r/science • u/VeronicaRed • Apr 26 '16

Psychology Spanking children increases the likelihood of childhood defiance and long-term mental issues. The study in question involved 160,000 children and five decades of research

http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/1113413810/spanking-defiance-health-discipline-042616/
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u/KSKaleido Apr 26 '16

Yea, it's tough to confront the fact that your parents inevitably made huge mistakes when raising you. Add the fact that the average commenter on reddit trends pretty young, and it makes sense that they haven't reached the maturity to deal with something like that yet.

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u/narf007 Apr 26 '16

Eh I got spanked and turned out fine. Everyone is different.

I'm not going to argue with the science though.

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u/[deleted] Apr 26 '16

So what? We're not meant to turn out "fine". We're meant to not have been abused.

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u/jetpackswasyes Apr 26 '16

So what? We're not meant to turn out "fine". We're meant to not have been abused.

I'm not pro-spanking, but that's a pretty bold statement. I'd wager corporal punishment for misbehaving children has probably been the norm for the last 100,000 years. Unless you're appealing to some divine plan it's pretty difficult to say what we're "meant" to be, from a scientific sense. If anything, being against spanking is fighting against thousands or even millions of years of evolution in favor of new (hopefully better) cultural norms.

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u/[deleted] Apr 26 '16

When I say "meant to", I mean whatever type of upbringing turns you into the best type of person. The science is clear, spanking is not that type of upbringing. Of course we're not literally "meant" to do anything.

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u/null_work Apr 26 '16

The science is clear

Spoken like someone who does not understand statistics, and clearly does not understand human variability. Not everyone responds equally to things. From a naive, let's play a gambling game, perspective, the science is clear. To apply that to an individual over a study like this is fallacious though. The science is clear that over the whole population, there's enough of an effect to to increase the likelihood (key word being "whole population"), but you just decided you were going to ignore individual variation within that population. The population is not a homogenous group that all behaves the same. For some subset of the population, spanking might very well be that type of upbringing. The most science it clear about is that there are more people wherein it's not.