If you were really sorry about being rude, surely you wouldn't have posted that? What a thing to come out with to someone who's excited about being pregnant, no matter how many children they have already. Judging people on the number of children they have when interacting with them on a Sims forum seems a bit harsh to me...... Would you walk up to someone on the street who had 8 children with them and was pregnant and say that to them? Maybe you would, but I certainly wouldn't. Just my opinion, obviously.

Besides, if they can support them and raise them well, they can go on to be valuable members of society who will contribute financially to whatever country they live in. Helps make up for the people who can't or don't have children when it comes to paying pensions in the future.....

I know at least 8 people who will never have children, for one reason or another, as far as I'm concerned kampffenhoff and her husband can have their "quota" :-) Though not the "quota" for the child my friend Laura doesn't want - she promised that to me so myself and my potential future partner can have three if we want to! :-D (I have some weird conversations with my friends sometimes....)

Also, though I don't want to derail the topic further by going into it, the world really isn't suffering from an overpopulation crisis. Plenty of everything to go around if only people could be organised about it on a multi-national level....

I like this. I managed to raise a respectful, caring young man without resorting to hitting him. Discipline is different at each age because, at it's heart, discipline is about communicating expectations with the goal of instilling self-discipline. Our children are reasoning beings. When they are little and readily reasoned with, there are a many alternatives to swatting them such as distracting, setting expectations, etc.... When they are older, they can be reasoned with and culture and values can be transmitted.

lauratje86@ Well said, and eloquently put. You handled that with a lot less sarcasm than I would have.

Thank you :-) Sometimes I surprise myself! Besides, it'd feel a bit wrong being sarcastic/"rude" to someone when querying the fact that they were being rude to someone on the internet and seemed to think it was OK...... I see no need to be rude, sarcastic or mean to anyone here. After all, we're all adults here - apart from those of you who're aged 13 - 17! :-D

It's fine as long as it's not extreme and for logical reasons, not child abuse. Honestly there are kids who simply can't learn their lessons any other way. Brats specifically.

Yeah, that was kinda uncalled-for, indeed. Besides, the overpopulation "crisis" has been and still is caused by people in the developed countries living well past the age when nature intended them to corpsify, thanks to modern medical technology. It's no coincidence that the population started increasing exponentially not long after things like antibiotics and vaccines had been discovered/developed and that it continues to explode while we do all that we can to make people live longer.

Not long ago, 50 was a ripe old age. Now, if someone dies before they hit 80, it's "way too soon." This sort of mindset has consequences, you know. The birth rate's been going down, precipitously and fairly worldwide (And where it isn't, infant/child mortality is still a going concern), for over 50 years now, but the population is still increasing because people who are "supposed to be dead," according to nature and our natural life span, are still alive and kicking and probably will be for another 20 years or so. Yet, people still whine about "overpopulation" and poo-poo people having large families while sometimes in the next breath rhapsodizing over the thought of increasing the human lifespan to some ridiculous number. Does anyone else see the irony there?

ANYWAY...I posted long, long ago in this thread about spanking. It worked for me, but I believe that it has to be very carefully done. Age has a lot to do with it. When they're too young to understand precisely WHY they've earned such a punishment, spanking is counterproductive. Once they hit the teen years, they're too old and physical discipline has far less impact and it can create funny ideas, especially if the parent of the opposite gender is doling out the punishment. Enough said about that. But there's a window in between there when kids can learn a lot about cause and effect, about decisions and the consquences thereof. Both of my kids are far too old for spanking now (Hell, one's married with a kid of his own on the way), but when they were younger, in that window between about 6 and 12ish, they learned a lot of sometimes very hard lessons about consequences.

See, my household had rules. Lots of them. And like the laws of a country, there were specific punishments that were known to and understood by all that were a consequence of a given offense. Spanking was on the list for certain offenses. It was never done in anger on my part. There was never screaming. There was a quiet, doomful "Go to your room and wait for me." During that time, I cooled down, they cried and lived in abject dread for a half-hour or so, and then the punishment phase commenced. Never brutal, but enough that they felt and remembered it. And afterwards, the offense was less likely to recur. And, as a result, my kids fully understand the concept that, when they make stupid choices, bad things happen to them, and they have no one to blame but themselves. Thus, they tend to avoid making bad choices now that they're grown up or close enough to it. And, when they have a dilemma, they'll often come to me for help deciding what to do. Not because they fear punishment but because when they were younger, there were long talks after spankings about why they received that punishment, so it was made clear to them that their decisions about what to do or what not to do had real consequences, good and bad, and that, in general, that's how life works. Better to get as much input as possible before making a risky choice, is what they learned, because when they didn't life sucked for them for a while. And, because I never punished/spanked in anger, they know that they can talk to me about anything and that I won't yell and won't judge but will give my honest, unvarnished opinion. It's a mutual respect kind of thing. People seem to think that physical discipline ends up with mutual disrespect but, at least with my kids, that isn't what happened at all.

"Time outs," IMO, are great for toddlers who, like dogs, can't understand cause and effect. Timeouts didn't do diddly-squat when my kids were about...oh...8 and up. The paddle on a fully-clothed bottom, used as outlined above, however, worked wonders. For my kids, that is. All kid/parent combinations are different, and as parents we must discover what works best for us in combination with our kid(s). I don't see much reason to be judgmental of others in that regard, so long as the kids aren't being abused.

So really, I don't think spanking is a problem. I think how it's done MIGHT be a problem. Punishment -- ANY kind of punishment, physical or otherwise -- should never be reflexive or reactionary, and what is done MUST be consistently applied (i.e., the infraction earns the same punishment every time it happens) for it to do any kind of good. And discipline that's done when the parent is angry or emotional in general is, IMO, a very bad thing.

I can't say I disagree with you, but that's the kind of thing you're only supposed to say behind someone's back to other like-minded people! I'm not sure if it's purely overpopulation I object to so much as the fact that most large families are super creepy. Like the Duggars and the Bates family I saw on 20/20 the other day. It seems the objective is to raise God's Army. They home-school their kids to ensure they grow up to be dimwitted, backwards, gun-loving, God-fearing nutbags. Their science curriculum consists of a piece of paper that says, "It's God's magic, don't question it!" This can't be good! Yes yes, I know not all large families or home schoolers are freaky-deeks, but it seems a great deal are.



I think most scientists would disagree. One of the first Google hits on overpopulation. Worst Environmental Problem? Overpopulation, Experts Say
This could probably be good debate topic on its own, however.

Anyhow, back to the topic at hand, I think spanking/hitting should be avoided when possible. I do think there are individual children that are extreme problem cases where spanking may be an effective means of discipline, but I don't think it should be the first or even second solution. From my recollection of my childhood, I was spanked very infrequently as I was generally well-behaved, and those times that I did experience corporal punishment just left me feeling betrayed and stewing with hatred for that parent for awhile. I don't think the spankings made me any more well-behaved at the time, and it didn't make me a better person in the long run. My view is corporal punishment is unnecessary in disciplining the average child. It may give the parent a temporarily stress relief, but in general, I think it does more harm than good.

Of course not. That doesn't mean that it can't effectively be used as A method of discipline. But as I said, if one is going to use it at all, it needs to be very carefully applied in order to be at all effective. And it should be noted that there is a HUGE difference between controlled physical discipline and beating. The examples you gave are examples of uncontrolled physical "discipline" which, IMO, is very damaging indeed. Controlled physical discipline -- or any other kind of discipline -- is, IMO, not damaging and, as I said, it can be effective under certain circumstances.

But no, it isn't THE method of discipline. Sometimes other things work better. Like, when my housemate and I both had problems with our respective sons, who were about 7 or 8 years old at the time, thinking that aiming their pee at anything but the inside of the toilet bowl was funny when they didn't have to clean up the resulting mess. It quickly became a lot less funny to them when, after a few warnings about impending doom if they kept it up, they were given toothbrushes and were repeatedly required, under close parental supervision, to clean every square centimeter of the bathroom with them, daily. The problem quickly went away, whereas spanking them for what they did would probably have solved nothing. On the other hand, sometimes a non-angry, not-physically-damaging spanking got the message through a lot more quickly. But, as I said, there's a time window for it. When done too young, kids, like dogs, don't make a connection between what they did and the punishment they receive. I think when done too young, spanking makes kids think that hitting other people for random reasons is OK, which really isn't what you want them to learn. At that age, other methods of discipline are a lot more effective, I think. And then, around 12ish, they reach an age when they'll just shrug off a spanking, and then other punishments, like taking stuff away from them that they feel they otherwise can't live without, like their video games or the phone/iPod or being able to go out and hang out with friends -- something that didn't faze my son much when he was younger -- start to work better.

Like I said, it's a matter of discovering what does and doesn't work for you as a parent, in combination with your particular child(ren). IMO, no one way works best in all situations with all kids. Rather, parenting is an ongoing process of trial and error on many levels; none of us is born good at it and none of us really knows what it's like until you're smack in the middle of it. AND not everything that worked with your first kid will work with your second, either. What worked on you when you were a child might not work on your own kids and what didn't work on you might very well work beautifully on your own kids. Because, as I said, every parent/child combination works differently, depending on the personalities involved.

Before I had kids, I said I wouldn't spank because, as I was growing up, I saw my dad kicking my brother's butt on a regular basis, and he was still every bit a hellion. He took pride in his hellion-ness, even; he was (and still is) the epitome of headstrong. But once I became a parent I saw that the problem with my brother was not the METHOD of discipline but rather the way that it was applied. My dad could be volatilely angry at times, a result I think of having to tightly rein in his own emotions at his job. So, he would tend to vent them on my brother who, it has to be said, loved nothing more than to endlessly prod our father into reacting. So, while I think my dad crossed a line at times, oftentimes my brother did, indeed, bring it on himself, and he knew full well that he was bringing it on himself. That said, my father and brother were actually very close, for all that my brother got his butt whipped on a fairly regular basis. He never claimed that he was "abused," and freely admitted both at the time and now that he's in his early 50s that, often, he provoked deliberately, to find out exactly what it would take to make our otherwise very tightly controlled dad explode. Kids are manipulative and experimental that way, always poking at boundaries. Still, when our dad died, my brother mourned far longer than I did, because they were very close. So it's not always the case that even harsh physical discipline that some might consider "abuse" always creates parent/child resentment and anger. (My dad tended to whip my brother with a belt, and, yes, that's painful and, IMO, too extreme.) Ultimately, it depends on the situation and the personalities involved, like pretty much everything else in the world.

But anyway, because of what I saw while growing up, I always thought that spanking didn't accomplish anything. It certainly didn't with my brother. But after having a somewhat...uh, challenging son of my own, I came to understand that the spanking wasn't ineffectual in and of itself but rather that my father's method of going about it was always reactionary and emotion-driven, the result of him losing control, and so it was always done in anger. Any kind of punishment, physical or otherwise, done in that frame of mind is, IMO, counterproductive. When a parent loses emotional control, THAT'S when abuse happens, and a spanking becomes a beating. The former can be an effective method of discipline in some cases, with some kids, etc.; the latter is never effective, except at creating neurotic people, I suppose. So, I would say that anyone who knows that they have anger issues should not have kids unless/until they get the issue under control. Because NOTHING will push you to the very limits of your control more easily and more quickly than a challenging and deliberately provocative kid will. My son, as I said, was challenging. It had a lot to do with his dad walking out on us when he was 3. He had anger issues, and I think he had a bit of my brother in him because he loved pushing me. Thankfully, I am a cool-headed person, very different from my father, not really given to anger over anything. If I weren't, I shudder to think what might have happened. Thankfully, my daughter was easy, from a discipline standpoint, perhaps because she was still gestating when her father walked out, so she didn't have the issues that my son had.

That said, even though I did use physical discipline mostly with my son (My daughter never really required it, as she wasn't and still isn't interested in getting into trouble), and we especially had bumps when he was a young teen, we are very close now. He's 18.5 now, in basic training with the Army (Where, because of his upbringing, he has NO trouble with the discipline. ), and is married with a kid of his own on the way. He thanks me now for being hard on him especially in his older kid/young teen years, because if I hadn't been, he would probably be in worlds of trouble and hurt right about now. So, physical discipline can be effective without being damaging. However, it has to be applied very carefully and in the right way. In my experience, most people who do it all do it on the spur of the moment and when they are highly emotional, angry like my dad was, and that, IMO, is just not the way to go about it. As I said, the method of discipline is not the issue. It's the way it's applied that makes it effective or not. Or damaging or not.

And that goes for all kinds of discipline. I know a few people who were never physically disciplined but who were verbally abused as children by their parents when their parents were angry. They were, for instance, called all sorts of demeaning names and such, such that their psyche was damaged and they're now plagued with feelings of inferiority and convinced that they're total, eternal screw-ups, etc. because that's what they were told all their life. They never had a hand laid on them, but frankly, I think they'd be less screwed-up now if that was what had happened to them. IMO, words can sometimes hurt a lot worse than a quick wooden paddle on a denim-clad butt. It's all a matter of how its done. That's the real key to discipline, I found. That was probably the biggest lesson that I've learned from being a parent.

Nobody has ever really addressed the legal issues I brought up previously in this thread, and they really are at the forefront of the debate. How do you legalise smacking when there are countless shades between discipline and abuse, and when juries seem too often to favour legalising smacking kids around quite violently? Is there any productive way to have smacking legal? Or should it be a technical assault subject to discretion?

I think it's legal as long as you don't leave visible marks and it's not someone else's kid that you're smacking, isn't it? Beside's there are many ways to abuse kids without ever laying a hand on them. You need to think how productive is smacking during the disciplining process and consider the factors that make it more productive or faster than other methods of discipline.

It's illegal to spank here in the Netherlands, marks or no.

Many things are illegal, yet they still happen.

So far as I know, there are no laws against spanking in the US. There are laws against child abuse. I don't know that a case has ever been brought to court; most such cases are handled more by CPS, not the criminal courts per se. But if a case were to be brought, I suppose it would be a matter of deciding what's discipline and what's abuse. I would think the same criteria used in an adult case where the defendant is charged with assault would be used.

But, in practical terms, while it sounds nice to outlaw spanking, I'd think that it would be an unenforceable law. Kind of like sodomy laws. Because unless one puts video cameras in homes 24/7 -- and I hope to die before that day ever comes -- no one really knows what goes on in private homes. I suppose if there's consistently a lot of kid screaming going on in a house, neighbors might complain to police about it...but not always. People don't always want to get involved. And, not everyone has close neighbors, either. (My closest neighbor's house is over a mile away. I could sit in my house and scream until I'm blue in the face and no one outside the house would ever hear me.) So it's one of those things that's nice on paper, but I doubt that it will make much difference on the number of children being physically abused. Making spanking illegal might deter people from spanking their kids in public, but it's not like a lot of people do that anyway. It might make people think twice about doing it in their home, too, but as I've said, a lot of people who spank do it at the spur of the moment when they lose control due to anger with what their kid did or said. People in that state aren't going to think about whether or not backhanding their kid across the mouth is against the law or not, particularly not if they're in the privacy of their own home.

Frankly, I think that a better approach to reducing the amount of child abuse would be to teach parents anger management techniques. That's what helped me never to spank in anger, on the occasions when I did spank. Which, as I've said, wasn't always. Of course, abuse, be it of one's kid(s) or one's spouse, is also often exacerbated by alcohol and (some) drugs, which tend to lower one's level of inhibition and self-control. So, I think addressing that issue somehow, in some way, might be more effective than laws against spanking, as well. Frankly, I'm an advocate for legalizing marijuana (It is partially legal where I live), but I'd be really happy if alcohol were to go away. It's the most damaging stuff on the planet, IMO, destroying bodies, making crimes worse, and causing people to do harm to others who might not otherwise do so, either by getting behind the wheel of a car while drunk or by causing them to become violently angry far more easily. I know Prohibition didn't work here in the states...but I wish that it had.

There's a saying that the sum of all vices remains constant. Take away one thing, people will start abusing something else. If people are looking for a way to blank out, I don't think it really matters what substance they abuse. Anyway, tobacco smoking is slowly becoming illegal, I don't think replacing it with marijuana smoking will be a smart move.

If you look back in the thread the reason I put forward for making spanking a technical assault - which, in practical terms, it is - is that by having special legal exceptions defining a "legal" kind of non-assault especially for children seems to result in plainly abusive parents getting off the hook. Just what is "reasonable force"? Does hitting with "the flat of the hand" or "without leaving marks" equal hitting without doing serious physical damage?

None of the various ways that smacking is legalised (ie, exempted from being a form of assault) are very useful criteria, they are all extremely vague when it comes down to it, even when they sound deceptively simple. The idea is not that making smacking illegal would reduce spanking, or even that it *should* stop spanking altogether, it's simply that having special provisions defining smacking as not a technical assault (which are seldom prosecuted anyway) seems to do more harm than good.

Actually, "plainly abusive" parents don't generally get off the hook, once the abuse is known. (And that's the key.) Children are rather often removed from homes, temporarily or permanently, because of abuse allegations. Sometimes they are returned after the investigation, sometimes not, depending on what the investigation discovers. It's just not something that always goes into the criminal court system, other than in more extreme cases, like if a child is severely neglected (as in, they're being starved) or severely injured or killed or if there's sexual abuse involved. As I said, usually Child Protective Services handles it, in combination with law enforcement, and they make the determination as to whether or not a child should be permanently removed, according to the laws on the books. Sometimes there's a criminal case brought above and beyond removing the children from the home, especially if sexual abuse is involved. So, what happens depends entirely on the situation at hand.

Which, incidentally, is often the case with more mild adult assault cases, as well. Often, unless it's a repeat offender, a fine and a restraining order against the aggressor and maybe a night in jail to sleep off whatever they drank, is all that happens and, often, is all that's required. If the person becomes a more persistent problem, then more stringent measures are taken, up to criminal prosecution. But if ALL cases of smacking someone in a way that didn't result in severe injury were prosecuted in the criminal courts, then the courts would be quite overloaded, I would think.

So, at least so far as I know, it's NOT a case of having a separate set of rules for kids. The rules are the same. If anything, children are MORE protected against assault, legally, than are adults, because there's a whole government agency created to protect them from abuse to the extent that they can, according to the law. The real problem with child abuse, I think, is that it's not often known that it's happening and so it sometimes becomes a hideous situation. It's something done mostly in the privacy of a home and the child is often too frightened to seek help or doesn't believe that they can seek help. (Which is often the case with abused spouses, as well.) Once such cases DO become known, then investigation and sanctions will follow. So I don't see many cases of abusive parents getting off the hook once the abuse is known about. Like I said, that's the key. Child abuse is often a silent, secret crime that no one outside of those involved know is happening, which is what makes it so terrible.

I suspect, if your legal framework is similar to New Zealand's, then cases like these that we saw quite a bit of prior to our law change aren't unknown: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/news/arti...4076&ref=imthis

This is the woman who hit her kid with a riding crop, which a jury deemed "reasonable force". She and her husband also tied up a boy and hit him with a bit of wood. Again, "reasonable force". What the hell is "reasonable force". Such a vague term as that is highly questionable. Quite what constitutes abuse is subjective. Let's not have vague and distinctly leading clauses in our laws like "reasonable force" or "trifling and transitory". Their effect of influence in jury decisions seems pretty worrying.

I've been having a quick flick through the US definitions of spanking by state and it seems in almost every case spanking is legalised by specifically exempting children from technical assault by one or other parties under the state's Crimes Act. So it doesn't look remotely true that the rules are the same. The rules are the same in New Zealand. Spanking is a technical assault when directed against children, almost never prosecuted, just like any other technical assault directed against an adult.

It seems to me like making spanking illegal is the best way to resolve the inherent contradictions e.g. you can't legally strike an animal or an adult human, but you can hit a child. That way people can't ever view it as a viable disciplinary method as long as they don't mark the skin.
The fact that it would be difficult to enforce is a separate issue, and shouldn't matter as far as changing the law.

Except that children already have special treatment and exceptions under the law. If you're just interested in "resolving contradictions" between children and adults we could go ahead and just treat children entirely as adults. They'd be able to get married, enter contracts, have consensual sex, go to prison no matter what their ages are, etc. Or, alternately, you could accept that there aren't any contradictions - that adults and children are different and the reasons you're not ever allowed to punch me in the face are different from the allowances for popping a child lightly on the behind.

Several question arise:

(a) Is there a clear reason for specific reason for legalising technical assault against one's children. Is that in the interests of the state? Bear in mind that completely separate laws already allow a parent to use force to prevent the child (or anyone) from doing harm to themselves or others.

(b) How does one define what a "reasonable" technical assault against a child is without creating room to legitimise abuses? How do we find a specific and non-problematic definition of spanking which should be legal versus spanking which should not be legal?

Once the discussion devolves to legality it loses meaning. This was far more interesting and meaningful when it was a discussion of morality and emotional/developmental ramifications.

I don't really care about the "morality", though certainly the ethics are questionable due to any emotional/developmental issues not only for the children, but for parents who may not be in a position to exercise intelligence and restraint in assessing how to smack their kids. But the legality is important. It's how the whole debate needs to be framed to get some kind of an reasonable outcome.

The questions still remain about the ethics. I just think the ethical side of things is significantly murkier and provokes angry gut reactions on both sides.

I find myself agreeing with Mistermook. Children ARE different than adults, from a legal point of view, and unless you make adults and children equivalent, the rules will always be different for them, too. When I said they were the same, I meant in the sense that laws, definitions of terms, and prescribed punishments are equally murky and therefore the cases are all highly subjective and heavily dependent upon the situation. Assault is not really a black-and-white, one-size-fits-all situation kind of crime. Most crimes aren't, in fact. It's why the justice system is slow and deliberate, so that it is as fair as possible to all parties.

Ultimately, parents are responsible for the actions of their children. Ergo, the state leaves disciplining children to the parents of them, outside of extreme cases as I mentioned above, where the state will more actively intervene. Or, if kids are committing serious crimes, they can be tried as adults, in which case the state takes over disciplining them, in more adult ways than giving them a swat on the bottom. At least that's how it is here and, as I said, there's a whole government agency devoted to monitoring, to the extent that the law allows, whether or not children are being "abused." Such special resources don't exist for adults who are victims of simple or even aggravated assault. Ask any victim of spousal abuse.



One generally doesn't, except on a case-by-case basis. The fact of the matter is that the whole issue is a recent one. For much of history, physical discipline wasn't questioned. "Spare the rod, spoil the child" was the mantra for most parents. It was for mine, growing up in the rural Midwest in the 60s, as it was for most families I knew at the time. None of us kids at the time were yelling about being abused and most of us weren't spanked very often because we generally avoided doing things that were known to provoke being spanked. (Except my brother, of course. ) So, because the anti-spanking thing is relatively new, it hasn't really been legally addressed outside of clearly abusive situations. And, because it IS sort of entrenched in culture, it's hard to change. (Which, I'm not saying that it necessarily shouldn't be changed, just that it's harder to do so.)

My own opinion is that, instead of passing unenforceable laws that don't really solve the problem, legal time and money and attention would be better spent on addressing the root of the problem of child abuse, the real problem. Like, as I said, giving parents resources to help them learn to control anger which, IMO, is the real problem. As I said, it's not necessarily the method of discipline that's used that is the problem, but rather how it's used and the mindset that the parent is in when the discipline is dispensed. An in-control-of-themself parent who chooses to spank a child is liable to do it such that it's felt but isn't devastatingly painful or harmful to the kid's overall psyche. The same can't be said for an angry, out-of-control parent. Really, any kind of discipline, especially verbal discipline, can get out of hand when the parent is out of control. Like I said, words often hurt more -- and the hurt lasts a lot longer -- than any pain from a physical blow.

As for what is "reasonable," my own opinion is that whipping with a belt or a crop or other such device is too extreme because it concentrates the force onto a small area making it, in my opinion, too painful a punishment. My dad used a belt on my brother a lot and a time or two on me, although I rarely did anything that warranted spanking according to our household rules, and it hurt like hell. My mother was fond of spanking with her shoe. She always wore shoes made by Bass, which had the Bass logo on the sole, so my brother and I used to refer to getting spanked by her as "Getting a Bass on the Ass," because she'd deliver a whack such that you ended up with the Bass logo imprinted on your ass for a few hours. That didn't hurt as much, but it was perhaps a little more humiliating, like being branded. I used to spank with a wooden paddle that resembled the shape of a frying pan, about 10" in diameter. It distributed the force over a wide area, causing little overall pain, especially because I didn't spank on a bare butt like my parents always did. The point of the spanking wasn't really pain, anyway. It was more like, as someone said above, a mama dog nipping at puppies acting in a socially unacceptable manner. According to my son, the far greater punishment was sitting waiting for me to come up and deliver the spanking, not the spanking itself. Anticipation is painful, apparently.