6 ms·
How is hitting a child not physical violence? What definition of violence are you using which doesn't include hitting children?
by AndrewDucker 8y ago
How is hitting a child not physical violence?
What definition of violence are you using which doesn't include hitting children?
- war1025 8y agoThere is a huge difference between swatting someone to get their attention and hitting someone with enough force to cause injury.
- lmm 8y agoIf it's meant as a punishment it's not "to get their attention"; it's done to inflict pain. Again, it wouldn't be acceptable with an adult; just apply the same standard.
- JamesBarney 8y agoI don't think how to deal with an adult is a good guide for what's an acceptable way to deal with children. For instance if someone were to put their wife in timeout or take away her allowance that would make them an abusive a-hole, but these are perfectly acceptable punishments for a child. Likewise leaving one's wife is an acceptable option for an adult but not for a child.
- ConceptJunkie 8y agoI would put my child in time-out if he left his wife.
- war1025 8y agoChildren are driven mainly by emotion. Particularly young children. Pain is an emotion that tends to override other emotions. A brief, sharp pain can snap them out of an emotional loop they found themselves caught in. Since the pain is very brief, they tend to revert back to a much more reasonable state afterwards. All that said, yes there is a difference between parenting and abuse. However, children are not tiny adults. They are tiny humans. You can often tell how they are feeling or why they are feeling that way, but it isn't by thinking the way a well-adjusted adult would. The whole point of parenting is to help them get to that point eventually.
- ConceptJunkie 8y agoAnd 99% of the non-spanking arguments ignore these truths and seek to treat children like tiny adults. If treating children like adults were possible, then we would redefine them to be adults and let them go on with their lives. If someone acts the same way at 25 that he acts at 13, that person would be a sociopath. But 13-year-olds are rarely sociopaths (i.e., they are only when truly mentally ill). Children can't function the same way adults do, and we can't treat them the same way, full stop.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Maken 8y ago>Again, it wouldn't be acceptable with an adult; just apply the same standard. And that's pretty much the key point. You cannot pretend children are adults.
- ConceptJunkie 8y agoIf we could treat children the way we treat adults, they wouldn't be children, they'd be adults. This is the kind of willful obtuseness the poster upthread is talking about.
- savingthrow 8y agoI'm not asking people to treat children as adults. I'm just saying that hitting a child is always as abusive as hitting an adult, and often more so because the child has no chance of escape. There are many ways of parenting, and msot of them do not include violence against the child. This is why hitting children is illegal in many countries. Never mind treating children as adults: how about we treat them as humans, with rights that need to be protected?
- weberc2 8y agoOur society draws lots of important distinctions between adults and children.
- weberc2 8y agoA definition of violence that doesn't distinguish between a completely non-injurious form of discipline and an abusive, injurious form is not very useful and its proponents are willfully obtuse.
- savingthrow 8y agoIt is injurious. It causes harm. We know it causes harm. But let's go with your incorrect assertion that it doesn't cause harm. Try slapping one of your co-workers, and then in court saying "but it was a completely non-injurious form of discipline" and see how far you get.
- weberc2 8y agoCitation needed and I’m not the legal nor moral guardian of my coworkers. What a terrible analogy.
- unknownkadath 8y agoYou don't get it. If we hit our children more, we can solve global warming. See? Also, this is why you should be a patriot and subscribe to Science rather than Nature.