Your grandparents probably got spanked and call it 'how kids used to turn out fine.' Pediatricians increasingly disagree. Is a swat on the backside discipline — or the first lesson a kid learns that hitting solves problems?
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Add your commentmy grandma used to say 'i got the strap and i turned out fine' and then in the same breath talk about how she still has nightmares about her father coming home drunk. fine is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence
My therapist asked me when I first learned that love and pain could come from the same source. I thought for a long time and then said: when I was four and my mother spanked me while telling me it was because she loved me. I'm not saying she was a bad mother. I'm saying that wiring has caused me real damage in adult relationships. Make of that what you will.
I spanked my kids in the 90s because that's what you did and I genuinely did not know better. I've since learned and I've apologized to my adult children. Growth is possible. Shame spirals on parents aren't productive but neither is defending what you did just because you did it.
I was spanked exactly once. I was five, I ran into traffic. My dad smacked my backside so hard I cried for ten minutes. I am now 47 years old and I have NEVER run into traffic again. Context matters, people.
Look, I'm a conservative dad from Tennessee and even I stopped spanking my kids after reading about how it actually affects the parent-child relationship long-term. Not because some liberal pediatrician told me to. Because I noticed my son flinching when I raised my hand to HIGH-FIVE him. That was enough for me.
i spanked my kids. they're adults now and we have good relationships. i still think i probably couldve done better. both things are true and i wish the internet would let people hold two true things at the same time without it becoming a trial
Hard no from me. I spanked my oldest when she was little and the look on her face — not fear of the action she'd done, just fear of ME — I never did it again. Worst parenting moment of my life and I think about it still.
grew up watching my dad get hit with a belt by HIS dad and then watching my dad hit my brother with a belt and now my brother has two kids and guess what. the cycle just keeps spinning unless somebody decides to be the one who stops it. i decided. its not political its just math
Former elementary school principal here. In 30 years I never once thought 'this kid needs more hitting at home.' Not once. I thought it approximately zero times.
the 'turned out fine' crowd never stops to consider that maybe they turned out fine DESPITE the spanking, not because of it
I was spanked regularly as a child. I'm in therapy now — not because of some single dramatic incident, but because decades of fear-based discipline taught me that love is conditional on compliance. That's the quiet damage nobody talks about.
my mom spanked me exactly when she was too tired or too stressed to think of anything else. that's the honest truth most people don't say out loud. it wasnt discipline, it was her losing it. dressed up as discipline after the fact.
what kills me is we have entire parenting courses, sleep training books, developmental psychology degrees, and somehow the answer to 'how do I teach my kid not to do bad things' is still 'hit them.' we have learned nothing.
asking genuinely: what IS the alternative when a child is screaming for 45 minutes, has destroyed their room, hit their sibling, and every calm redirection has failed? not being snarky. I have a 4-year-old with sensory processing disorder and I need actual answers, not just 'don't hit.'
As a pediatric psychologist with 22 years of clinical practice, I can tell you the research on this is genuinely not ambiguous anymore. Corporal punishment is associated with increased aggression, decreased mental health outcomes, and damaged parent-child attachment. The 'it worked for me' anecdote is not data.
To the parent asking about sensory processing disorder — occupational therapy has been a genuine game changer for kids like yours. Dysregulation that looks like defiance often isn't. Your pediatrician should be able to refer you. It's not a parenting failure, it's a neurological difference that needs different tools entirely.
Nobody asking the real question: why do we legally protect adults from being hit by other adults but not children from being hit by their parents? Kids are literally smaller and more vulnerable. The logic gap is enormous.
I find it fascinating that we treat this as a parenting style debate when it is, at its core, an ethics question. Do children have the right not to be hit? Either they do or they don't. The effectiveness argument is almost beside the point.
As someone who works in child welfare in Texas, I can tell you the line between 'discipline' and 'abuse' is one that parents cross far more often than they realize, and far more often than they're willing to admit. The ambiguity in what's 'okay' is itself the danger.
i love how this debate is full of people with advanced degrees talking about studies and then there's the rest of us just trying not to raise monsters on $47,000 a year with no support system. the context matters people
To the person citing the Bible — that verse is almost certainly referring to a shepherd's rod used to GUIDE sheep, not beat them. Biblical scholars have argued this for decades. Just wanted to put that out there.
The countries with the best childhood development outcomes — Finland, Norway, Iceland — all ban corporal punishment entirely. The countries that practice it most are not exactly holding up as models of social cohesion. Data's right there.
okay but there's a massive difference between an open-handed swat on a toddler's diaper and beating a child with a belt. acting like these are the same thing in this debate is intellectually dishonest
My husband and I came from completely opposite backgrounds — he was never spanked, I was regularly. We spent the first year of parenting having the same argument every few weeks. We landed on never spanking and using consistent consequences instead. Our kids are 7 and 10. So far so good. But I want to be honest that getting to that agreement was genuinely hard and not everyone has a partner willing to have that conversation.
Raised five kids. Spanked none of them. Three are fantastic. One is struggling with addiction. One I barely talk to. So spare me the idea that no-spanking guarantees outcomes. Parenting is chaos and humility is required from everyone in this conversation.
Here's my challenge to every parent reading this: describe the exact scenario where you believe hitting your child is the appropriate response. Be specific. Now ask yourself if there isn't a single alternative you haven't genuinely tried. I'll wait.
At the end of the day this entire debate comes down to: do you believe children are fully human beings deserving of bodily autonomy, or do you see them as not-quite-people who need to be physically managed until they become real people. I know where I stand.
I teach 4th grade. The kids who are the most disruptive in my class are not the ones who were 'not spanked enough.' They tend to have chaotic home lives characterized by unpredictable, fear-based discipline. Draw your own conclusions.
Every generation thinks the next one is soft for not doing what they did. Baby boomers got spanked and called millennials soft for not wanting to be spanked. It's just older people refusing to update their priors.
I think what gets lost is the 'in anger vs. calm' distinction. Every expert will tell you that discipline administered in genuine rage is categorically different from a planned, calm response. Most parents who spank do it when they're furious. That's the actual problem. Not the theoretical calm swat — the very-real angry one.
Desperate parents reaching for hitting is exactly the problem though. When we normalize 'I was frustrated so I hit' we're teaching that precise lesson to our kids.
That's... not how any of this works. Crime rates are influenced by economic conditions, policing policy, demographic shifts, drug availability, and dozens of other variables. You cannot isolate spanking bans as a causal factor in national crime statistics. Please don't present that as 'definitively proven.'
My parents spanked me and I turned out great. My neighbor's parents spanked him and he has serious anger issues. So which one of us is the data point?
The IQ claim is a massive oversimplification of one controversial 2009 study that has been heavily criticized for its methodology. Please don't cite that as 'settled science.' The actual research consensus is about behavioral outcomes, not intelligence.
Unpopular opinion incoming: I think parents who've never once spanked and whose kids are also well-behaved should be MORE humble about this, not less. You don't actually know if it was your no-spanking policy or just your kid's temperament. I've seen incredibly well-behaved kids who were spanked occasionally and complete nightmares who never were.
Ugh the bodily autonomy framing again. Nobody thinks children aren't fully human. We also restrain toddlers in car seats, hold their hands crossing streets, physically carry them out of dangerous situations. Physical contact in parenting is not inherently a violation of personhood. The question is specifically whether hitting is an appropriate form of that contact.
I'm genuinely undecided on this. I don't spank my own kids and I use time-outs and natural consequences and honestly? My 8-year-old is a nightmare sometimes. I'm not saying spanking is the answer, I just understand why desperate parents reach for it.
Nuance or not, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association, and the American Medical Association all officially oppose corporal punishment. At what point does 'there's nuance' become a reason to ignore professional consensus?
I'm sorry but if a toddler runs toward a hot stove or a street a single swat to get their immediate attention is not abuse. You can write a developmental psychology thesis at me all day long. In the real world sometimes you need a child to understand danger in two seconds flat.
Being working class doesn't make hitting kids okay. I grew up broke in rural Ohio, got spanked plenty, and I've managed to raise three kids without touching them in anger. Resources help but they're not the whole story. I reject the framing that this is a class issue.
Three kids. Never spanked any of them. Two are thriving adults. One is in therapy for anxiety. The therapy has nothing to do with spanking, but I guarantee someone will use it to argue I should've hit them more. The logic in these debates...
The hot stove argument always comes up and it always frustrates me because there's zero evidence that a swat communicates 'stove = danger' more effectively than grabbing the child and saying NO firmly while removing them from the situation. We assume the hitting is doing the work when the alarm in your voice is almost certainly what's actually landing.
ok but correlation ≠ causation and those countries also have universal healthcare, better parental leave, lower poverty rates. maybe fix those things first before blaming a swat on the butt
the thing people keep dancing around is that 'spanking' covers an enormous range. a single open-palm swat from a calm parent who immediately explains why is so wildly different from a belt from an angry parent that it shouldnt even be the same word. conflating them makes this whole debate useless
what I want to know is why the same people who say government should stay out of parenting also support laws that let parents physically discipline their kids. seems like you want government involved only when it protects YOUR preferred parenting style
y'all really out here writing dissertations about spanking when some parents are just tryna get a five year old to not touch a hot stove a second time. calm down
Science says no. Multiple professional organizations say no. 65 countries have banned it entirely. At what point do we just... follow the evidence? What are we waiting for?
this whole comment section is coastal elites telling working class parents they're abusers for doing what generations of families did. some of us didnt grow up with parenting podcasts and therapy budgets. a little grace please
I grew up in rural Alabama. Spanking was just... Tuesday. I don't feel traumatized. I'm not saying everyone should do it, I'm just saying the apocalyptic framing from some folks doesn't match my actual lived experience.
Both sides need to stop acting like there's one universal answer here. A light tap from a loving parent in a rare high-stakes moment and systematic belt-whippings are not the same universe. Treating them identically makes this conversation useless.
I don't spank and I judge people who do, quietly. I know that's not virtuous of me. I'm working on it. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel something when I see a parent swat a kid in a grocery store.
Spare the rod, spoil the child. This is what the Bible says and my family has lived by it for four generations. My kids are respectful, hard-working, and they thank me for the discipline I gave them.
To the person saying this is purely an ethics question — I'd push back slightly. Ethics questions benefit from empirical data. If spanking caused zero harm AND worked better than alternatives, that would change the ethical calculation for many people. The fact that the data points the other way actually strengthens the ethical case against it. These things aren't separate.
My wife is a pediatrician and she doesn't spank our kids, fine, but she also acknowledges privately that the studies on this have serious confounding variables and the field is less unanimous than the AAP's public statements suggest. Just saying there's nuance inside the medical community too.
Okay but are we really going to let ONE person's therapy session set national parenting policy? People have wildly different responses to the same experiences. That's not dismissing your story, it's just acknowledging that humans are complicated.
Confidently stating this: countries that ban spanking see crime rates drop within a generation because children raised without physical punishment develop better impulse control. It's been proven definitively.
The science literally proves that kids who are spanked have lower IQs. I read a study on this. It's settled.
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