America is more violent because parents don't spank?

[Cassandra]

http://truestory37.blogspotDOTcom/

Spanking your child is getting pretty close to illegal nowadays! The Bible clearly states that "the blueness of a wound cleanseth away sin". Prov 30:20. This judge is exactly what is wrong with America. It's the REASON why the jails are full, why there are more divorces, murders, burglaries, and crimes in general.

Children are not made to obey, to be respectful, and are not taught the difference between right an wrong.

This fundie is talking about a mother being put on probation and losing her children for spanking her two year old so hard there were red marks on her bottom that led her grandmother to take her to the hospital. Not to start up the spanking debate again, but I love this woman's rationalization.

Obviously when you don't inflict violence upon a child they turn into violent criminals.....wait, huh?

[Boogalou]

I find it so annoying that EVERY LITTLE THING must be supported by the bible. Let's see how well that works out*:

However, you may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you. You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land. You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance. You may treat your slaves like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must never be treated this way. (Leviticus 25:44-46 NLT)

Whoever strikes his father or mother shall be put to death. (Exodus 21:15 NAB)

As you approach a town to attack it, first offer its people terms for peace. If they accept your terms and open the gates to you, then all the people inside will serve you in forced labor. But if they refuse to make peace and prepare to fight, you must attack the town. When the LORD your God hands it over to you, kill every man in the town. But you may keep for yourselves all the women, children, livestock, and other plunder. You may enjoy the spoils of your enemies that the LORD your God has given you. (Deuteronomy 20:10-14)

I don;t really think that works out super well.

*Not trying to bash the bible here. I am just saying the book is not perfect so when people's only "proof" for why something is right is a bible passage, it annoys me.

[uber frau]

Uh, I very much doubt that ppl in jail for violent crime are ppl who weren't spanked as children. If anything, the children who were physically abused are proportionallty over-represented. But anyway...

Logic and science are not exactly friends to the Fundy side of any debate.

[Jencendiary]

Being in jail in America has nothing to do with guilt or innocence, and everything to do with race, socioeconomic status, and access to private counsel anyway. . .

[dianapavelovna]

Funny, I heard this same argument a week or so ago. A middle-aged woman was saying that things were different "back in the day," dontcha know, when parents could spank/beat without fear of CPS knocking on their door, because you never heard of anything like "those Columbine boys" happening in the past. My jaw met the floor.

[dawn9476]

That sounds as ridiculous as the argument that the more guns an area has, the less violent it is.

[amie]

..........

[sugaree]

Uh, I very much doubt that ppl in jail for violent crime are ppl who weren't spanked as children. If anything, the children who were physically abused are proportionallty over-represented

Yep, this.

[contrary]

i was gonna quote the same thing...that's just wretched.

[Witsec1]

So, if you are not leaving black & blue wounds on your child you are not following the Bible?

This is something I really want to say to the fundies who quote this verse, but I'm afraid that God would then lay it on their hearts to start beating their kids black and blue.

[fundiefan]

I do believe that some of the 'ways of society' regarding child rearing these days contributes to irresponsible adults. The idea that everyone wins, so no child's feelings will get hurt, lack of follow-through in punishment, no consequences, 'weak discipline' (not sticking to it, changing it, etc...) - I just think that consequences are not experienced, so they are not learned from.

I do not, however, think the lack of spanking/hitting kids is a factor in that change. Nor do I think that is a universal cause/effect or correlation. Too many factors contribute to who someone grows up to be and to attempt to pin their adult choices and actions on one element of their upbringing is a lazy argument.

[Marchpane]

I wasn't spanked. which is obviously why I have turned into a violent criminal mastermind, with no care for the harm I inflict upon the innocent and helpless. BWHAA, HAA, HAA :character-jason:

Actually, I'm a (fairly) mild-mannered, boring middle-aged woman, who has spent a lifetime either working with other people's children or raising my own. What went wrong?? :lol:

[Hane]

It isn't the lack of corporal punishment--it's the lack of real discipline: that is, teaching and structure. Hitting kids is almost always lazy, reactive "discipline."

[Lily]

Hmm. More than 3/4 of all American parents have spanked or do spank, and arguably, we have a rather violent culture to begin with.

We have the highest violent crime rate of any first world country.

Several countries in Europe have made any form of corporal punishment illegal, and yet they have among the lowest violent (and overall) crime rates in the world.

Am I missing something here? Maybe the key to low violent crime has nothing to do with whether or not someone is hit and raised in an overall violent (either physically or otherwise violent) manner, in a violent culture, and everything to do with the consumption rates of pickled herring.

[Witsec1]

You force your children to eat pickled herring? That's child abuse! :lol:

[Lily]

You force your children to eat pickled herring? That's child abuse! :lol:

Ha! My husband thinks so!

I eat kippers, my parents do, and 2 of my kids like them. I guess I might as well just lock away those of them who don't.

[SquirrelySquirrel]

It isn't the lack of corporal punishment--it's the lack of real discipline: that is, teaching and structure. Hitting kids is almost always lazy, reactive "discipline."

This.

[Lily]

I don't even think it's lack of structure or teaching. Kids are overstructured and overtaught, if anything. Every moment of every day filled with designated activity. It's not healthy or normal.

Anyway, I don't think any particular parenting practice can be blamed for America's violence problems. Parenting has gone through enough change and trends over the last 200 years to throw that into doubt for me. We've always had a violence problem. And more so than cultures with similar parenting practices and socio-economic conditions to ours.

Logically, it has to come down to culture and cultural rhetoric, in my humble opinion. America is a culture that places high value and pride in war, nationalism (call it patriotism or whatever you like: nationalism is trouble 100% of the time, historically speaking), the wild west, religion, self-righteousness, entitlement, lack of restraint, and excesses of all types. And when children spend so much of their lives with the peer culture and being instructed both overtly and covertly in the culture by adults outside their families (and often within them as well), I truly don't see how there's any option for them but to adopt it themselves.

[bananacat]

Violent crime is actually going down. This is just alarmist nonsense. We're not going downhill. I hate all this "what is the world coming to?" nonsense. It's old news and every generation has some fraction of people who think we're so much worse off than we were a generation ago. It's just not true. We don't even have a "violence problem" to blame parents for. Of course we're not perfect but we're better off than we've been in the past.

The jails are full because of regressive drug wars and because the prison industry has become extremely profitable. Most of the people in prisons have been spanked as kids. Poorer people are more likely to end up in jail, and also more likely to spank their kids. I wouldn't make a correlation with spanking in either direction.

[bananacat]

I do believe that some of the 'ways of society' regarding child rearing these days contributes to irresponsible adults. The idea that everyone wins, so no child's feelings will get hurt, lack of follow-through in punishment, no consequences, 'weak discipline' (not sticking to it, changing it, etc...) - I just think that consequences are not experienced, so they are not learned from.

I do not, however, think the lack of spanking/hitting kids is a factor in that change. Nor do I think that is a universal cause/effect or correlation. Too many factors contribute to who someone grows up to be and to attempt to pin their adult choices and actions on one element of their upbringing is a lazy argument.

Adults are more responsible now than they have been in previous generations.

[Kaylee]

So, if you are not leaving black & blue wounds on your child you are not following the Bible?

This is something I really want to say to the fundies who quote this verse, but I'm afraid that God would then lay it on their hearts to start beating their kids black and blue.

I forget who, but there is at least one fundie either preacher or parenting author who does interpret it this way. I remember it being quoted as evidence that, if you aren't leaving bruises on your child, then you aren't really doing your job as a parent.

[thoughtful]

Hmm. More than 3/4 of all American parents have spanked or do spank, and arguably, we have a rather violent culture to begin with.

We have the highest violent crime rate of any first world country.

Several countries in Europe have made any form of corporal punishment illegal, and yet they have among the lowest violent (and overall) crime rates in the world.

Am I missing something here? Maybe the key to low violent crime has nothing to do with whether or not someone is hit and raised in an overall violent (either physically or otherwise violent) manner, in a violent culture, and everything to do with the consumption rates of pickled herring.

:lol:

That's it! It's all about the herring! :animals-fishblue: :animals-fishgreen:

[BlackHawk]

As someone who was both spanked AND beaten... I can tell you neither made me more violent... but neither made me less violent... In my opinion. My father beat us into submission, my mother merely spanked when it was "BIG" (I ran away from her in a parking lot when I was two, I got a swat on my clothed butt. I tried to stick a fork in the socket when I was 5 or 6, I got a swat on the hand. That type of "BIG").

That said, to try to pinpoint a cause and effect relationship with something like "spanking and prison"... that's pretty hard! There are so many factors that may lead up to a persons incarceration, that you can't just say "because of X, person is in jail".

[handcuff]

That sounds as ridiculous as the argument that the more guns an area has, the less violent it is.

While it may sound rediculous, statistically it is true that those areas where more people are legally allowed to have guns are less violent than those areas where guns become illegal.

-handcuff