Children are always a bit of a knotty problem for libertarians (yes, I am still using that word until a better one comes along). I have almost lost count of the number of arguments I have engaged in concerning their rights or absence thereof and I have still not reached any (or very many) satisfactory conclusions.
So it is with the question of physical punishment. Every instinct I possess and every principle to which I subscribe tells me that hitting children (albeit a moderate smack to the posterior) is wrong. You can camouflage it in as many codes of discipline or doctrines of necessity as you wish but the bald fact remains that it is an assault. If assaulting somebody is wrong (and I should hope that most sane people will agree that it is) then surely it remains wrong notwithstanding that it is administered by someone who otherwise loves and cares for you and is intended to provide some sort of memorable object lesson. If I strike out at my wife, co-worker, best friend or next-door neighbour I run the risk of prosecution and a lawsuit. But not so if I strike my child.
I find it extremely difficult to justify this distinction. In fact, if anything, a child should have an even stronger presumption of physical integrity because they are incapable of mounting anything like a plausible self-defence.
So, while my mind is not closed on the issue, that is where I currently stand and that is what I currently think. But, however starkly I may oppose the physical punishment of children, I am even more stridently opposed to the idea of appointing the state as guardian:
Spanking children can lead to more severe abuse, two parliamentary committees said Monday, and urged the government to pass a law barring parents from hitting their children.
The government has already outlawed corporal punishment in day care centers and schools. But parents and guardians are still permitted to use spanking as “reasonable chastisement,” putting Britain out of step with several European countries where all physical punishment of children is illegal.
Heavens to Betsy! We’re ‘out of step’. Quick, somebody crank up that metronome.
Actually this is not a fresh hell. There is a dedicated coterie of toweringly self-righteous do-gooders who have been campaigning for years for a ban on all physical punishment to be enforced by the state and every couple of years or so they manage to force their agenda on to the front pages. I am implacably opposed to them. Quite aside from the fact that these people are so obnoxiously condescending, there is no way I want to hand an excuse to the ‘Social Working Classes’ to drive the thin end of what is sure to prove a very fat wedge in between children and their parents. It will provide further justification for them to go trampling all over people’s private lives and accelerate the process of family nationalisation and resulting social disintegration. A few red rumps are by far the lesser of those two evils.
Fortunately, I can cast aside my customary pessimism because there appears to be no chance whatsoever of this law getting onto the Statute Books. At least not yet. I allowed myself a cheer of relief upon hearing a government minister on the radio news this morning give it the unequivocal thumbs-down. I don’t believe there has been any great examination of ethics involved; more likely their minds are concentrated by the fact that (for a change) the overwhelming majority of public opinion is against any state intervention in this area. I think HMG might be tempted if they knew they weren’t going to face such stiff public opposition.
And I am with the British public on this one. Well, sort of. I do think that assaulting a child is wrong regardless of the intentions behind it but I am equally sure that legislation is a cure that will prove worse than the disease. Parents should raise their children, not the state and I hope sufficient numbers of parents share my sentiments. That is far from a perfect solution but maybe it is the least worst solution and, in any event, it is the best I can do.
I don’t know. There are laws against assault. If someone hits me in my workplace, or when I am walking down the street, then they have broken the law and should be prosecuted. (I favour quite harsh punishments. The right to walk down the street and not have anyone attack me is amongst the most fundamental of rights, and I think anyone who violates this should get prison time, with very few exceptions). I really do not think there should be an exception to these laws in the case of children being hit by their parents. (Of course, it is only a partial exception. If parents use too much force, then the law deals with this severely).
On the other hand, having a cadre of social workers investigating parents and making sure that they are raising their children in a morally approved manner is horrifying. (Of course, if you have the misfortune to be poor and living on state benefits, this may happen to you already). I think I do actually favour outlawing smacking in a legal sense, but without any enforcement mechanism from the social working classes. In practice I think this leaves us where we are now, where the police will deal with cases of serious child abuse, but probably not much less than that (and an unfortunately large number of cases of genuine child abuse will not be dealt with).
I agree it is not an easy one.
One of the main problems with the government getting involved in how a parent decides to punish their child, is that as much of a joy as they are, sometimes, they lie. If a child is ticked off at his/her folks, they can simply run to their nearest school counselor (in the U.S., anyway), claim they’re being physically abused, and what might have been a perfectly sound family, is torn asunder, if not completely apart.
David
How do you feel about parents forcing their children to undergo medical treatment?
Children are to some greater or lesser extent the property of their parents. We need to divine the moral unified field theory that allows us to calculate the balance between child rights and parents’ responsibilities.
I was never a terribly naughty child so I was never really disciplined. I had very loving and trusting relationship with my parents, so when I crossed the line they just needed to get angry and upset and shout a lot, which made me feel terrible and did the trick.
Ugh. I can’t belive I just used a variation on “balancing rights and responsibilities.”
“How do you feel about parents forcing their children to undergo medical treatment?”
Erm…ah…let’s see…well…umm…er..I refer the honourable gentleman to the answer I gave earlier (Makes hastily for the exit, sweating profusely).
since corporal punishment was abolished, the level of juvenile crime has risen dramatically.
discuss.
Hi David,
Children (and old people, and ill people) are, as you say, always a thorny one, and provide great excuses for socialists to trumpet their religion.
But on balance I think it must be left to the parents to decide what is best for their children. The case put forward by the two Houses of Parliament committees seems to be, “We must ban smacking because a small minority of evil people batter their children and use smacking as an excuse.”
This is on a par with banning driving, because some idiots drive dangerously, or banning paracetamol, because some depressed people overdose. (Though saying that, I can hear some do-gooder out there already, saying, “Yes, Mr Duncan is right, let’s ban driving and paracetamol…”. These may even be current policies of the Social Work Foundation to force us to use buses, and NHS Direct.)
The failures here are the police, and the enfeebled criminal justice system. There are plenty of laws which could be used, in front of good and true juries, to convict child batterers with. But they never get to court, in anything like a reasonable time frame, if at all. And bringing in yet more laws to harrass the law-abiding with, is not going to stop Sex Partners, Yob and Yobette, of the Yobbish Towers Social Housing Project, hitting their unfortunate unwanted children with empty beer bottles.
Is it Robert Heinlein, in Starship Troopers, who describes why society has gone wrong, and why everything is covered in graffiti, or is vandalised, because we don’t teach children properly any more, the meaning of right and wrong, with corporal punishment, because we’ve ascribed to them too many “rights”?
Children are not fully-formed small adults, and therefore I don’t think we can apply fully-formed adult rules to them. Here I get very woolly, and won’t go any further, but I do feel once we libertarians/liberals/Classic Old Whigs/individualists manage to work this problem out, we’ll be much the stronger for it.
I, and I suspect others here, used to get a smacked bum now and again and we turned out alright.
“Wait till your father get’s home!”
“He’s on HMS X in the Mediterranean Sea”
“Okay then” SMACK
It wasn’t abuse. It was discipline. Spare the rod and spoil the child.
Re corporal punishment in schools. Surely in Libertarian Nirvana the state would have no business telling a school how to run its affairs and a school could have it’s punishment tariff in its prospectus. I don’t think I’d send a child of mine to a school that used a cane but somewhere that gave them a thick ear if they got bolshie would be better than the present situation.
Of course the do-gooders would have a field day. But then the NSPCC recently put their name to some charter that compared grammar schools to child abuse. My already low respect for that organisation pretty much vapourised at that point.
oh and then there’s this
This is one of the areas into which libertarians are unwise to extend the ethical-individualism principle.
“Freedom is a tenable objective for responsible individuals only. We do not believe in freedom for madmen or children.” Thus wrote Milton Friedman, one of the century’s truly great minds, in his 1962 book Capitalism And Freedom. Friedman had captured one of the most important limitations on libertarian premises in a mere nineteen words, probably the most concisely it’s ever been done. Grasping the implications of this statement is critical if libertarian thought is ever to achieve wide respect.
Children are, by presumption of law — and yes, I know the lines that divide children from adults are arbitrary — incapable of giving meaningful consent or making binding commitments. For this reason, their parents are deemed responsible for them, in two senses of the word:
— Parents are responsible for assuring their children’s well-being and nurturance.
— Parents are responsible for any harms their children might cause to the lives or properties of others.
A man cannot legitimately be held responsible for a condition over which he is granted no authority and therefore can exercise no control. To exercise the necessary authority and control, parents must be permitted the use of disciplinary measures that would not inflict permanent damage on the child. That includes non-crippling, non-mutilating corporal punishment.
Admittedly, there are still gray areas to resolve. Locking a child into a windowless closet strikes me as intolerably cruel. However, commanding him to remain in his bedroom for the evening does not — and I can’t say where the critical differences are. Pure logic probably won’t be enough to eliminate all such ambiguities. But there is little doubt that requiring parents to accept responsibility for their children, as delineated above, while denying them enforceable authority with which to meet those responsibilities, is an unsustainable condition.
For more ruminations along these lines, see this.
First, thanks to Mark for linking to that particularly chilling article. From the sounds of it, those adverts aimed at children skirt the edge of being abusive themselves (though as an American who has not seen them I have to reserve judgment). My young sons would be fairly traumatized and I would be forced into a needlessly early discussion of how some people are cruel to their children.
Speaking of nightmares, here’s mine (and it has actually happened several times): your young child is misbehaving in the parking lot (as young children will do, even in Utopia). He’s slipped your hand and is darting into the path of a car or two. You drop one arm’s worth of packages and sweep him up, only to have him wriggle free (laughing and screaming simultaneously). Now what do you do? Your options are all bad: grab a wrist and drag toward the car, smack him on the bottom and drag toward the car (advantage: now he resists less and the task is quicker), or c: let him be struck by oncoming traffic. Only by taking option c could a parent be assured that in a land where any form of “violence” against children has been outlawed s/he would not be prosecuted. That is unacceptable. Young children cannot be taught that dangerous behavior is per se dangerous (without exposing them in a most irresponsible manner) but they CAN be taught that mother/father will inflict a sharp sting if they transgress very explicit rules (don’t dart into traffic, don’t jump into a pool without me, don’t stick a fork into an outlet, etc.)
Is society better off where large numbers of children never learn impulse control or where children are “never” (and I doubt the plausibility of this one) physically disciplined? Is it better off where parents who have sacrificed greatly (and willingly) on behalf of their children and who know precisely what it takes to socialize them (and yes, this is important) are allowed to raise them (within well defined constraints and norms) or are constantly second-guessed by the state?
I think the remarks made by Andy, Mark, and Francis are all excellent.
I think the key idea that allows one to think this through is Andy’s remark that children and not fully-formed adults. No one is born with the ability and experience to be able to think and act in one’s rational self-interest; that is developed over time. As a child grows to become an adult, that child is able to reason better, is able to become more responsible, and therefore gains the ability to exercise his rights.
Either the people advocating a complete ban of corporal punishment of children by their parents, do not have children themselves or must be keeping their kids docile with Ritalin.
My lovely wife and I tried that experiment 17 years ago, we quickly discovered that if you punish a child by making them sit ‘Time Out’, you then either must sit with the child for that time – there by giving them the attention that they are seeking and voiding the punishment; or you have find a different punishment for them when they leave ‘Time Out’.
In the end, three smacks on the butt; and you and your child can use that five minutes to do something constructive.
IRT children’s rights, as the Court of Appeals reaffirmed in the Elian Gonzalez decision, children “suffer from the disability of age”; and because of that their rights are curtailed.
I would also refer people to this. It was the essay that drew me in to the Palace, and it’s relevant to this discussion.
I draw from a less cultured perspective this morning–it’s early. I’m reminded of episode 1 of King of the Hill, in which the do-gooder social worker from LA is trying to prove that Bobby’s been abused by his father Hank. He’s spanked, he’s sent to his room.
I, like David and the majority of those polled, wouldn’t like to see legislation like this become law. Unlike David, though, I think there is a need in some cases for light physical punishment–a non-injuring spank, a period of reasonable physical confinement. I was spanked, and if I have kids I’ll likely spank. I grew up okay and still understood the difference between an assault and a spank.
The argument that we need laws against all spanking/physical punishment of any kind reminds me of the one used to justify celphone/driving bans and even anti-gun campaigns. We already have laws against wreckless driving, we already have laws to regulate traffic–so there are already laws to prevent the things that celphone users allegedly do while driving; why do we need *another* set of laws to ban celphones in the first place? SOME people can operate them safely while driving.
We already have laws against using guns… um, unlawfully–for murders, violent crimes, burglaries, public threats, discharging a firearm in a neighborhood, etc. But some folks would like to do away with firearms, period (or at least handguns).
SOMEMOST gun owners can operate their guns safely and responsibly.We already have laws against causing *injury* to a child–and that’s NOT what a spank is about. But most parents who administer a spank do so with full cognizance of the amount of force to use for the message to get across while not causing injury.
Finally, I’m not sure about school punishment. We certainly had “paddlings” in grade school. Dr. Burgoon was notorious for making kids cry. The one time I got sent to his office, I got away with a stern warning. And I sure as hell cleaned up my act in a big way–that one afternoon scare lasted me through years and years of school. Who knows what I would have done if their had never been any kind of deep-rooted fear of that ultimate punishment?
If children are considered not competent to make life decisions, then someone else has to make those decisions for them. If children transgress in ways to bring harm to themselves, then someone else must protect them from themselves.
Making a lasting impression upon a juvenile mind takes many different approaches, dependent upon the level of capacity to both understand and apply to self in future. If it takes a physical impact of non-injurious level to complete the circuitry of ‘lasting impression’, then that is the best method to be used.
For good or for bad society recognises a number of classes of people to whom it does not grant all the rights nor responsibilities that it grants average citizen. These include criminals, the mentally handicapped and children because like many have pointed out they are not small adults but rather … well children. Those classes of people are appointed guardians to look after their well being, in the case of children these are most often one or both of their parents. The guardians are then granted a variety of special powers over their charges in order to carry out their duties. Criminals are for example incarcerated and children forced to spend a high proportion of their waking hours in special institutions called schools.
The question then obviously is whether physical punishment is part of the special powers of parents like enforced bedtime or medical treatment like pointed out above. I think they do and I’m obviously not suggesting that parents be allowed to cause actual physical harm any more than any other group in society is allowed to use excessive or disproportionate force. The point is we expect parents to be reasonable individuals able to make reasoned decisions in carrying out their responsibilities. They therefore, should be able to tell the difference between a full force blow to the face and a smacked bottom.
As to the proposed law barring parent from hitting their children, you notice that it is not aimed at people who put their children in hospital. We already have laws to deal with those. No this is aimed squarely at “normal” families so that what you term the social working classes can create an entirely new class of problems for them to deal with.
I commend David Carr for tackling such a difficult and contentious subject, but I don’t see that it poses any particular difficulties for Libertarians.
Parents (and other family members) are responsible for how their children turn out. Twas always thus, and Marx, or any EU or UK government action doesn’t change this.
I also agree with his position, and not only have I never physically punished my daughter, I have never punished her period. And this may suprise some people but I have never had any discipline problems. Like most parents I figured it out along the way, but applied the same basic principles I use to deal with most people – You are free to do what you want, I have some expertise that is relevant (in this case of life), I have control over certain things (money, internet access) that you value and you must cooperate with me to get access (although in practise I don’t withdraw access. Its sufficient to point out that I can), I have certain responsibilities (as a parent primarily to protect you from harm, but also to encourage you in activities that I consider benefit you as a person such rock-climbing), And perhaps most importantly in any battle of wills I can and will outlast you (one day I won’t but thats cool and its the way its meant to be).
It distresses me when I see parents physically punish their children, not least because I think it pointless and counter-productive (and the generally bad behaviour I see after the punishment only reinforces my view). But no amount of laws and social workers will fix the problem, only personal responsibility will and what is Libertarianism except personal responsibility.
Surely, any legislation in this area is going to have the same effect as the legislation against guns. Namely, those who would abuse children will continue to do so, despite the law, and those law-abiding parents who would have used spanking responsibly will be denied the best and most natural method of discipline available to them.
Ooops, I see Kevin White has already made a very similar point earlier in the thread…sorry.
That’ll learn me to read the damn thread *before* posting in the future….
As one who has raised children to adulthood and know the difference between a child and an adult, I distinguish between discipline and assault. A light swat on the behind to get the child to pay attention is not an assault (as would be, for instance, beating the child with a club). Trying to “reason” with a small child in the throes of a temper tantrum is like trying to reason with a puppy. The level of working out consequences is almost the same.
I am now watching my children raise their children. One child was not above giving her children a swat when they didn’t listen to reason. Her children are well-behaved and well on their way to becoming productive,, self-disciplined, happy adults. The other child has subscribed to “reasoning” with his children. Both of them are hellions who insist on getting their own way, and will become the kind of adults I hate dealing with. I’m keeping my mouth shut, but I know which method of child-rearing I believe in.
Phil wrote: I have never punished her period. And this may surprise some people but I have never had any discipline problems.
It does, to some extent. My [limited] experience with kids who aren’t disciplined at all has been rather negative. I’m thinking of the two sons of our family lawyer. He’s a good lawyer, but an extremely liberal fellow. I know this is anecdotal, but so is your experience–while I’m sure your daughter is quite well-behaved, our lawyer would also say he’s had no “discipline problems”. Meanwhile, these kids have never had any limits. They’re entirely unable to deal with other human beings, especially other kids (they help make the case *against* home-schooling), but they have zero respect for adults as well.
I remember a Christmas party a couple years ago in particular. It was like a scene out of a movie. These kids were taking cans of soda and throwing them against their walls (leaving dents), then bashing them with baseball bats until they started spewing. At one point the television fell off its stand on to the game console below due to their wild gyrations (which my brother and I were watching, from the hallway, fascinated). Dad comes in the room, surveys the scene briefly, says something like “you kids are having too much fun” with a laugh and sets down the food he was carrying up for them. Just astonishing. They had two whole rooms upstairs as their private destruction rooms.
It was such a spectacle that my family had a talk on the way home about how that kind of thing happens, and those kids’ prospects for the future.
There’s also sibling discipline: I beat the crap out of my brother (not literally, it was more like high school wrestling moves) when he overdosed on ecstasy and had a psychotic episode. He knows “big brother” is watching. 😉
I am always amazed when I hear/see self-identified libertarians condoning coercive ways of dealing with children. The analogy between ‘children need parents to make them do what is right’ and ‘people need the state to make them do what is right’ seems pretty clear to me. Once you make the assumption that children/people are not able to think and learn for themselves, authority becomes necessary, ‘for their own good’.
While children are lacking in knowledge and need their parents’ help in all sorts of ways, there is nothing about this situation that requires coercion. Just because it has always been done with coercion – the famed ‘I was smacked and look, I turned out all right’ defense- doesn’t mean that there aren’t better ways to relate between parents and children. I’m pretty sure there are, but it takes some thought and meme-slaying to find those ways.
A parent’s responsibility to their children includes helping them get what they want in life, safely. I think that a parent’s responsiblity is to their self and their children first, over their responsibility to the collective; that when individuals thrive, so does the society. And that individuals thrive through good non-coercive relationships.
Good reasons to seek non-coercive relationships between parents and chidlren include trust and communication and learning, all of which are compromised by parents resorting to coercion to get children to do what parents want them to do. Both parents and children learning how to define and solve problems in ways that they are all happy with will only help more people to know how to work together to find and create good solutions to problems in the larger world as well, I conjecture.
And, really, children learn what they live. How can a parent get across the idea that hitting/hurting (psycholocial harm included) people is not a good solution to problems, when the parent will resort to hitting/hurting the child when the parent is unable to find a better solution to a problem? If it is right for parents to manipulate their children into acting certain ways, why would they surprised when the children use manipulation in their attempts to get what they want in the world?
Are these parents looking forward to having their children care for them in old age/sickness? “You crap your pants again, Daddy, and I’m going to have to take away your internet access.” Yeah.
Congratulations, Mr Bradley. Not only do you sound like a concerned and highly engaged parent, you must certainly have a child with the capacity to learn early and learn well. Neither the existent laws against abuse, nor the proposed laws against the whole of society (as suggested by the “out of step” comments) were designed for you or your child.
The majority of laws are devised and enacted to regulate and control the behaviour of those members of society who would not, or could not, otherwise regulate their own behaviour (traffic regulations, fair trade statutes, etc.).
Certainly it is my opinion that MOST people choose to do what is right for that reason alone. It is right. MOST people do not conduct their lives out of fear or pressure of prosecution. If I properly understand the proposal, this “ban” makes the assumption that a majority of parents cannot be trusted to control their own behaviour or the behaviour of their children. I believe this is patently untrue, and completely denigrates the concept of individual responsibility by assuming MOST people are criminals and must be regulated. How utterly insulting and quite frankly frightening?
Where will it stop? Legislation to criminalize feeding certain foodstuffs to children (there are already laws to deal with the FEW who would feed alcohol or drugs to children)? Legislation to ban certain educational/informational materials (laws already exist to deal with the FEW who would allow access to pornography and exessively violent material)? State run baby farms (one could argue they already exist for those FEW in unfortunate circumstances who are under the ever watchful, yet ever skewed gaze of social services)? If indeed, as Mr Carr comments, this is just the thin end of the wedge what can the (il)logical conclusion be?
While objectionable on its face, hideously difficult to administer and possibly a violation of individual rights, I’d like to air the concept of Parental Licensing. We legislate marriages, driving privledges, personal use of fire arms (to some extent in America), even cosmetology. Isn’t the state of parenthood worthy of such attention? The system would need to be open to all who apply except the FEW who are unwilling or unable to meet the standards of behaviour MOST people would voluntarily enforce. Not a legislation to bar, condemn or criminalize, but legislation to include, accept and educate before abuses can occur. Its not a perfect idea, but then again, neither are we.
The view of children as reasoning, intelligent beings, just like adults but smaller, is a flawed view that comes to us from the Renaissance idea of man as tabula rasa. Even if children are a blank slate, then very little is written upon them, and what is written there is often scribbled, half thought-out, and not particularly helpful.
I am generally against hitting kids, but I think at times mild physical discipline may be necessary in order to focus the mind. It’s how my wife and I were raised, and we both turned out to be very disciplined, high achieving adults. We have one on the way, and we intend to stick to the same rules we were raised by.
My parents (and hers) were successively slacker with our younger siblings, and they are far less disciplined, far more self-indulgent and far lazier in their work and personal habits. I’m not saying that creating an anal retentive ueberkind is the goal here — just that discipline is really important. Let the kid ponder on the meaning of eating his peas when he is of the age of reason – 14, or 18, or never if he has liberal tendencies. What matters more for a 6 year old is that he eats his peas.
I know “spare the rod, spoil the child” is a profoundly conservative sentiment, but I think that it has its place. I know of what I speak because I was getting well out of control around age 14. I was running with a pack of delinquent kids my age, my grades in school were abysmal, and I was involved in a lot of petty crime. My exploits ended in a trip to the local constabulary’s office, in handcuffs. My parents retrieved me from the hoosegow, brought me home, and gave me a good lecturing about it. I was still pretty defiant. A little later in the day, I decided to take a swing at my father. I approached him, balled up my fist… and when I woke up, with the cold water running off my head into the kitchen sink, he asked if I’d like to take another shot. I decided against it, and at that point figured I had better clean up my act — which I did.
I’m not recommending child abuse- but mild physical discipline – say a whack with a small wooden spoon – is probably sufficient. Most kids won’t be as defiant and wild as I was, and just a little force should be sufficient to remind the child who is the boss.
I think part of the problem is the failure to distinguish assault/abuse from punishment/correction. With our children, physical punishment was defined and explained. In other words: “If you do X, you will get a spanking.” Then, after X has been done, “What did I say would happen if you did X?”
This involved only feigned anger. If there had been real anger, my wife and I sat down somewhere until it subsided and then administered punishment.
Abuse or assault is different. It is a result of irrational anger or rational ill will. There is no element of instruction or correction in it, only enmity.
The push to blur the obvious difference between the two is part of the drive to break up the family unit in order to enlarge the state. Libertarians ought to see beyond the illusory appearance of similarity to the ultimate objective of this argument and decide accordingly.
By the way, I would be very interested in knowing which of the commenters have had children and which have not. Remembering (with a feeling of warmth on the back of my neck) some of the rather ill informed opinions that I gave parents back in my single days, I have to observe that experience is a great teacher in this subject.
lars wrote: A parent’s responsibility to their children includes helping them get what they want in life
I don’t really agree with this line.
But to your analogy of the state’s and parents’ use of coercive power: you’re flat-out ignoring the fact that children are NOT responsible adults who can make their own rational decisions about what’s right for them. I don’t need John Banzhaf trying to save me from my own decision to eat fast food; but a child certainly DOES need a parent there to make decisions in his or her best interest.
Reasonable discipline does not preclude any of the things you mentioned–trust, learning, communication.
I don’t understand why a light spank administered to a misbehaving four-year old is so demonized, and why some like to equate this with “violence”. Is my [hypothetical] child in danger of learning to lightly spank the other kids and send them to their rooms? A spank is not a hit. In fact, as DanF mentioned, I think a spank is a quite natural parental tool for teaching behavioral norms and socialization.
A four-year old is becoming aware of everything around him, pushing boundaries, testing patience, seeking limits, and all the while . I don’t see any reason to relate that to social engineering by a “benevolent despot” government. But that’s why I’m not a “true” libertarian–I can’t deal with the absolutism.
Oops, first sentence in last paragraph should read something like this:
…and all the while is unable to make wise decisions about most anything or protect himself from the most basic of dangers.
“We already have laws against causing *injury* to a child–and that’s NOT what a spank is about. But most parents who administer a spank do so with full cognizance of the amount of force to use for the message to get across while not causing injury.”
Kevin… that’s exactly right. I don’t understand how someone could possibly compare swatting a kid on the bottom with punching someone in the face. There are ways to get the attention of a misbehaving child short of breaking bones or drawing blood. Holding a child’s hand and smacking the back of it will sting like hell, but won’t cause any bruises. And there are frustrated parents that refuse to use any physical discipline, but end up using the most vile verbal abuse as an alternative… which leads back to the assault comparison. I don’t know what the laws are in the UK, but in the US it is considered a form of assault just to verbally threaten an assault.
After the birth of my first child, who was sanguine and phlegmatic by nature, I congratulated myself often on my excellent parenting skills. Days in a row could pass without one harsh word, because I was so naturally good at being a mother.
For whatever mysterious reason, my second son was a 180 degree departure in personality. He never slept, was never happy. As he grew older, he displayed an appalling lack of impulse control. He would throw a shrieking, thrashing fit anywhere. He threw himself on the floor in shops, clung on to the banisters on public stairways, hid under the table in restaurants. He was the sort of child everyone in the grocery store wishes would leave, and whom everyone assumes must have a useless parent.
My third child is another calm, coping person. If she is told no, she pouts silently for a bit and then resumes her normal, sunny disposition.
My experience has taught me that parents who pat themselves on the backs for the parenting skills which have produced their well mannered children may very well have simply enjoyed the luck of the genetic draw. If I had had my first and third child without my second, I’d probably be one of them.
I was living in London with him when he was at his most difficult. I did eventually get an appointment with a Council employed educational psychologist. He was a well meaning guy, but he told me bluntly that unless my son was throwing desks and threatening other children, he would be pronounced a delightful lad and that would be the end of it.
Much as the police seem to be rather more interested in catching pot smokers and people exceeding speed limits then protecting bodies and property, social workers will be happier to visit harried mothers to warn them about smacking their child’s bottom, rather than dealing with anything really desperate, because it’s easier. People who really need help won’t get it, and taxes will continue to be used to fund activities the public doesn’t want.
As for the “libertarian position” on child discipline, the saying, “Your right to swing your arm ends where my nose begins” seems to sum it up succinctly.
I think Lars and others who see an inconsistency between libertarian views on proper government of adults and spanking are confusing a couple of things.
First, if you outlaw spanking, then you are using the government to intrude into an area that is intensely personal. Most libertarians don’t like that on general principles.
Second, if you say, well, I don’t want to outlaw spanking, but I think it is incosistent with libertarian principles banning the initiation of force, I think a critical distinction between spanking and assault has been lost. If you really think a swat on the rear end is the equivalent in every way of a beating with fists or a bat, then you are missing a distinction with a difference.
Third, most children operate at a very primitive level of cognition, and spanking is an irreplaceable tool for communicating with them. Sorry, but if you don’t believe this, either you have not spent any time with young children or your children are abnormally well-behaved.
Finally, if you regard spanking a child as a violation of that child’s rights, how on earth do you justify medicating a child with Ritalin or other mind-altering substances without their consent?
T. Hartin wrote:
“Finally, if you regard spanking a child as a violation of that child’s rights, how on earth do you justify medicating a child with Ritalin or other mind-altering substances without their consent? ”
Yeah- how do you justify that? Surely there are better solutions than to hit a child or to medicate them against their will! It is possible and desirable for parents and children to relate on the basis of consent.
I totally agree with keeping government out of the home. People are capable of figuring the right thing to do without the government forcing it down their throats. Even as children are rational and able to learn about the right things to do, without having it forced down their throats.
What happens in a child’s mind, when they are hit? Anger, resentment, lack of trust of the person doing the hitting, the ‘I’ll show you’ attitude. How does this help parent-child relationships? How is this moral?
Yes, I am a parent and I don’t hit children and we seek to solve our problems non-coercively and with consent, and it’s a pretty damn good way to live even though we don’t always succeed at finding the best solutions all of the time.
And I just don’t see how people who support societal relationships based upon non-coercion and consent can think that doing exactly the opposite in their homes helps to create the knowledge that people need in order to find non-coercive solutions in the face of conflict.
Again, my parents never “hit” me. In no way did I ever equate a spank with a beating. Others have already explained it better though.
I think what goes through a child’s mind is contrition. A little twinge of guilt, of knowing that mommy and daddy are disappointed, that a line has been crossed. I think it CONTRIBUTES to trust. Why? Because the parents set limits, clearly defined, and the child tests those limits as a matter of course. The child learns what is right and wrong by how the parents react. The child learns to trust that the parents are going to have consistent rules and a consistent way of dealing with the breaking of those rules.
I don’t know what you mean in your last sentence. I mean, I support the idea of a system of laws which prescribe punishments for certain behaviors and actions. Just like in the home: here’s what’s acceptable and why, here’s what’s NOT acceptable and why it’s not, if you cross that line, here is what you should expect to happen to you. Sounds to me like a pretty good way to teach very young children to be principled and respectful of rules.
I’m not talking about older kids over eleven years. But as someone mentioned, small children display limited and rather primitive reasoning skills.
Handling misbehavior by anybody, adult or child, requires applying negative feedback. For an adult that’s easy, just warn of future consequences. For children you have to find a method that works for that child. Some children respond to verbal feedback. Family legend has it my great-grandmother kept order with the sound of a shaken newspaper. But when my son tried to stick the car keys into an electrical outlet I need to not just restrain him but ensure he wouldn’t try it again when I turned my back. A swat on the wrist did the trick. Now that he’s 7 other methods are available, but if he needs to be taught something I have to make sure to use a method that he understands.
I note Mr. Bradley has a daughter. I suspect Lars does as well.
Oh, yeah, one more thing. 🙂 You’re right, children are not little adults. They count on their parents for good information and help in getting access to the world and and for finding ways to explore and learn that are safe.
If a child does something wrong, out of ignorance, how is hitting them and sending them to time out or whatever going to help them learn about what was wrong and what they could do next time that would be right?
If a child is doing something wrong out of anger at the parent- that ‘I’ll show you’ thing- then maybe the parent would do well to think about how things came to such an impasse, and find better solutions, together with thier child.
Without committing myself one way or another on spanking: yay or nay, I will note that NRO’s John Derbyshire (no libertarian in any remote sense of the word, but he’s quite right about this), in an article on the subject, pointed out that all but the most abusive parents (e.g., the mother and step-father in my state who were just sentenced for starving their teenage son to death) are preferable to the institutional hell of state intervention, which is pretty much guaranteed to scar a kid for life. Lots of people have escaped growing up in abusive homes and became outstanding members of society; I have seen, on the other hand, plenty of kids buffeted around through endless foster homes, half-way houses, and the like, and become total screw-ups. Just about all of them, in fact. Better, I suppose, than being starved to death in your basement in Wilkes-Barre, but that’s just about it.
Come on guys. We’re libertarians. We’re supposed to think things through from first principles, not just come up with ad-hoc opinions about issues. You got to go back to the beginning.
Where do rights come from and what are they? Rights are born totally out of a philosophy of equality. If you and I are moral equals then I don’t have the authority to tell you what to do and you don’t have the authority to tell me what to do. We, instead, each have the right to live our own lives and make our own decisions. Which is why liberals in the 18th century opposed monarchy so strongly. Monarchy implies that certain people are born superior. A liberal society, instead, considers people as equals. Hence they have rights.
The government doesn’t have the authority to make decisions for me or to coerce me into doing what they want because we are all equals. I am the moral equal of every Congressman, President, or Supreme Court Justice that there is. I am the moral equal of every other voter out there. As such, nobody — either individuallly or collectively — has the authority to tell me what to do.
Rights come from equality. So, what about children? Is anyone going to try to claim that children are the equals of adults? If so, there is no half-way. If you consider children as the equals of adults and deserving full rights then there is no justification for denying a 6 year-old the right to vote or the right to drive a car. Either they are equal or they are not. You can’t have some people “more equal” than others.
If children are not equals then they do not have rights because rights come from equality. Which isn’t to say they have NO rights, because they are still human, but saying assaulting someone in the street is wrong so corporal punishment must be wrong is illogical. A doesn’t follow from B because we have a very different situation.
Someone above said it correctly, so I’ll re-iterate: children are somewhere half-way between human beings (as defined by the law) and property. Until they become full citizens at adulthood they are under the control of their parents — their superiors. When people believed the king to be their moral superior, they had no argument against his pronouncements. Because as a superior being he had the authority to control his inferiors — and the corresponding responsibility to care for them and protect them. The situation here is the same, but the difference is that parents really are their children’s superiors while the king was the equal of his subjects.
The dictionary I consult assures me that hitting and spanking both involve striking. David’s article is not about beating children, but rather about the laws some would have in place to institutionalize the value of not striking children at all. Yes to the no striking, no to the government morality police.
I can assure you that gender has nothing to do with the desire to put things into handy receptacles. 🙂 If a child wants to learn about inserting a plug into a receptacle, helping them to learn about how to do it safely seems like a good idea to me, rather than terrifying them into not wanting to try it at all- or worse, to wait until no one is looking, and then to try it in an unsafe way.
Rustling a newspaper after having done some smacking with it works wonders in training dogs, but human beings can create knowledge in ways that dogs do not. Humans can do much better than being trained. 🙂
The state would be a far more coercive parent than the parents children come equipped with, generally. Unless parents are sure that they have hold of infallible truth, they might do well to keep looking for better ways to solve problems. Distress and coercion in the process are indications that- engage creativity! create some knowledge!- better solutions can be found.
I must say, I entirely disagree on the basis of my own observations (and no scientific or philosophical evidence or arguments at all) that gender has nothing to do with enjoying fitting things into handy receptacles. There seems to me to be an entirely inexplicably visible correlation between some kinds of preferences and learning patterns, and gender.
Not that it has any bearing on much at all…
TJ wrote:
“We…each have the right to live our own lives and make our own decisions. ”
I submit that children do these things- though after awhile, a child can lose track of what they want and not bother to try to make their own decisions, because they are not helped or allowed to get what they want, anyhow.
Whose life is any one of us going to live, if not our own? Though adults put up lots of obstacles to prevent children from living the life they choose, thus blocking knowledge creation.
Children certainly make their own decisions- often the decision seems to be whether or not to do what an authority is telling them to, whether it makes sense to them or not. No wonder life seems senseless to many people…
I think humans have the right to self-determination, from the start. Whether or not they are helped to learn about the moral ways of wielding their autonomy depends upon if the parents are aware of and respectful of their own autonomy and that of others.
There are good reasons behind some laws and some rules, and children are capable of learning about them. They’ll make mistakes, just as adults do- any one of us is fortunate to have trusted advisors who help us to avoid mistakes when possible and to learn from the ones that we make.
While children may need more help on the basic stuff that they are learning early in life, this does not mean that they don’t know what they want. Adults are doing the same thing, learning all the time- should some older and wiser person be making the decisions for us too? Maybe, the governement? 😉
If what people want is flawed in some way, parents/trusted advisors can show how/why and help find a better way to get what is wanted. People learn best by pursuing things they are interested in, not by living someone else’s idea of what their life should be.
The human rights thing arises out of human nature- how can humans thrive- imo. It is the nature of humans to create new knowledge, so what are the conditions under which humans best create knowledge? Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness all contibute, and consent is an important condition of these. To demote any human to second class, who needs their decisions made for them without their consent- like women, or people of different colors, or children- does not seem to have a foundation in human rights, that I can see.
thanks for the discussion!
I am under no illusion that children are rational entities, but they sure are learning machines from a very young age. I made an effort when daughter was young to ensure bad behaviour did not achieve anything like a desired result. Whereas good behaviour got a good result – ignoring a child versus a couple minutes of attention is remarkably effective with young children. I also found humour works well in ‘disrupting’ bad behaviour. Child is throwing tantrum, parent pretends its amusing, insists on taking video, shows child video with commentary ‘This is the really funny part when you..’. Child laughs at own behaviour. I found this worked around 2 years old.
And for the record my daughter is ‘miss popularity’ at school and her teachers always comment on how much she helps the other children. Its interesting to watch kids use the strategies you helped them learn.
Also for the record my daughter is not disciplined (she is well behaved but discipline means something different to me), but then neither am I and its not a characteristic I particularly value.
My point is, that its all about personal responsibility! You are personally responsible for what happens to you and getting what you want. And this is something that children can and should learn at a young age. In fact if they don’t learn it young, I can see why they would have problems.
I have no ideological position on punishing children. I am a utilitarian pragmatist – maximum results for minimum effort. I never felt punishment was a particularly effective way of getting children to behave. Had I ever got to the point where I thought it was necessary then I would have used it.
And as for the state trying to legislate for this kind of problem. I consider all legislation of this type not just mis-guided, but counter-productive – they actually make the problem worse. I find the whole neo-socialist agenda of transferring responsibility from the individual to the state deeply alarming.
I think the problem is no one is looking at the alternative. Sometimes, a swat on the rump is an effective behavioral modifier for a child, keeps him from suffering worse harm by doing something stupid.
Remove the parents power to spank, you remove one of the most effective punishment methods available to parents. Leaving them with what, when the child screws up? Denial of supper? Grounding? As we move away from corporal punishment, we move into less immediate and less effective means of behavioral modification.
Advance the clock 20 years, and you end up with an adult whose has essentially been allowed to run wild his whole life, never forced to discipline or modulate his behavior in accordance with the dictates of society. You end up destroying that society with a version of the rogue elephant problem.
Children are not adults, and sometimes through ignorance, misinformation, stupidity or simple bloody mindedness, they do bad things. And have to be taught not to do that. Reason is a facility that has to be learned, not something you are born with. If parents are not allowed to correct and punish bad behavior in their children, why should those children change their behavior once they are adults?
Punishment in all forms is of necessity cruel and unusual. If not cruel, it does not convey the messege effectively that such behavior is wrong. If it occurs too frequently, it becomes meaningless. I would recommend Heinlein’s discussion on corporal punishment in “Starship Troopers”
I ask all you who say a “swat” is not “hitting”, and can be useful to “focus the mind”, what if you were underperforming at work, so your boss decided he had to give you a “swat” to “focus your mind”? Suppose he had tried counseling you, talking over your problems at work, and he was just really worried that something bad might happen to you, like your inadequacy of late might come to the attention of the higher-ups and get you fired? So, he decides to give you a little swat on the behind to focus your mind, and show you he’s really serious. Would anyone find that behavior acceptable? Why is behavior that is not acceptable among adults acceptable between adults and children?
Saying “Children are different!” is not an argument, it is an unsupported assertion. Saying “I was hit and I came out okay!” is not an argument, it is weak anecdotal evidence. All those people who say that being hit, verbally abused, or manipulated by their parents in childhood was no big deal, take a moment to reflect on your feelings toward your parents. Is it really true that it did you no harm?
Have any of you ever wondered to what degree “acting out” by kids, to which the solution is allegedly coercion, is in fact a result of past coercion? How would you feel if you were thwarted in almost everything you tried to do, and given no explanation other than a smack? How would you feel if you had to ask permission to eat or not eat, to sleep or stay awake, to go to the bathroom? And finally, how are children supposed to learn to be rational if you do not demonstrate what it is to be rational by talking to them as though they were? Every time an adult tells a child “Because I said so!” they are admitting that they have no good reason other than to exert their authority over the child, and they are teaching their children that might makes right.
And to the guy who smacked his kid for trying to stick his keys in a electric socket: if you’re the big responsible adult looking out for your kid’s safety, why didn’t you have those plastic child-proof thingies in the socket? If you left a knife laying around and the kid cut himself playing with it, would you blame yourself or the child?
Virginia wrote:
And to the guy who smacked his kid for trying to stick his keys in a electric socket: if you’re the big responsible adult looking out for your kid’s safety, why didn’t you have those plastic child-proof thingies in the socket?
We did, at home. And we had some in the suitcase. But we’d only been in the hotel room two minutes and hadn’t had a chance to child-proof it yet. Perfect safety is only possible in static situations.
If you left a knife laying around and the kid cut himself playing with it, would you blame yourself or the child?
Myself–and I do blame myself for when he hurt himself with a fork I’d left in his reach. But since I’m not infallible I have to provide the best training to my children I can. That means providing the training in a manner they can understand.
Effective parenting has to be driven by what works, not pretty theories.
The pretty theories inform the effective parenting.