Spare the Rod, Save the Child

Spanking is one of the oldest forms of discipline. There are still many people who regard it as a perfectly legitimate form of corporeal punishment & they forcefully defend their right to raise their children as they wish. However the research in recent years is pretty clear. The more kids are spanked, the more likely they’ll emerge as violent adults. The key here is ‘the more kids are spanked’ suggesting that if kids are spanked only a little, then they won’t be violent or at least not too violent. If you still don't buy this, here's something that might help. I recently heard a report that suggests spanking also leads to lowered IQ scores in kids. The immediate reason offered for this was that it stands to reason lower IQ people are the ones most likely to spank, therefore they’d be producing lower IQ kids, but that doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. There are plenty of very bright, intelligent people who believed in good old-fashioned spanking. My father was one of the smartest people I’ve ever known, so there goes that theory. What does hold up, however, is the emerging science of neurophysiology. It seems that when children are spanked or otherwise exposed to violence, their brains produce substances that have an adverse effect on cognitive development, i.e. intelligence. So here we have a case of ‘hard science’ supporting what was previously just a hunch. This is a very typical scenario. Given enough time, there’s no doubt in my mind that science will answer all questions. Yet there is still going to be a significant number of people who have nothing but contempt for science and therefore disregard these findings. Their children will be the ones to suffer.