My 99th Debate: Kids and Corporal Punishment

The resolution On balance, parental use of corporal punishment is beneficial for the childMost parents around the world use corporal punishment - therefore it is probably in the best interests of the child.Con argues that we can't assume a link between the two parts of that ^ statement. I agree that we can't be 100% sure it's true, but that without evidence to the contrary, I think it is reasonable to take it as probably true. Con has presented some evidence to the contrary, but it is too weak to outweigh the commonsense interpretation that people act in their own best interests.Suppose we were watching birds feeding their chicks in their nests, and stuffing them with regurgitated worms. If we saw parent birds of that species do it year after year we would assume that it's beneficial to baby chicks to be stuffed with worms in that way. If we see people walk a particular way to work day after day, we would assume it's in their best interests to commute along that route, even if we personally would have chosen another. That's because we acknowledge that we may not know our colleague's reasons fro choosing the route: she might like the shortest way, the prettiest way, the way that goes past the bakery, there's no way of knowing.Of course, they might be wrong, but it would take detailed evidence to show that. In the absense of such evidence, we can go with the assumption that people know what's good for them.Parents vs childrenCon talks as if parents' and childrens needs are in opposition. This is false, because families act as cooperative units. As I showed in a previous round, obedience from a child can make it easier for a mother to complete her tasks, but it is highly likely that those tasks are for the child's benefit. Even if good behavior makes a mother calmer and happier, it will improve the family dynamic which is also in children's best interests.Con writes: For instance, if Pro showed us 10 examples, and in each, parents received 60% of the benefit, and children received 40%, and I showed you 10 examples with the opposite ratio, assuming all else was equal, my examples would outweigh Pro's examples. Of course, benefit can't be divided up in that way, and even if it could be, if a child only receives 10% of the benefit, she is still benefitting. Besides, the opposite ration would be the child benefitting by 60%, so I'm not sure what Con is saying exactly.Summary Most parents use corporal punishment. As that has been established and not contested, it stands as evidence that corporal punishment benefits children because it is based on two very common sense assumptions: that people know what's best for them, and that parents want what's best for their children, on the whole.I appreciate that this is a weak argument. It's very weak, and it wouldn't take much for us to change our minds. However, the evidence against is even weaker, and is not enough.The evidence against consists mostly of prejudice and the authority fallacy. Prejudice I do have a lot of sympathy with the prejudice against physical punishment, because as I said at the beginning, we don't do ANY kind of punishment in my family, and I have issues with imposed authority in general. Of course the idea of a great big hairy adult belting a little child seems horrible. It does to me, anyway.However. A lot of things seem horrible to me that other people take as quite normal, and I won't list them here for fear of offending people. Consider ear-piercing and male circumcision, which are actions that physically harm children, but which are often culturally accepted. Also, consider isolated sleeping and bottle feeding, actions that have been shown to be harmful for children with much better established evidence than for physical punishment. But. Who could argue anything except that a mother's well-being is beneficial for her child? The two can't be separated as Con claims, so to consider a child's interests, the mother's interests and the family as a whole need to be considered. Appealing to authority Con appeals to some very impressive authorities including the American Academy of Pediatrics and UNICEF. If we didn't have time to think through this issue, then of course we would defer to such authorities. And personally, the combination of prejudice against punishment of children, combined with the backing of these authorities would normally be enough for me to take something on board. It was enough for Jennifer Lansford, whose review I mentioned last round. She collected evidence that showed that any effects of physical punishment are mediated by cultural norms, so that it has much worse effects in white western culture than it does elsewhere, but then in her conclusion argues that UNICEF's policy is going to change norms and so it we can expect a change in the effects of physical punishment worldwide.It's barefaced cultural imperialism. It is.And BECAUSE of that, we need to look carefully at the reasons why those authorities have reached those conclusions. It's all on record, and we find pretty quickly that it's based on evidence ONLY for white, western cultures. In short, physical punishment is bad in our culture, and so we're going to make sure that nobody does it.Lack of evidenceParents spank their children in kindergarten, and ten years later those children are more likely to get in trouble with the police. White parents are less likely to spank their children. White children are less likely to be aggressive and get in trouble.The difference at adolescence is because white parents are better parents and spank less. Seriously. That's the evidence and the argument against physical punishmentOF COURSE it's ludicrous. That's what happens when you infer causality from observational studies.Con has made all kinds of claims about "controlling for" other variables. It's impossible. For example, I could say, hey, white people are also richer. Let's control for income. Yes, you could do that statistically in theory, but of course researchers almost never do and there's not much point because income is only one of the differences between the experiences of black children and white children between the ages of 4 and 14. There's socialization, language, cultural symbolism, education, relationships, stereotypes, peer influence, attitudes of authorities and countless other variables. They can't all be anticipated, and even if they could be, they can't all be measured and quantified in any kind of reasonable way.So to pick from that huge jungle of variables and say, it's PHYSICAL PUNISHMENT that makes all the difference, is just funny. Or it would be, if people weren't doing it. Look at the claims. Spanking makes people criminals! It leads to unsafe sex! Inability to adjust to the adult world! Oh please. Really? Spanking a four year old makes them unable to adjust to the adult world 14 years later? I don't think so.Different benefitsParents raise their children in different ways around the world because the circumstances of their lives are different. Children who grow up in chaotic or violent societies need to have different approaches to authority and different skills than those who are born into American middle-class suburbs. Some have to go out and scavenge for food from a young age, some have to defend themselves and their families from threats that we can't imagine. Some may well need to be aggressive. Some societies have much more formal social relationships and obedience to form is essential for any kind of interaction. There is no end to the variation of social and physical circumstances of human life.Con writes: "corporal punishment doesn't instill respect for rules as such as long as one can avoid being caught and/or one is powerful enough to obviate any penalty. Those are not lessons we want to pass on to our children--we want to develop our children into moral human beings, not conniving human beings that have no qualms breaking the rules when they think it's smart to do so."Yes, those are lessons that HE doesn't want to pass on to HIS children, because he has a good understanding about what skills and attitudes are best for living in his own society. But other parents in other circumstances may well, legitimately, want their children to have a different attitude towards authority, rules and breaking them. He needed to prove that those sorts of attitudes are NEVER beneficial to children, no matter what the circumstances, and he hasn't.Burden of Proof: summaryThis debate feels weird because of the way burden of proof is assigned. BoP naturally falls on the person with the positive assertion or who challenges the status quo. In relation to physical punishment, the status quo is its existence and the BoP would be on the people who want it banned.However, this debate has it around the other way. I have the BoP to show that it's beneficial to children and I have presented a weak argument. I have said that we should trust parents to know what their children need. Con has said this is a bare assertion, but it is more than that.Parents have full legal control over their children. They can give them healthy food or not. They can speak to them kindly or not. They can take them to the library and get books for them or not. We DEEM parents as people who act in their children's best interests. It's in the very fabric of the way society is put together. If it's an assumption I make, it's also an assumption that the whole world makes and rightly so. No wholesale intervention between that relationship between parent and child has been anything other than disastrous for the children. Parents really are the best people to act in their children's best interests.Thank youTo my opponent bsh1 for this debate!