Spanking is Child Abuse; Stop Justifying It
I grew up in a regular household. Both of my parents worked, but they cared about me, and they loved me a lot. They still do, despite my numerous mistakes, my mix up with drugs when I was a stupid teenager, and my sometimes incomprehensible life choices. What's more, I see the wisdom in many of the life lessons they tried (in vain) to teach me when I was younger. It seems the older I get, the more right they were.
One thing that they were wrong with, and they've taken responsibility for, was spanking me when I was a small child. They didn't do it all that often, and the last time I remember them trying was when I was five, but they did engage in the time-honored tradition of corporal punishment. I didn't think anything of it at the time, and I grew up thinking that's how things were. That's just a fact of life; you got your ass beat by your parents when you didn't listen.
Moving to the South only reinforced that idea in my mind. Down here in the Southeastern United States, it was common practice for people to go out to their backyards to pick the switch their mom or dad would smack their ass with. Half the time, if they picked something specifically because it would hurt less, they got it twice as bad for trying to cop out of it. I do not mean this to be disparaging toward black people, but the black people I've come to know during my time down here had it especially bad. The notion that you had to dodge a shoe or slipper when you were growing up was something I've heard time and time again from my black friends, almost in equal proportion to the switch story from my white friends.
However, the fact that a lot of parents engage in this activity doesn't make it right. The fact that children grow up accepting this is as moral behavior does not make it moral. The fact that it's striking a kid on the behind or the back of the thighs and not punching your kid to within an inch of their life doesn't make it right. Wrong is wrong, and just because it's a lesser degree of wrong doesn't change the fact that it remains wrong.
Kids Either Don't Understand Why They're Wrong, or They Do
Small kids are some of the most frustrating human beings on the planet. I know; my two-and-a-half year old daughter drives me up the wall plenty. I have to constantly remind her about things she's doing wrong, and sometimes it takes a couple of repetitions before she decides she wants to listen to me. It drives my wife nuts, too. Still, we don't spank her.
Why? Kids will either understand and be able to process abstract ideas like right and wrong, or they won't. If they can understand what right and wrong means and you can reason with them, then using coercive violence (and yeah, spanking is violence) is no different than a guy beating his wife because she doesn't listen to him or show him any respect. It's immoral and unnecessary, and if the parent doing it also tries to teach the Golden Rule it is the worst kind of hypocrisy. If a kid is too young to understand what you're telling them and why they should listen, then the act of spanking them isn't going to teach them anything. It's not constructive. The only thing it does is teach them that the same people who they depend on for everything are also going to hurt them if they say a certain thing that they don't understand or can't comprehend.
It's vile. Plain and simple. There's no such thing as respectful spanking; spanking is the epitome of the mantra that might makes right. No, you didn't get spanked and then turned out just fine; if you're justifying spanking kids, you didn't turn out just fine. You normalized behavior that, in any other context, would be considered abuse. If you replace kid with some other type of person and it can be construed as abuse, it's not moral behavior. I forgave my parents for spanking me. That doesn't mean I condone it; I don't condone violent coercion.
Remember, kids: violent authoritarianism starts at home. Spanking is violent coercion.
Andrei Chira is a vaper, voluntaryist, and all-around cool dude. Formerly a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division, he now spends his time between working at VapEscape in Montgomery County, Alabama, contributing to Seeds of Liberty on Facebook and Steemit, and expanding his understanding of...well, everything, with an eye on obtaining a law degree in the future.