> The fear of God had been put into them by nightly news and the understanding that an unsupervised child could invite a call from CPS. But walking alone to school or playing outside alone is not neglect. Giving your kid an iPad and letting them rot their brains with Cocomelon is neglect.
But I don't at all agree that the logical conclusion to this is that we should encourage corporal punishment. I would estimate that fewer than a fifth of the well-adjusted people I know were beaten or had their mouths washed out or such similar things. I would say that as a proportion, many more of the badly-adjusted people I know in adulthood experienced corporal punishment or similar.
We can give children rights, agency and protections from abusive behaviour without locking them in a padded room and melting their brains with iPads.
I really think that overexposure to technology is a huge part of this. It's doing something negative developmentally, stripping away children's agency and curiosity. I often feel addicted to tech, but I grew up in a world without nearly as much of it.
It doesn't matter if you think of them as different things. The umbrella term is corporal punishment, and some countries prohibit child corporal punishment. A few examples from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39250304 :
> "Shouting, 'Think about what you just did. Go to your room!' " Jaw says. "I disagree with that. That's not how we teach our children. Instead you are just teaching children to run away."
> And you are teaching them to be angry, says clinical psychologist and author Laura Markham. "When we yell at a child — or even threaten with something like 'I'm starting to get angry,' we're training the child to yell," says Markham. "We're training them to yell when they get upset and that yelling solves problems."
> In contrast, parents who control their own anger are helping their children learn to do the same, Markham says. "Kids learn emotional regulation from us."
If you read a child developmental psychology book you will soon notice it is not whether punishment is corporal or not that makes the difference. It is the causal connection between bad behavior and punishment that makes the difference. That is one reason why CPS is so incredibly bad for children.
A violent dad (or mom) can be a far better parent than someone who never touches their children. It is simply not what matters (except in absurdly extreme cases, things that do permanent damage)
It's a mistake to think I advocate for encouraging corporal punishment as a first-line treatment for misbehavior. It's like a nuclear weapon: it should always be an option, but almost never the one exercised. I pointed out the single time in my life it was used, which I think was justified.
Even keeping corporal punishment on the table without engaging in it can encourage the mentality of needing to "strike down" children who defy orders. If not physically, then metaphorically.
Source: personal experience. I was only physically punished a single time, but the continued emotional abuse sustained over a decade (which they learned from a guy who preached a "spare the rod"-type mentality) left me with scars that are unlikely to ever fully heal.
And in my case, I was lucky enough to remain capable of being a good student. That kind of baggage, and the expectations on top, only makes the effort to succeed in school/work an order of magnitude harder to sustain for years and years. I can only imagine how many people in my situation weren't able to accomplish what I was able to.
If for example I hadn't finished college instead, I wouldn't be surprised if certain people just blanket labeled me "lazy" like so many others, without taking into account my upbringing.
With all respect to your parents, given you were 3, I don't think it was justified. You said yourself you were imitating Looney Tunes. Who lets a 3 year old watch Looney Tunes?
I think a lot of people point to parenting but don't lay it out as well as you did here. On the subject of God, Church used to be a place where kids practiced reading. Now it's just some VC backed dude talking at people about personal and political grievances for half the day. Reading/literacy tutoring is also now some VC backed business that becomes more expensive every year.
> He responded by spanking me, hard. I understood, and never did it again.
About the only thing I learned from corporal punishment at the hands of my parents was that I’d never visit such violence on my children, each of whom today are successful in their diverse fields, law abiding, and in stable relationships, despite keeping my promise to never touch my children in anger. Whatever the causes of intellectual laziness, behavioural disturbances, or disinterest in fully engaging with the world, lack of physical violence directed at children would not appear on my own list of suggested causes. Instead I’d look at the world we adults have created and start fixing that. The opposite of coddling and overprotection isn’t corporal punishment. Likely that’s not your stance either; but when physical harm to children enters the conversation, I think we need to look elsewhere for solutions.
"Although parents and other advocates of spanking often claim that spanking is necessary to promote child discipline, studies have shown that parents tend to apply physical punishment inconsistently and tend to spank more often when they are angry or under stress.[18] The use of corporal punishment by parents increases the likelihood that children will suffer physical abuse,[1] and most documented cases of physical abuse in Canada and the United States begin as disciplinary spankings.[19] If a child is frequently spanked, this form of corporal punishment tends to become less effective at modifying behavior over time (also known as extinction).[1] In response to the decreased effectiveness of spanking, some parents increase the frequency or severity of spanking or use an object.[1]"
Abusing kids has nothing to do with the article in question nor lowered literacy rates. I knew plenty of people growing up that got their ass kicked by their parents and said parents also demanded the school treat them perfectly.
Doesn't even have to be physical, an insidious form of punishment can be for example locking someone in a closet for hours a week which is interpreted as "timeout".
And doesn't get counted as physical abuse. Then authority figures will go "doesn't sound like abuse to me, just ordinary discipline" and be left convinced nothing's wrong.
> an unsupervised child could invite a call from CPS
Unfortunately, that's a correct assessment.
Of course CPS goes after such children IF AND ONLY IF they have been raised well. Why? They are paid per child and that's the only way for them to get access to a child that doesn't destroy the place, or worse, the people. Leaving an obviously well-behaved child unsupervised gives them an excuse to use in court, and an easy child to whose life gets destroyed ... but they get money and jobs (and parents that they can "prove" aren't good)
> We can be good parents again
Nope. The state would never let us. You can mitigate this problem by having a lot of kids (minimum 3), in rapid succession, at which point there's a bit of a society at home. But you cannot fix society.
>Of course CPS goes after such children IF AND ONLY IF they have been raised well. Why? They are paid per child and that's the only way for them to get access to a child that doesn't destroy the place, or worse, the people. Leaving an obviously well-behaved child unsupervised gives them an excuse to use in court, and an easy child to whose life gets destroyed ... but they get money and jobs (and parents that they can "prove" aren't good)
Is there any evidence of a systematic problem - nation wide no less - that its happening like this?
Because I know social workers, many of whom who work for child protective services (or their equivalent depending on state / county / city) and the constant story I hear is they are so understaffed they are overwhelmed with cases. They don't get enough funding as it is, and I have yet to hear a story that wouldn't make any decent person's skin crawl.
Well adjusted kids in good situations are not on their radar
Of this in particular? Except that absolutely everybody in the system knows, not really.
But there are plenty of studies that point out that foster care, any form, is on average worse than facing abuse at home. Group homes are FAR worse than abuse at home. A huge one is here:
The implication of this is, of course, doing nothing about abuse at all is superior to the current CPS system. This should NOT be understood as "child abuse doesn't matter". No. It has strong negative effects on children. However, CPS has strongER negative effects on children.
Also, I have actually seen care homes from the inside. You will not find violent children there, despite the fact that they should obviously be the main group. You will also not find real problem children, because they get removed when they commit a crime or self-harm. Not because they don't need help (obviously). To protect the place from liability and costs. Obviously eventually kids DO, out of desperation, commit crimes or self-harm. Because behaving will guarantee that you stay there, destroying the place or the people and, suddenly, "you're OK now".
This seems too cynical to me. I think child protection services (by whatever name in whatever country) do genuinely care about kids' welfare. They just believe a lot of incorrect things about how to improve it.
I believed that about social workers until my partner disclosed she was having postpartum at the doctor's office and the social worker proceeded to pick her apart because our son was wearing mismatched socks. Meanwhile all of the parents in the group she's created all do that occasionally.
>This seems too cynical to me. I think child protection services (by whatever name in whatever country) do genuinely care about kids' welfare.
Individuals who work for such an agency may care about kids. They are human after all, humans often care (though not always). But an agency is a different beast, and is at best apathetic. They can be certainly be cruel, but never really kind. They can be hateful, but never loving. Agencies would cease to exist if they could express virtue, but they often thrive when expressing vice. This is not cynicism, just an understanding of the dynamics of groups of people. Virtue is maladaptive at those scales, it does not provide survival advantage.
I definitely echo your comments about this point:
> The fear of God had been put into them by nightly news and the understanding that an unsupervised child could invite a call from CPS. But walking alone to school or playing outside alone is not neglect. Giving your kid an iPad and letting them rot their brains with Cocomelon is neglect.
But I don't at all agree that the logical conclusion to this is that we should encourage corporal punishment. I would estimate that fewer than a fifth of the well-adjusted people I know were beaten or had their mouths washed out or such similar things. I would say that as a proportion, many more of the badly-adjusted people I know in adulthood experienced corporal punishment or similar.
We can give children rights, agency and protections from abusive behaviour without locking them in a padded room and melting their brains with iPads.
I really think that overexposure to technology is a huge part of this. It's doing something negative developmentally, stripping away children's agency and curiosity. I often feel addicted to tech, but I grew up in a world without nearly as much of it.
> I would estimate that fewer than a fifth of the well-adjusted people I know were beaten
It is probably not a popular opinion, but I think it is fairly absurd that people consider "spanking" and "beating" to be the same thing
To me it's like saying that telling a kid to go to their room is the same as putting them in jail
It doesn't matter if you think of them as different things. The umbrella term is corporal punishment, and some countries prohibit child corporal punishment. A few examples from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39250304 :
> "Shouting, 'Think about what you just did. Go to your room!' " Jaw says. "I disagree with that. That's not how we teach our children. Instead you are just teaching children to run away."
> And you are teaching them to be angry, says clinical psychologist and author Laura Markham. "When we yell at a child — or even threaten with something like 'I'm starting to get angry,' we're training the child to yell," says Markham. "We're training them to yell when they get upset and that yelling solves problems."
> In contrast, parents who control their own anger are helping their children learn to do the same, Markham says. "Kids learn emotional regulation from us."
2 replies →
If you read a child developmental psychology book you will soon notice it is not whether punishment is corporal or not that makes the difference. It is the causal connection between bad behavior and punishment that makes the difference. That is one reason why CPS is so incredibly bad for children.
A violent dad (or mom) can be a far better parent than someone who never touches their children. It is simply not what matters (except in absurdly extreme cases, things that do permanent damage)
It's a mistake to think I advocate for encouraging corporal punishment as a first-line treatment for misbehavior. It's like a nuclear weapon: it should always be an option, but almost never the one exercised. I pointed out the single time in my life it was used, which I think was justified.
Even keeping corporal punishment on the table without engaging in it can encourage the mentality of needing to "strike down" children who defy orders. If not physically, then metaphorically.
Source: personal experience. I was only physically punished a single time, but the continued emotional abuse sustained over a decade (which they learned from a guy who preached a "spare the rod"-type mentality) left me with scars that are unlikely to ever fully heal.
And in my case, I was lucky enough to remain capable of being a good student. That kind of baggage, and the expectations on top, only makes the effort to succeed in school/work an order of magnitude harder to sustain for years and years. I can only imagine how many people in my situation weren't able to accomplish what I was able to.
If for example I hadn't finished college instead, I wouldn't be surprised if certain people just blanket labeled me "lazy" like so many others, without taking into account my upbringing.
> which I think was justified.
With all respect to your parents, given you were 3, I don't think it was justified. You said yourself you were imitating Looney Tunes. Who lets a 3 year old watch Looney Tunes?
I think a lot of people point to parenting but don't lay it out as well as you did here. On the subject of God, Church used to be a place where kids practiced reading. Now it's just some VC backed dude talking at people about personal and political grievances for half the day. Reading/literacy tutoring is also now some VC backed business that becomes more expensive every year.
> He responded by spanking me, hard. I understood, and never did it again.
About the only thing I learned from corporal punishment at the hands of my parents was that I’d never visit such violence on my children, each of whom today are successful in their diverse fields, law abiding, and in stable relationships, despite keeping my promise to never touch my children in anger. Whatever the causes of intellectual laziness, behavioural disturbances, or disinterest in fully engaging with the world, lack of physical violence directed at children would not appear on my own list of suggested causes. Instead I’d look at the world we adults have created and start fixing that. The opposite of coddling and overprotection isn’t corporal punishment. Likely that’s not your stance either; but when physical harm to children enters the conversation, I think we need to look elsewhere for solutions.
"Although parents and other advocates of spanking often claim that spanking is necessary to promote child discipline, studies have shown that parents tend to apply physical punishment inconsistently and tend to spank more often when they are angry or under stress.[18] The use of corporal punishment by parents increases the likelihood that children will suffer physical abuse,[1] and most documented cases of physical abuse in Canada and the United States begin as disciplinary spankings.[19] If a child is frequently spanked, this form of corporal punishment tends to become less effective at modifying behavior over time (also known as extinction).[1] In response to the decreased effectiveness of spanking, some parents increase the frequency or severity of spanking or use an object.[1]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanking
Abusing kids has nothing to do with the article in question nor lowered literacy rates. I knew plenty of people growing up that got their ass kicked by their parents and said parents also demanded the school treat them perfectly.
Do you have cites for this? My understanding has always been that whenever this is measured, physical punishment anticorrelates with academic success.
Doesn't even have to be physical, an insidious form of punishment can be for example locking someone in a closet for hours a week which is interpreted as "timeout".
And doesn't get counted as physical abuse. Then authority figures will go "doesn't sound like abuse to me, just ordinary discipline" and be left convinced nothing's wrong.
> an unsupervised child could invite a call from CPS
Unfortunately, that's a correct assessment.
Of course CPS goes after such children IF AND ONLY IF they have been raised well. Why? They are paid per child and that's the only way for them to get access to a child that doesn't destroy the place, or worse, the people. Leaving an obviously well-behaved child unsupervised gives them an excuse to use in court, and an easy child to whose life gets destroyed ... but they get money and jobs (and parents that they can "prove" aren't good)
> We can be good parents again
Nope. The state would never let us. You can mitigate this problem by having a lot of kids (minimum 3), in rapid succession, at which point there's a bit of a society at home. But you cannot fix society.
>Of course CPS goes after such children IF AND ONLY IF they have been raised well. Why? They are paid per child and that's the only way for them to get access to a child that doesn't destroy the place, or worse, the people. Leaving an obviously well-behaved child unsupervised gives them an excuse to use in court, and an easy child to whose life gets destroyed ... but they get money and jobs (and parents that they can "prove" aren't good)
Is there any evidence of a systematic problem - nation wide no less - that its happening like this?
Because I know social workers, many of whom who work for child protective services (or their equivalent depending on state / county / city) and the constant story I hear is they are so understaffed they are overwhelmed with cases. They don't get enough funding as it is, and I have yet to hear a story that wouldn't make any decent person's skin crawl.
Well adjusted kids in good situations are not on their radar
Of this in particular? Except that absolutely everybody in the system knows, not really.
But there are plenty of studies that point out that foster care, any form, is on average worse than facing abuse at home. Group homes are FAR worse than abuse at home. A huge one is here:
https://nccpr.org/the-evidence-is-in-foster-care-vs-keeping-...
The implication of this is, of course, doing nothing about abuse at all is superior to the current CPS system. This should NOT be understood as "child abuse doesn't matter". No. It has strong negative effects on children. However, CPS has strongER negative effects on children.
2 replies →
> Of course CPS goes after such children IF AND ONLY IF they have been raised well.
Why do you believe this?
Experience, both as a child and a parent.
Also, I have actually seen care homes from the inside. You will not find violent children there, despite the fact that they should obviously be the main group. You will also not find real problem children, because they get removed when they commit a crime or self-harm. Not because they don't need help (obviously). To protect the place from liability and costs. Obviously eventually kids DO, out of desperation, commit crimes or self-harm. Because behaving will guarantee that you stay there, destroying the place or the people and, suddenly, "you're OK now".
This seems too cynical to me. I think child protection services (by whatever name in whatever country) do genuinely care about kids' welfare. They just believe a lot of incorrect things about how to improve it.
I believed that about social workers until my partner disclosed she was having postpartum at the doctor's office and the social worker proceeded to pick her apart because our son was wearing mismatched socks. Meanwhile all of the parents in the group she's created all do that occasionally.
>This seems too cynical to me. I think child protection services (by whatever name in whatever country) do genuinely care about kids' welfare.
Individuals who work for such an agency may care about kids. They are human after all, humans often care (though not always). But an agency is a different beast, and is at best apathetic. They can be certainly be cruel, but never really kind. They can be hateful, but never loving. Agencies would cease to exist if they could express virtue, but they often thrive when expressing vice. This is not cynicism, just an understanding of the dynamics of groups of people. Virtue is maladaptive at those scales, it does not provide survival advantage.
1 reply →