavery. Would it be better to raise that child to be obedient and sweet and thereby avoid trouble from the slaveowners, or would it be better to raise the child to have internal pride and courage that may one day help him gain freedom? It's hard to decide without knowing the exact circumstances and the possibilities for freedom in the future, etc. It's not a simple decision.For any child, "benefit" is complex. It could include health, safety, interpersonal relationships, social status, education, material benefits, and many other factors which could be in direct conflict with each other. In other words, these sorts of decisions are best left in the hands of people who are intimately involved in the exact circumstances of the child's life.In his sociocultural analysis of physical punishment, Arthur Whaley argues that the reason why the outcomes are so different in African American and European American communities is partly due to the way those communities relate to authority. He writes: "Spanking may have originally functioned as a means of teaching children to respect power and authority to protect them from greater harm by violating social rules... Although the consequences are often not as severe as during the era of slavery, contemporary experiences with legal authorities reflect the same concerns. A common saying in the Black community is "I'd rather my child get a beating from me than from the police." Belsky (1993) aptly pointed out that the Rodney King beating was evidence in support of the assertion that violation of societal rules has graver consequences for African Americans." (1)A study of physical punishment in Hispanic communities reached the same conclusion, that ecological context was more important than cultural habits per se. (2) In other words, parents are sensitive to their circumstances. What works for white, suburban middle-class parents may or may not be appropriate for parents in other circumstances. On balance, parents are in the best position to assess potential benefits for their children.Cherry pickingCon has accused me of cherry picking evidence and so here is a review and summary of cultural differences in the effects of physical punishment by Jennifer Lansford at Duke University (3). In this article, Lansford weighs up the evidence of cultural differences in the effects of physical punishment, and especially the evidence that when it is considered a part of normal, caring parental behavior, any bad effects are offset.Interestingly, Lansford ends up siding with the UN that in the absence of strong evidence of benefits, there should be a global ban, rather weakly arguing that because there is no strong evidence of benefit (although few very - if any - studies have ever attempted to find any) banning it would be consistent with the UN's broader policies.In other words, her review shows a strong evidence of sociocultural differences in the use and effects of corporate punishment, but a global ban makes sense politically.Lack of evidenceAs I explained earlier, experimental studies in this area are impossible and therefore, causality CANNOT be established. Con concedes that "some" of his studies do not establish cause, but this isn't concession enough. NO study can establish cause because children cannot be randomly assigned to parents and parents cannot be randomly assigned to punishment or no punishment conditions and certainly not in any kind of double-blind set up. It's impossible.Con also claims that "most of the research I cited in my R2 comments controlled for racial, socioeconomic, and other possible confounding variables to reach highly reliable conclusions." This is just laughable. If it came from an experience researcher, it would be an outright lie. You cannot control for "other possible confounding variables" with an observational study, and these are ALL observational studies. You need to randomly assign subjects to experimental conditions to control for confounding variables, and as I've already explained, that is impossible.Let's take the example of aggression, and the observed link between aggression and corporal punishment. Con's sources were almost entirely demographically restricted cross-sectional studies. That means that mostly white adolescents or adults were given surveys to measure their aggression and whether they experienced physical punishment as children, or possibly their parents were asked to report on physical punishment. A link is found. There are dozens of potential explanations.1. Corporal punishment leads to increased aggression (everyone's favorite),2. People who are more aggressive are more likely to use corporal punishment, and children grow up like their parents.3. Violent societies require people to be aggressive to survive, and corporal punishment is a good way to raise children in those societies4. The sorts of people who claim that they're aggressive on a survey, are also more likely to claim that physical punishment was used in their families.5. The sorts of people who care about impression management are more likely to deny aggressive behavior AND being spanked as a child.6. Physical punishment is more acceptable in some cultures than others, and those cultures also have a higher incidence of aggressive behavior for unrelated reasons.That's just off the top of my head. I could keep going, but the point is, causality cannot be established.This debate and BoPCon has argued that if causality cannot be established, then I am in a worse position than him because I have BoP. However, I'm not arguing on those lines.My argument is very simple. Most parents around the world use corporal punishment. It is more popular is some cultures than others and in particular it is unpopular in white, western, educated communities, which are also the people who are running the studies and trying to advocate for it to be banned in the rest of the world. When we look at the evidence, though, it is inconclusive although it's clear that outside white, Western communities, the "bad" effects are greatly diminished. In any case, it's not clear that "aggression", "delinquency", and refusal to "internalize morality" are anything other than judgmental, subjective outcomes made up by cultural imperialists anyway. Con has provided no evidence that children do not benefit by behaving aggressively in an oppressive or violent society, for example. Therefore, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, criticism of physical punishment is just opinion, and because of the cultural circumstances, it looks like prejudice. I have the BoP, but I've shown that most parents around the world use it. Parents are the most motivated to benefit their children, and they are in the best position to judge benefit in their particular circumstances. Without evidence to the contrary, it's enough to uphold the burden. As I said at the beginning, it's not strong, but it's enough.(1) http://www.homeworkmarket.com...(2) http://psycnet.apa.org... (3) http://scholarship.law.duke.edu...