How to respond to the "I Was Spanked, And I Turned Out Fine" Argument

1) that's not a vaid argument, only 1/3rd of long term heavy smokers get lung cancer, someone can smoke 60 a day for 40 years and say "I smoked and I was fine" and even though that might be true it wouldn't disprove the evidence that broadly speaking smoking large quantitites over a long period of time is harmful.
Likewise there is a large body of evidence that shows broadly speaking spanking is harmful, and just because you turned out fine doesn't disprove that evidence.

93% of studies on spanking agree It is harmful to children. This has been called "an almost unheard of consensus" in childrearing studies - in other words people who reasearch childrearing find it hard to agree on just about anything, but that spanking is harmful is just about as close to an established fact as you can get.

If you choose to smoke you take the risk with your health but if you spank you take the risk with your child's state of mental health.

Here are the facts on spanking, according to the last 20-30 years of science:
children who are physically punished even mildly:
- Tend to have a lower IQ and are less able to reason effectively.
- Have a poorer relationship with their parents than those who are reared non-aggressively.
- Are more likely to resort to violence as a means of solving problems and even become chronically defiant.
- Are more likely to smoke and twice as likely develop alcohol/drug addictions.
- Are more likely to develop anxiety disorders and depression and show symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
- Are more likely to display anti-social behaviour and abuse their spouse or children later in life.

The use of aggression on the young gains immediate compliance but results in more aggressive children prone to delinquency, anti-social behaviour and crime. The consequences correlate to dose, the more physical punishment, the greater the effects, and effects tend to reduce once physical punishment stops.

While many of parents justify spanking, 85% say they would rather not if there was an alternative.

2) you probably did turn out fine but that doesn't mean you couldn't have turned out even better if your parents knew other ways to influence your behaviour that didn't involve violence.

 
3) you shouldn't need an argument because we don't need an argument to know that a man shouldn't hit his wife, we don't hit our waiters, associates, employees, bosses, friends, spouses and we shouldn't hit children whose personalities and brains are still forming.

There is no gray area when it comes to whether or not hitting your spouse is acceptible, and there is no gray area in hitting your child. There are over 30 countries in which spanking is banned, Children in Switzerland, and Austria are not running wild in the street. Those countries have become less violent as a whole - it's more than likely a direct consequence of people hitting their children less since hitting even a couple of times (if the parent does not apologise and admit they should have used a non-violent approach) teaches that violence can solve problems in some circumstances so that belief comes integrated in the psyche. There is no need for violence and the alternatives which are expounded in books like Parent Effectiveness Training, How to talk so kids will listen and listen so kids will talk, unconditional parenting, etc. actually use opportunities that most parents would see as a reason to spank as a useful time to teach good values and to bring caregiver and child closer together,





When you spank you're doing two bad things:
1) you're teaching kids to be selfish - ie. don't do this because of the consequences to you (as opposed to the consequences to others)~
2) you're missing the opportunity to use other methods which will teach your children both how to reason and think for themselves, and genuine values that concern caring about the consequences of their actions.

having said all that, rather than make those arguments which are all true, logical, and reasonable, the suggestion is to ask the spanking advocate to give an example of a situation where they think spanking is warranted and demonstrate how the progressive approaches would acheive their aims better within that particular situation.