At my parents' house for Thanksgiving, I was making gravy and couldn't find a wooden spoon. A bit sheepishly, my mother admitted that she'd stopped buying them once my youngest sibling got too old for spankings. We used to have a simple system for eventually demoting the newer, food-worthy spoons to bottom-smacking detail (lest we wind up with some temper tantrum or sass in our stew). But it turns out the repurposing was itself the purpose, and there's no longer a single wooden spoon in the house.
(A friend with a similar upbringing once told me that he still cringes when his mother reaches toward him for a hug--even though they have a close and loving relationship and he doesn't think her punishment techniques were ever over the line--because she used to smack him in the face when he was mouthing off. Always sensitive to a serious moment, I pointed out that the wooden-spoon thing has kept me from eating any cooked food for the past 15-20 years.)
In high school speech class, my first assignment was to make a traditional argument for a position and subject of our choice. I chose corporal punishment, arguing that, while there's no evidence that it's the best or only good way to discipline children, used responsibly and lovingly it's one good one. I might still believe that--anecdotally, I know an awful lot of people who grew up like I did and are pretty well-adjusted, parent-loving adults.
On the other hand, my professional life has also exposed me to the research community's consensus that the effects of different kinds of spanking range not from good to bad but from bad to worse. And my theological development makes me a bit uncomfortable with the idea that you can use physical pain or violence to promote good character (though I have trouble describing the kind of careful, loving spanking that my parents used as "violence" with a straight face). And I know that many parents who ARE child abusers by anyone's standard got there via escalation of well-intentioned and considered corporal punishment.
Anyway, Massachusetts might be on the way to being the first state to ban spanking. If "blogging" was an acronym, the "b" would stand for "burying the lede is okay, especially if you don't have an editor."
Via World magazine.
Jesus Passion made present John 18 1 19 42
5 weeks ago
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ReplyDeletethanks for sharing the background story. as you point out, i think any intentional physical pain inflicted on children is pretty messed up, but i'm a raised-by-episcopalian-actors latte-liberal, so there ya go.
ReplyDeleteit looks like that world link doesn't work.
Thanks--I fixed the link.
ReplyDeleteMy ambivalent-about-religion bottled water-liberal mother spanked me, and with a wooden spoon, or more likely, as with Steve's family, several over the years. I don't think spanking is one of the great injustices of our time, but when I compare it with the expository verbal discipline my father used, the spanking was never as effective as knowing my beloved father was disappointed in something I had done. Sorry this comment is late. I should be reading your blog more, Steve.
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