The spanking = abuse formulation can only be understood if you erase from your mind any sense of nuance. But if we're basing our conclusions on the '��Y involves X so therefore all things that involve X are automatically identical to Y'�� calculation, then why don't we apply it to other things parents do to their kids?
For example, in my household growing up, it wasn't uncommon to hear my parents say, in a commanding and unequivocal tone, things like "Don't interrupt me when I'm speaking" and "�Watch your attitude."�� In contrast, I knew kids who lived in homes where it wasn't uncommon to hear the parents say, in a somewhat harsher tone, things like "�Shut the f**k up"�� and "I can't f**king stand you."
�� Both involve words spoken at an elevated volume, but one is clearly not abusive and the other clearly is. If we can do this math with verbal discipline, why do we act like it's so difficult on the physical side?
2) Maybe you respond by saying that there's nothing inherently wrong with speaking, but there is something inherently wrong with physically touching your kid in a disciplinary and corrective manner. Fine. If that's your argument then, I ask you, WHAT precisely makes it inherently wrong? You can't answer "�violence,"�� because that only restates your original premise.
Besides, to call spanking "�violence"�� is intentionally misleading. Even deceitful. It prejudices the jury in the court of public opinion by using a term that Webster defines as 'exertion of physical force so as to injure or abuse'�� to describe smacking a child's posterior a few times. Spanking as opposed to beating or assaulting doesn't injure and it isn't intended to abuse.
read more :http://themattwalshblog.com/2014/09/18/spanking/
Edited by
msharmony
on Wed 03/18/15 11:21 AM