The Anti-Spanking Movement

The Anti-Spanking Movement
Detective Robert R. Surgenor

Who is responsible for the anti-spanking movement. During the past twenty years, the non-spanking advocate (or NSA for short) has made great strides in convincing the public that spanking a child is harmful and counterproductive. They have been so successful that we are afraid to spank our children in public.

So who is the NSA? As far back as 1950, psychologists began experimenting with the notion that physical force used against a child taught the child to be aggressive. In other words, spanking a child taught the child to hit others. Now although this sounded logical, many parents who had raised their children with the "rod of correction" doubted the validity of this new claim. Their life experiences had been the opposite. They had found that a child who was spanked for misbehavior was usually better behaved than the child who was never spanked. The NSA had a serious obstacle to overcome, which was the past success of spanking.

Then in 1952, Doctor Benjamin Spock published his book, Baby and Child Care. Renowned for his expertise in child rearing, Doctor Spock counseled parents against using punitive discipline when raising their children. Using much of what was seen by many as Freudian theory, Spock set the tone for what is becoming the attitude of many modern day child rearing "experts," which is to advise parents that they should never punish their children. Then in 1970, Thomas Gordon wrote the one million best seller, Parent Effectiveness Training, in which he suggests that parents stop punishing their children and to start treating them "much as we treat a friend or a spouse." Many of the psychologists and child-development authorities jumped on the permissive bandwagon and began publishing anti-spanking and anti-punishment literature of their own.
How did this advice affect our culture? At first, people did not take much of the permissive mumbo-jumbo seriously. An article in the April 13, 1998 issue of the U.S. News and World Report states "This onslaught of advice did not, on the surface, appear to alter parent's attitudes toward spanking very much." Unfortunately, enough parents began to follow the advice of the peddlers of permissiveness to create a major problem, one that was immediately recognized by those involved in my lines of work, law enforcement. It was becoming apparent to police officers that more and more kids had no fear of authority.

Murray Straus and Irwin Hyman are the two best known non-spanking advocates in today's arena. In 1994, Straus published his book, Beating the Devil Out of Them, which concluded that even the slightest slap on the bucket of a toddler resulted in a juvenile delinquent who the parents could not control. Hyman, a psychologist at Temple University, wrote his manual in 1997 titled The Case Against Spanking. Both Straus and Hyman promoted their theory, that spanking causes violent children, on numerous television talk shows. In 1997, I had the opportunity to debate Straus in front of a national audience on an MS-NBC news special about spanking. It was then that I realized how dedicated the NSA is to eliminate spanking as a form of discipline in our society. In 2000, Irwin Hyman appeared with me on the Montel Williams television show, and spent a great deal of time interrupting me and telling the audience that my findings were "contrary with all of the research." Hyman continues to insist that "all of the research" shows kids who are spanked grow up to be violent. I began to realize how dangerous the Straus and Hyman information was. It was then that I became dedicated to proving how dangerous the non-spanking theory actually is.

Straus has come under a great deal of criticism by others in the field of psychology, although you won't see this disagreement on the evening news. In the April 13, 1998 issue of the US News and World Report, an article on the spanking issue states "The problem with Straus and Hyman's pronouncements was that they were based on a body of research that is at best inconclusive and at worst badly flawed." Obviously, Hyman is not too upset over this criticism. His reply was "There's enough evidence to decide that we don't need it [spanking] even if the evidence isn't that strong." Straus goes on to say "The question should be turned around. We should say, 'Give me a good reason why you should hurt kids.'" I would say to Mr. Hyman, there is one good reason. Spanking causes pain. That one element, pain, is the only element that instills the healthy fear factor in a child that stays with him as he grows up. That fear factor prevents that sixteen-year-old teenager from punching mom in the face when he gets angry. That fear factor keeps that teenager from mouthing off to the police officer when he gets a traffic ticket. Unfortunately, with less spanking in today's society, we are seeing more and more kids who are not afraid of authority of any kind.

The shelves in the local bookstores are being flooded with anti-spanking literature. With the advent of the Internet, web pages began springing up that spelled out the evils of spanking. Those who were dedicating their lives to the elimination of punishment in child rearing, like Penelope Leach, Aletha Solter, and Jordan Riak, began publishing web pages loaded with misinformation that allegedly proved that spanking children was harmful. You might remember Jordan Riak. He was the one-man crusade in Oakland California who attempted to have a law passed that would have declared the city a "No Spanking Zone." Fortunately, Riak's efforts failed.

Although there are many professional studies that show that the use of corporal punishment results in a better behaved child, the liberal media continues to proclaim the faulty findings of Straus, Hyman, Leach, and Riak. Let's hope Christian parents don't fall for their deceit. These non-spanking advocates are like those mentioned in Romans 1:22, "Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools."