Comment by eesmith
19 days ago
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."
You can't drink in the Arab world either but I'm not about to resurrect the temperance movement just because some other countries ban alcohol. I was not hit to learn that it's wrong to harm others or that it's right to turn the other cheek. It's obviously fine to defend yourself or shoot a home invader. I was hit (again, just the once ever) to show that violence begets violence and to expect aggressive behavior to be met with aggressive behavior. That is good guidance.
In those terms, "spanking" is to "beating" like 2.4% beer is to doing shots.
Children should have neither, and few countries lets 2 year olds drink alcohol, with or without a temperance movement.
I was spanked more than once. Was it my fault for not learning as quickly as you did? Was it my parent's fault for not spanking me the right way? Or, hey, let's skip the entire conversation of how to spank the right way and simply ban corporal punishment, since other child-raising methods demonstrably work.