They are, as always, welcome to respond to anything on this open forum that they want. Ditto anyone else reading
I am hardpressed to believe that this hypothetical little monster who completely disregards everything I do will suddenly be stopped in their tracks by a single, non-painful tap on the butt. This is where I think the narrative diverges from reality. I think people either overestimate the effectiveness, or underestimate the harshness, of their spanking.
Anyway, I am not a parent so anything I say is hypothetical, but I would like to be an
authoritative, rather than authoratarian, parent. Obviously reality is different than intention but I also think a key part of parenting is doing what’s best for your kid, not what’s easiest for yourself, and in my opinion spanking is the latter.
I agree with this, there was a show in the UK called "Super Nanny" or something like that where she deals with extremely naughty children, and all of the time it was that the parents weren't using the correct type of discipline on their children. This isn't spanking or physical punishment, but using non physical ways to teach children what is acceptable behaviour. It's incredible seeing how children can go from being completely out of control to well behaved with the right treatment. Parents are not experts on children, their children or anyone else's just by reproducing, and there is no shame in that. Most people haven't spent much time around children until they have them, and then they're thrown in the deep end. So it's perfectly reasonable to expect that when a child is having serious issues that something is going wrong, rather than it being to do with a child being intrinsically bad. Children can go from awful homes where they're being abused and are basically feral and with the correct treatment can eventually grow up and become decent people. In these cases the children tend to be really hard work for their foster parents, and physical punishment is clearly not going to be the right course of action (it rarely is).
Something that should always be kept in mind when dealing with "badly behaved" children, is you actually have no clue if they've been abused by someone else. This would be really hard for a parent to even consider, but sexual abuse against children is common, and those doing it are clever and know how to gain access and convince the child not to speak up, or to feel guilt for what has happened. If a child is seriously acting up, there may be a really good reason for it, and physically getting into their space and physically punishing them is not going to make them feel they can speak up. It also teaches children a really bad message which is that adults or people in a position of power are allowed to get into their space and physically harm them if they believe they've been "bad". This can translate to them being more accepting of abuse, or turning around and abusing other children. This is a really extreme case, but it's something to be kept in mind.
I agree with Gen that spanking is a cop out. It's lazy and seems like an easier option than actually working hard to maintain boundaries with children. Children crave consistency, something which as an adult can be hard to give them in terms of maintaining rules. But if you start letting certain rules slide, the child will learn. It's not fair to then get angry. I see people doing this not just with children, but with animals. They'll allow their pet to do something all the time, like going to get food off their plates at dinner, and will then tell it off when they do it around company. That's not fair behaviour. It's not the pet in that situation who's in the wrong, it's the owner. This is the same for children. You can't allow a child to scream bloody murder and do whatever all the time and then when you want peace and quiet expect them to pipe down. They're not adults, they don't understand, and adults shouldn't expect them to.
Nor did I turn into a cold blodded killer or otherwise.
I'm not an expert on serial killers, but I do find them fascinating enough to study them, so I may not be correct on this, but it seems that those who do become cold blooded killers tend to be psychopaths already. Most psychopaths live pretty "normal" lives and have no interest in killing, but in the cases where a psychopath grows up in a dysfunctional family, likely with physical abuse/punishment involved, that's usually when they might gain an interest in killing. So it's not really relevant you saying that you didn't become a killer, as you are clearly not a psychopath or a sociopath, and therefore will feel natural levels of empathy for others, while in the case of people with anti social personality disorder they don't feel empathy naturally (though they can with effort). But if you were born a psychopath with low levels of natural empathy, you might have interpreted physical abuse or punishment as a child in a different way, and may have wanted to kill others later in life, while if there were no physical abuse you might focus more on say, making money or pursuing something else you enjoy.
Spanking is also primarily about the humiliation. I have a friend whose son thinks it's hilarious is she spanks him because she's never done it as a punishment, only on a "we're mucking around and I'm mock punishing you" way. He's now conditioned to think it's the funniest thing in the world, and she could never use it as a punishment even if she wanted to (which she doesn't). So the pain clearly isn't an issue for him. And the child is the best behaved child I've met. As a child I can remember the nastiness of physical punishment always being that it was scary, humiliating and a feeling of betrayal from the parents, than the actual pain being bad. So there are definitely ways to instill an image of having done something wrong without such a harsh punishment.
