Children and corporal punishment

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“Thou shalt not withhold thine hand from thy son or from thy daughter” ~ Didache of the Twelve Apostles

It was Rousseau who started the anti-spanking movement. Turning Christian anthropology on its head, he believed that children were born naturally good and only corrupted by society, in particular parents and the Church.

There are a lot of things that need to be done to reclaim the world from the evil unleashed by Rousseau and the 18th century revolutionaries ( It is curious, but not philosophically inconsistent, that the Jacobins were against spanking, but so fond of the guillotine) – but bringing back spanking would be a good start.
 
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Catholic teaching and the Catechism makes it clear that punishment is not simply utilitarian i.e. for deterrence purposes. The natural law asserts there is an objective order of justice that must be respected if human beings are to flourish. Punishment, then, exists for the sake of restoring that natural order of justice if it has been broken by sin and misbehavior. Punishment is therefore a moral requirement, and not merely a utilitarian remedy to teach and deter.

This is what parents (and children if the truth be known) mean when we say a spanking “clears the air” --it very effectively “wipes the slate clean” in a cathartic fashion!
 
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GospelOfMatthew said:
‘Obey’ is too harsh of a term. Obedience really has no place in any type of relationship. It should be complying out of love not out of requirement or compulsion
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Aquinas wrote a whole section on the Virtue of Obedience. Given a choice between his understanding of what the Church teaches, and yours…I go with the Angelic Doctor.
 
I admit that there are a small minority of saints, and important Catholics (not the current Pope) who have been against corporal punishment, but Aquinas is not one of them. The Angelic doctor specifically wrote about it in the Summa Theologica , Question 65.

The significance of quoting the Didache is when it was written – about 50 A.D… – earlier than the Synoptic Gospels. It is also the first writing by the Church Fathers specifically condemning abortion.

Corporal punishment was common, and the need for it unquestionably understood, in Catholic homes and schools until 30-40 years ago. This has changed because of liberal/modernist secular influences –not because of a deeper understanding of revelation or the natural law.
 
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You don’t have to look back in time for corporal punishment.

Just look around the world. People still do it.
 
I agree.

Corporal punishment is not always abuse but there is a time when the child is older that more forms of non corporal discipline can be applied, especially after age 7, which the Church considers the beginning of the age of reason.

Also discipline should be adjusted to the individual temperament of the child.

What I disagree with and vehemently against are parents who use a child as a scapegoat and an easy target to take out their frustration on.
 
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Indeed, my mother-in-law passed along the spanking paddle she used to my wife, who passed it along to our oldest daughter when she became a mother. It is helping raise a third generation of great Catholics!

But we are an increasingly embattled minority. And I don’t know how any fair observer can argue this is for the better.
 
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No, just a little wooden paddle made specifically for spanking children. My mother-in-law bought it in a drug store. It is shaped like a hand and says “Mom’s Helping Hand” on it.

It’s hard to believe now, that these types of parenting aids were readily available just a few years ago!

Do we really believe that we have become so enlightened in such a short period of time?
 
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Oh okay

My family was friends with immigrant Portuguese families and they used a wooden spoon.

They babysat me as a child and I got spanked along with their kids. It didn’t hurt but it sure got my attention and let me know I had crossed a line.
 
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There are a few topics in which including your definition of said topic might be helpful.

I define corporal punishment as:
I define spanking as:
I define discipline as:

Not that anyone is going to start doing this but I’m certain that we’re all picturing very different things regarding one or all of these.
 
I grew up in the 80’s in the rural south, where kids got punished and disciplined in ways that would never happen now. I personally don’t think you should punish a child with a switch/wooden spoon/or belt but there is nothing wrong with a spanking if your child is out of control.
 
Sarcelle said:
What I disagree with and vehemently against are parents who use a child as a scapegoat and an easy target to take out their frustration on.
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Yes, bad parenting is still with us.

What I see today is parents frequently calling 911 when their child is out of their control. Many of these parents will even lie to the police so that the police arrest the child as a consequence, thus putting them in a juvie holding cell as their ‘time-out’. 9 times out of 10 there are no formal charges applied though.
 
GospelOfMatthew said:
But I’m saying they should do it out of love not fear of punishment.
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With God, there are two sorts of contrition = perfect and imperfect.

Perfect contrition is a goal, it is when we seek forgivness because we love God and we are sorry that we did something against him because of love.

Imperfect contrition is when we seek forgiveness because we we are afraid of hell.

Both are valid, both will restore our relationship after we commit grave sins. Most of us spend many years expressing imperfect Contrition and when we mature as Christians may reach perfect contrition. Others, rare people, are very spiritually advanced at a young age in their spiritual life. That is the exception, not the rule.

This is mirrored in the parent child relationship. There are rare kids who have a maturity level beyond their years. Their goal is to make their parents happy and they obey purely out of love for their parent. Most of us are not that mature.

Heck, a lot of us adults only obey the speed limit out of fear of getting a ticket!
 
Much of the anti-spanking “research” originates from the University of New Hampshire and the late Dr. Murray Straus. Straus claimed to be a scientist, but he was not – he was a progressive ideologue who created an anti-spanking industry. There was a massive rebellion within his staff because he was designing experiments that would lead to a predetermined outcome on spanking.

However, the liberal media has given a platform to this stuff – passing it off to parents as science, while ignoring the objective research of scientists like Dr. Diana Baurind (Straus’s former assistant) whose studies have concluded that parents over the ages have been right – spanking is a helpful parenting tool!
 
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