5 ms·

Agreed, spanking is viable as long as the child is still young. Also, it should only be done on the flat of the palm or on the buttocks, and not too hard. The g

Agreed, spanking is viable as long as the child is still young. Also, it should only be done on the flat of the palm or on the buttocks, and not too hard. The goal isn't to inflict pain, but to send the child a message that what he did was wrong. The kid will most likely cry even though your hitting his/her hand will not really hurt. Its the fact that you're hitting them that they don't like, cause its a negative connotation. Aside from it, lots of love and affection! Kids need attention while they're young or they'll claim you're a bad parent. They need affirmation.

curi 19y ago
What criterion did you use for determining which are the best places to hit children?
Tichy 19y ago
Oh my god this thread is really shocking! So because you can not reason logically with a two year old, you somehow think that if you spank them, they will make the logical connection? That doesn't add up - either they are capable of understanding, then it shouldn't matter if you say "no" or hit them (in a logical sense, emotionally of course there is a difference). Or they are not capable of making the connection. In which case what you are trying to do is conditioning them, rooting "being hit by daddy" into their nervous system - maiming their soul! I can't believe this thread, really.
- rms 19y ago
  It's just another embarrassing thing about America... trying to take away spanking would be worse than trying to take away guns. I think the European countries that have outlawed spanking are much more civilized. Curi: Do you think states should outlaw spanking, or do anything to discourage it? Or do parents have a fundamental right to hit their children without causing injury, misguided as it may be?
  - Tichy 19y ago
    I wonder if "hackers" are more likely to spank their kids because they consider them to be just another hackable system, and whatever works to "modify it's behaviour" is ok? I am completely stunned that this kind of thing has reared it's ugly head on hacker news...
    - rms 19y ago
      I am confident that the vast majority of people here don't spank their kids; it's just that people who do feel strongly in favor of it and are more likely to speak out.
      - curi 19y ago
        How are you confident of that? I'd like to be. But I have self-selected friends that don't give me any valid way to extrapolate what proportion of smart hackers advocate spanking. Similarly I don't know how to make a valid estimate of how many people here are atheists. I have noticed reasonably frequent atheist references, so I think a fair amount of people here are atheists. But parenting comes up rarely, and people often have views on parenting that are poorly integrated with the rest of their personality.
  - curi 19y ago
    I don't think parents have a fundamental right to hit their children. What about children's rights? And I don't like to analyze things in terms of rights, anyway. But I don't think spanking should be banned today in the USA. I don't want to make 90% of families (or whatever the number is) into criminals overnight, and make the debate go underground. A ban wouldn't stop spanking; we need to persuade more people first. I do expect that some time in the future we will rightly ban spanking. I wouldn't object to the State taking steps to discourage spanking, but I don't think the State is really any good at persuasion. Their anti-drug and anti-smoking campaigns and stuff like that don't work. What we need is for people to start believing that rationality isn't just for doing science, and maybe your job, it's for everything including parenting and relationships. And to learn something about which ways of arguing and thinking are capable of finding better conclusions than you started with, and which aren't.

curi 19y ago

What criterion did you use for determining which are the best places to hit children?

Tichy 19y ago

Oh my god this thread is really shocking! So because you can not reason logically with a two year old, you somehow think that if you spank them, they will make the logical connection? That doesn't add up - either they are capable of understanding, then it shouldn't matter if you say "no" or hit them (in a logical sense, emotionally of course there is a difference). Or they are not capable of making the connection. In which case what you are trying to do is conditioning them, rooting "being hit by daddy" into their nervous system - maiming their soul! I can't believe this thread, really.

rms 19y ago
It's just another embarrassing thing about America... trying to take away spanking would be worse than trying to take away guns. I think the European countries that have outlawed spanking are much more civilized. Curi: Do you think states should outlaw spanking, or do anything to discourage it? Or do parents have a fundamental right to hit their children without causing injury, misguided as it may be?
- Tichy 19y ago
  I wonder if "hackers" are more likely to spank their kids because they consider them to be just another hackable system, and whatever works to "modify it's behaviour" is ok? I am completely stunned that this kind of thing has reared it's ugly head on hacker news...
  - rms 19y ago
    I am confident that the vast majority of people here don't spank their kids; it's just that people who do feel strongly in favor of it and are more likely to speak out.
    - curi 19y ago
      How are you confident of that? I'd like to be. But I have self-selected friends that don't give me any valid way to extrapolate what proportion of smart hackers advocate spanking. Similarly I don't know how to make a valid estimate of how many people here are atheists. I have noticed reasonably frequent atheist references, so I think a fair amount of people here are atheists. But parenting comes up rarely, and people often have views on parenting that are poorly integrated with the rest of their personality.
- curi 19y ago
  I don't think parents have a fundamental right to hit their children. What about children's rights? And I don't like to analyze things in terms of rights, anyway. But I don't think spanking should be banned today in the USA. I don't want to make 90% of families (or whatever the number is) into criminals overnight, and make the debate go underground. A ban wouldn't stop spanking; we need to persuade more people first. I do expect that some time in the future we will rightly ban spanking. I wouldn't object to the State taking steps to discourage spanking, but I don't think the State is really any good at persuasion. Their anti-drug and anti-smoking campaigns and stuff like that don't work. What we need is for people to start believing that rationality isn't just for doing science, and maybe your job, it's for everything including parenting and relationships. And to learn something about which ways of arguing and thinking are capable of finding better conclusions than you started with, and which aren't.