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Comment by s4vi0r | Hacker News Reader

Don't spank your kids. It has no benefit, and many negative effects.

Yeah, the research is pretty clear on this. From https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3447048/:

> Although some studies have found no relation between physical punishment and negative outcomes, and others have found the relation to be moderated by other factors, no study has found physical punishment to have a long-term positive effect, and most studies have found negative effects.

The research is pretty poor. The main problem is that all physical punishment is landed into a single pot, but there is clearly a world of difference slapping a fifteen year old in the face and slapping the bottom of a four year old.

See here for a useful meta-analysis: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10567-005-2340-z

Many people who hit kids aren't making fine distinctions like that. The whole point of the research is to address the general practice.

If the general practice can be effective depending on fine distinctions, and if such fine distinctions exist, then they matter. General advice like given above is then just bad advice.

It's incredible that we still have to discuss this in 2018.

Not really. Thousands (tends/hundreds of thousands?) of years of human society isn't going to just evaporate from a couple studies, even if they're incontrovertible.

Do you understand the post hoc fallacy?

I am not arguing that corporal punishment is effective because society has progressed. I'm saying that people are inflexible and even irrefutable science is unlikely to cause an immediate societal shift.

So your argument is that humans are feral? I don't think that's supported by the evidence either.

His argument is that culture is slow to change.

How in the world did you get "feral" from anything I'm saying?

Indeed. I was spanked as a child (I was very stubborn and looking back it's clear that nothing else really worked with me). As a result, I suffer from a condition known as respect for others. It's a terrible affliction to have in this day and age.

Strange, I was also spanked as a child and somehow I still ended up with several flaws. I feel like the experience retarded the age at which I was able to achieve self actualization by many years and seriously impacted my ability to have a healthy adult relationship with my father who has himself changed and grown tremendously as an individual since the years he spanked me as a child.

How did spanking lead to respect for others? Are you afraid other people might physically hurt you if you don't "respect" them? Or does adverse interactions bring up the childhood memories of being spanked? In genuinely curious how this works? (I grew up in a country where spanking and all other physical abuse of children is illegal)

Alas, "others" most likely do not include kids.

I am so glad that in my country physical abuse of the child is a punishable offense.

Not spanking also has no benefits and many negative effects.

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