SPANKING CHILDREN: PRO OR CON

For the last time in my life, I have clicked some link out of curiosity which said "Spanking: Pro or Con." (And no, I'm not including the link, since I don't want to add to its Google Pagerank, but it was on Slate.com.) I clicked it out of the same habit which brings me to read PowerLineBlog or other ultra-conservative blogs, to glimpse the thinking of people who have arrived at philosophies of life much different than my own. This habit of mine often leaves me annoyed or irritated, but occasionally provides me with new insight. Hell, it's also brought me in contact with some of my favorite authors and fundamentally shaped my beliefs: Nikki Giovanni was explored because a strong, female, black activist from the 60s who was not non-violent seemed remarkably outside my realm of experience--and became my favorite poet. Well, no more in regard to spanking; it's no longer a theoretical exploration. I have a daughter.

Am I pro or con?

Moo.

As I read the very reasonable person who might as well have been my parents trying to explain how spanking was okay and could be measured and precise and non-emotional and merely used as consequence and not in the same category as abuse, I wanted to take this man aside and explain to him the lies his sons and daughters will tell him as life goes on.

First, this whole argument of pro-spankers that spanking isn't in the same category as beating your children or punching them in the face is a straw man. Of course it's not, and it's not in the category of molesting them or vehicular manslaughter or drowning puppies. Wasting one's time with that argument is ridiculous, and I'm not going there. Spanking is all I'm talking about, the slapping of a child with one's hand so as to create pain, once or over a series of slaps, necessarily accompanied by postures or gestures of submission like bending over a chair or over a parent's knee or while being held still.

I don't want what follows to imply that I had a hard and painful childhood or that kids who are spanked necessarily have a hard childhood; I didn't and most kids probably don't. I also don't want to imply that all kids felt as I felt--I was a pretty introspective kid, with a rich internal dialogue about my own feelings that I didn't share with anyone.

The lie that you and your child will share, both of you willingly--really wanting to believe it--is that he's not scared of you. For my entire childhood (well, after 7 years old--I don't have any memories before that) I was scared of my father and my mother. I've never written that down before and it'll probably shock my parents if they read this. C'est la vie, that's life; I have a little girl now and need to really understand my own childhood in order to be the best parent that I can be.

So.

For as long as I can remember during my childhood I've loved my mom and dad and also been scared of them.

I was both obedient and disobedient as a child. Not disobedient a lot, but sometimes, I lied on occasion, not a lot; not always caught, but some; and was spanked when that occurred. No anger, with explanation, with warnings, consistent in execution, sometimes by my mom and mostly by my dad. I don't remember the ages, exactly, but certainly throughout my elementary school years.

I'm sure that my infrequent spankings served to shape my obedience, my behavior, my manners, all sorts of good things that society and the children and adults around me could appreciate. But I was scared of being spanked. Irrationally so. It was a fear that went way deep down inside. It was an irrational fear that I always had; some days it may have disappeared way into the background, maybe even for a week or a month, but it was always there, just eating at me. It was a fear that really shaped the way I saw my mother and my father. They were not just people who loved me, and people who I loved, but people who would cause me pain and ask me to submit willingly to it.

I'm not defending the fear. It was irrational. Why would a kid be rational. Kids blame themselves for their parents' divorces. Kids aren't rational. I also had a fear of a monster under my bed, and in my closet. Not rational. I also superstitiously jumped over cracks in the sidewalk. Not rational. But the fear of a monster under my bed, the fear of an overly dark room, the avoidance of a sidewalk crack, none of my other fears and foibles involved being afraid of my parents.

And I would have lied straight to their face if they ever asked me, "are you afraid of me?" They would have never gotten the truth out of me, it was a truth that was filled with shame and embarrassment, humiliation and anger, fear and regret, a truth that I would only occasionally give voice to in my own inner dialogue. I would have very fiercely lied to any friend or stranger who dared to suggest it: "Of course I'm not afraid of my Mommy or Daddy! How could you even suggest that?" It was an irrational fear that I don't think ever really went away completely (I'm 39 years old now).

But it's true. And I wish I could sit down and tell whomever is on the fence about whether they should spank their child or not that they will never, never, never know what their child actually feels about them ever again as long as the child believes that you might hit them purposefully in the future. That might not dissuade someone from pursuing spanking as an option, but at least they would know what they're losing.

I know that I'm not willing to spank my daughter. I may have a disobedient, willful, anti-social child. So be it. I'll reach for whatever other tool I can out of a non-violent, gentle-discipline toolbox, even if they don't work as efficiently. I'm not willing to have my child cut off from me emotionally like I cut myself off from my parents when I was a kid.

[Sidenote: if you have spanked your child, and you want to honestly sit down with them and apologize for it and tell them you were wrong and you will never do it again, you may be able to rebuild that emotional trust--I don't know, they're kids, they're not rational. But don't give up hope that it can be rebuilt if you show honest remorse, a desire to change, and true vulnerability.]