"Parenting Without Punishing"

On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 05:15:32 -0500, "Nathan A. Barclay"
wrote:


"Kane" wrote in message
. com...
"Nathan A. Barclay" wrote in message
...
"R. Steve Walz" wrote in message
...
Nathan A. Barclay wrote:
(originally responding to Kane)

If I thought you were honestly
interested in listening to me,
---------------
Is THAT what you really think we're here for???

A conversation involves talking and listening on both sides. If
you
aren't
willing to listen, all you're really here for is to preach at
people,
and
being preached at is not MY reason for being here.

Of course not. It's obvious YOU are here to preach. Ain't we all
though.

I'm here both to offer my ideas and to learn from the ideas of
others. To
me, it's a feedback process: if what I learn from others helps me
refine my
ideas, the ideas I offer others will be better. Yes, I push hard
with my
ideas when I've put enough time and thought into them that I'm pretty
sure
I'm on target. But I expect others to push back, and I value new
information, arguments, and insights they provide when they do push
back.
And while a lot of my goal in listening is to look for my next way to
attack
(which, after all, is an integral part of debate), I'm also
reevaluating my
own ideas in light of whatever new information I receive.

If people give me good reasons to change my views, the effect over
time can
be very significant even if I don't change my mind as completely as
the
people trying to convince me might like. But in order to do so, they
have
to either present arguments compatible with my underlying
philosophical
viewpoints or make a convincing case for why I should change those
underlying philosophical viewpoints. Otherwise, they're just (to use
your
analogy) hammering away at the carburator and accomplishing nothing
useful.
(And yes, I recognize quite well that I have the same obligation when
I want
to try to convince others. On the other hand, you might note that I
often
preface things I say with something like, "In my view," indicating
that I am
merely expressing my view and explaining why I hold it and not
necessarily
trying to persuade the person I'm having the discussion with to adopt
it.)

Do you frequently delude yourself in this way? It seems to be a theme
in your postings. You profess, it appears, to a civil discourse laced
with barely concealed contempt for your opponent, while babbling
screed as old as inflicting beatings on those weaker than one's self.

Nathan, you aren't offering anything new.

If you have really studied the issue we are discussing you'd not say
such things.....you'd already know the answers and counterclaims to
your questions and claims.

You delude yourself when you state: ".....I am merely expressing my
view and explaining why I hold it and not necessarily trying to
persuade the person I'm having the discussion with to adopt it."

Truth is we are constantly trying to influence others. We even do it
in rehearsal when we are alone.

You are out of touch with yourself. A common occurance of a trait most
often seen in children who have had to disassociate to survive the
awful truth that first slap, physical or psychological, they got from
their parent.

Your future was cast at that moment. You either became a rage filled
vengeful beast, waiting his or her turn to inflict pain on others, or
a coward cringing in a dark corner running life by remote control
instead of living it.

Some can even combine the two.

As your mind clears, as it often does over time, you will come to see
what I say is true. This is the horror that parenting by pain
produces.

As your mind clears you'll come to understand what all the agony we
humans inflict on each other and on this planet is about.

And it could be paradise.

Sad, idnit?

Nathan

Kane

"Nathan A. Barclay" wrote in message ...
"Kane" wrote in message
om...
On Wed, 23 Jun 2004 16:11:55 -0500, "Nathan A. Barclay"
wrote:

YOU just took it, instead of staying on task and answering the actual
questions asked.

What I did instead of "answering the actual questions asked" was reframe the
issue in a way that I hoped would cut through the clutter and get to the
heart of the matter.

Mmmm....well......that COULD be what you were up to. Let's see.

The question was this: Is society taking a similar view on spanking of
children that they did on beating wives? My claim: it was, and this
is, a moral evolution. Moral questions drove suffrage. Moral questions
drive child "suffrage."

You claim, correct me if I am wrong, that the motivating factors were
practicial realities. My response is that humans are not known for
being motivated by the practical, but they are by the
emotional...which is often the major, if not total component of a
moral question and argument.

So far so good?

Was, or was not, the concept that women are significantly less
capable than men, including the analogy with the parent/child
relationship, a central argument in support of men's having
authority to punish their wives? If you don't think it was, then
obviously one of us is off base regarding the historical
aspect of the situation.

Yep, you are correct.

Okay. From this point, there are two different interpretations. Your
interpretation is that abolition of husbands' authority to spank their wives
was part of an ongoing process of discovering that all use of corporal
punishment is wrong.

Yep. A moral question and motivation. Withing "wrong" however, lies
that very real possibility of practical matters and basic
truths...even in things such as economy, and reactivity (like she
might just gut you in the middle of the night if she get's tired of
your ****ing abusiveness).

My interpretation is that the fact that wives are
presumed to be mature, responsible adults who don't need someone else to
exercise authority over them is critical to why the law should not give
husbands the authority to spank their wives, and that if wives were no more
mature and responsible than five-year-olds (yet still had five-year-olds'
ability to control their behavior when they choose to), a different
conclusion would probably be warranted. (Of course if women were like that,
none of them would be who and what they actually are.)

Which has just about zero practicality in any component as an argument
for suffrage. You language is ALL about moral questions and choices.
You STILL have a bug up your butt about this. I can't help but wonder
why.

From a moral perspective, either view can be defended depending on one's
underlying philosophical beliefs and values.

Yeah, like I said. smile

But because either view can be
defended, it is not logically sound to use the fact that we abolished
corporal punishment of wives as evidence that we should abolish corporal
punishment of children, or that parents should never spank their own
children.

I guess there is only one sane response to make to that bit of
overweening self delusion:

Say whaaaaaaaaaaaat?

Or, more precisely, the argument is only logically sound relative
to one of the two interpretations of why husbands shouldn't have the
authority to spank their wives, and is therefore useless for convincing
those of us who follow the other interpretation.

You need a psychic laxative. Call the Hotline.

Unless you can sort that out in terms a less intellectually indowed
fellow like myself can fathom, you just left out about 98% of the
human race in your explaination, or claims, or whatever the hell it is
you just offered.

A grand desplay of intellect, I'll have to take for granted, but a
larger display of hubris. To whom are you addressing yourself? The
doctoral committee listening to your defense of your thesis?

The least you could do is heavily footnote your presentation here with
some referrences to support your claims.

I gave you the source I like to use when contemplating women's
suffrage and its history. What do YOU have to offer to refute my
shooting down your argument that it was NOT a moral motivation that
brought about the first laws protecting women, and why would that NOT
be a perfectly sound argument for the coming push for laws protecting
children?

And why do you wish to have THIS mixed up with your argument in favor
of spanking children?

It's a side road. It is a diversion from the topic. I've played with
you long enough.

I wish to discuss the effects of CP on children, not whether or not
there will be laws against it in the US motivated, finally not by what
we discuss here...the practicalities of spanking, but the MORAL
indignation of enough of the population to make it pass.

Are you interested in exploring the moral issues involved, and the
research now extant that shows some of the arguments we have made are
perfectly valid?

Or are you fishing for another diversion in the face of being proven
wrong?

Ever read the Embry report on his studies on street entries of
children (a traffic safety study)?

They show clearly that CP reinforces ENTRY ATTEMPTS, not compliance to
NOT approach traffic boundaries.

Those that are not totally lost in their bias and who have exposure to
children at all ages and stages of development don't even need Embry
to tell them that. They see what happens when a child is punished for
doing something, or even ordered NOT to do something.

The end result has always been that the child somehow, someway, does
the exploring that nature intends them to do, OR, THEY GET SICK AND
BECOME CRIPPLED HUMANS WHO CANNOT DETERMINE REALITY. And we have this
miserable world we live in.

Personally I wish everyone could live in the world I do. Mine is
filled with peace and good neighbors who care for each other, but
around us we see what is up.

I know, and annually vacation for a week with, about 60 or so families
at camp, that do NOT use CP on their children. It is a very very
different world than most parents, those that use CP, report. They
don't even use punishment.

Who would think that with 80 or so children in one encampment for a
whole week that it would be a consistently peaceful invironment, or
that the occasional bout of frustration for a child would be easily
and gently handled by whatever adult happened to be closest?

Not a child there expects to be hit or even punished by an
adult...simply helped if they are stuck...so they seldom are stuck.

And these are all kinds of families, though I notice entrepeneurship
seems to be prevalent. All levels of income ( a few families are
scholarshiped) but they all have this one thing in common...they have
children, and they do NOT parent by pain and humiliation.........and
Nathan, IT'S ****ING EASY TO DO.

It doesn't take extra time or trouble. It is extremely rare that any
kind of parent child "discussion" even takes place. Kids know what
they are supposed to be doing and they do it. Because they haven't
been derailed by the betrayal of a hitting parent. Not even by a
punishing parent.

THEY KNOW THEY HAVE A HELPER AND PROTECTOR IN THEIR PARENT, and in the
parents that come to this annual camp. They older children even
provide the same safety and support to the younger.

We all, parents and children alike, give educational or just discovery
presentations as part of camp. Everything from martial arts (my wife
and I will be doing it again this year) to training in developing the
capacity for idenifying substances by their odor. Last year we graded
beers, microbrews, and then drank up the samples....R R R R ....

We all cook and clean. We all play together, children and adults in
the same games and same activities. Only us oldsters take much time
away for ourselves, and not that much because the kids are so neat to
be with.

About the worst thing that has ever happened in 16 years of these
annual camps is a bee sting, or someone ran out of relish for
sandwiches.

And we don't sit around an even discuss parenting issues all that
much. It's rare. And we don't because it's too easy to even think
about much.

Nathan

You are from a world of pain you wish to perpetuate to justify your
childhood. We are not.

Kane

"Nathan A. Barclay" wrote in message ...
"Kane" wrote in message
om...
On Wed, 23 Jun 2004 16:11:55 -0500, "Nathan A. Barclay"
wrote:

YOU just took it, instead of staying on task and answering the actual
questions asked.

What I did instead of "answering the actual questions asked" was reframe the
issue in a way that I hoped would cut through the clutter and get to the
heart of the matter.

Mmmm....well......that COULD be what you were up to. Let's see.

The question was this: Is society taking a similar view on spanking of
children that they did on beating wives? My claim: it was, and this
is, a moral evolution. Moral questions drove suffrage. Moral questions
drive child "suffrage."

You claim, correct me if I am wrong, that the motivating factors were
practicial realities. My response is that humans are not known for
being motivated by the practical, but they are by the
emotional...which is often the major, if not total component of a
moral question and argument.

So far so good?

Was, or was not, the concept that women are significantly less
capable than men, including the analogy with the parent/child
relationship, a central argument in support of men's having
authority to punish their wives? If you don't think it was, then
obviously one of us is off base regarding the historical
aspect of the situation.

Yep, you are correct.

Okay. From this point, there are two different interpretations. Your
interpretation is that abolition of husbands' authority to spank their wives
was part of an ongoing process of discovering that all use of corporal
punishment is wrong.

Yep. A moral question and motivation. Withing "wrong" however, lies
that very real possibility of practical matters and basic
truths...even in things such as economy, and reactivity (like she
might just gut you in the middle of the night if she get's tired of
your ****ing abusiveness).

My interpretation is that the fact that wives are
presumed to be mature, responsible adults who don't need someone else to
exercise authority over them is critical to why the law should not give
husbands the authority to spank their wives, and that if wives were no more
mature and responsible than five-year-olds (yet still had five-year-olds'
ability to control their behavior when they choose to), a different
conclusion would probably be warranted. (Of course if women were like that,
none of them would be who and what they actually are.)

Which has just about zero practicality in any component as an argument
for suffrage. You language is ALL about moral questions and choices.
You STILL have a bug up your butt about this. I can't help but wonder
why.

From a moral perspective, either view can be defended depending on one's
underlying philosophical beliefs and values.

Yeah, like I said. smile

But because either view can be
defended, it is not logically sound to use the fact that we abolished
corporal punishment of wives as evidence that we should abolish corporal
punishment of children, or that parents should never spank their own
children.

I guess there is only one sane response to make to that bit of
overweening self delusion:

Say whaaaaaaaaaaaat?

Or, more precisely, the argument is only logically sound relative
to one of the two interpretations of why husbands shouldn't have the
authority to spank their wives, and is therefore useless for convincing
those of us who follow the other interpretation.

You need a psychic laxative. Call the Hotline.

Unless you can sort that out in terms a less intellectually indowed
fellow like myself can fathom, you just left out about 98% of the
human race in your explaination, or claims, or whatever the hell it is
you just offered.

A grand desplay of intellect, I'll have to take for granted, but a
larger display of hubris. To whom are you addressing yourself? The
doctoral committee listening to your defense of your thesis?

The least you could do is heavily footnote your presentation here with
some referrences to support your claims.

I gave you the source I like to use when contemplating women's
suffrage and its history. What do YOU have to offer to refute my
shooting down your argument that it was NOT a moral motivation that
brought about the first laws protecting women, and why would that NOT
be a perfectly sound argument for the coming push for laws protecting
children?

And why do you wish to have THIS mixed up with your argument in favor
of spanking children?

It's a side road. It is a diversion from the topic. I've played with
you long enough.

I wish to discuss the effects of CP on children, not whether or not
there will be laws against it in the US motivated, finally not by what
we discuss here...the practicalities of spanking, but the MORAL
indignation of enough of the population to make it pass.

Are you interested in exploring the moral issues involved, and the
research now extant that shows some of the arguments we have made are
perfectly valid?

Or are you fishing for another diversion in the face of being proven
wrong?

Ever read the Embry report on his studies on street entries of
children (a traffic safety study)?

They show clearly that CP reinforces ENTRY ATTEMPTS, not compliance to
NOT approach traffic boundaries.

Those that are not totally lost in their bias and who have exposure to
children at all ages and stages of development don't even need Embry
to tell them that. They see what happens when a child is punished for
doing something, or even ordered NOT to do something.

The end result has always been that the child somehow, someway, does
the exploring that nature intends them to do, OR, THEY GET SICK AND
BECOME CRIPPLED HUMANS WHO CANNOT DETERMINE REALITY. And we have this
miserable world we live in.

Personally I wish everyone could live in the world I do. Mine is
filled with peace and good neighbors who care for each other, but
around us we see what is up.

I know, and annually vacation for a week with, about 60 or so families
at camp, that do NOT use CP on their children. It is a very very
different world than most parents, those that use CP, report. They
don't even use punishment.

Who would think that with 80 or so children in one encampment for a
whole week that it would be a consistently peaceful invironment, or
that the occasional bout of frustration for a child would be easily
and gently handled by whatever adult happened to be closest?

Not a child there expects to be hit or even punished by an
adult...simply helped if they are stuck...so they seldom are stuck.

And these are all kinds of families, though I notice entrepeneurship
seems to be prevalent. All levels of income ( a few families are
scholarshiped) but they all have this one thing in common...they have
children, and they do NOT parent by pain and humiliation.........and
Nathan, IT'S ****ING EASY TO DO.

It doesn't take extra time or trouble. It is extremely rare that any
kind of parent child "discussion" even takes place. Kids know what
they are supposed to be doing and they do it. Because they haven't
been derailed by the betrayal of a hitting parent. Not even by a
punishing parent.

THEY KNOW THEY HAVE A HELPER AND PROTECTOR IN THEIR PARENT, and in the
parents that come to this annual camp. They older children even
provide the same safety and support to the younger.

We all, parents and children alike, give educational or just discovery
presentations as part of camp. Everything from martial arts (my wife
and I will be doing it again this year) to training in developing the
capacity for idenifying substances by their odor. Last year we graded
beers, microbrews, and then drank up the samples....R R R R ....

We all cook and clean. We all play together, children and adults in
the same games and same activities. Only us oldsters take much time
away for ourselves, and not that much because the kids are so neat to
be with.

About the worst thing that has ever happened in 16 years of these
annual camps is a bee sting, or someone ran out of relish for
sandwiches.

And we don't sit around an even discuss parenting issues all that
much. It's rare. And we don't because it's too easy to even think
about much.

Nathan

You are from a world of pain you wish to perpetuate to justify your
childhood. We are not.

Kane

I'm sorry about taking so long replying to this. The issues are complex
enough that I didn't want to just give the kind of "off the top of my head"
response I usually do, and some of my moods are better for thoughtful,
careful writing than others. Unfortunately, in the meantime, I lost the
original version of my response when my computer crashed, but I think I'm
recapturing the gist of it here.

"Chris" wrote in message
...
In alt.parenting.spanking Nathan A. Barclay wrote:

: Of course that still leaves the issue of how many mothers might have
: started off never intending to spank, didn't like their results, and
ended
: up changing their minds and spanking at least once. When a group is
: allowed to eject at least some of its less successful results into
another
: group, that can easily make the group look more effective than it really
is.

Fair enough, but for one thing, Nathan this works both ways. Mothers
who started out spanking, recognized that it was a pernicious damaging
addiction which was harming their child and their relationship with their
child, and switched to win/win nonpunitive methods of discipline with
outstandingly good long term results, would still be counted as among the
"spanking" group. (I personally have met a couple of mothers in this
category, former spankers who are now ferverent antispankers after seeing
how cooperative discipline approaches transformed their whole parenting
experience for the better.) Use of sufficiently large sample sizes
permits random noise like this to cancel out.

Yes, it can work in more than one direction, although the situation in
Straus and Mouradian's 1998 study is not entirely symmetrical. When
spankers stop spanking, they eventually move into the "not in the last six
months" category. When non-spankers start spanking, they might be found in
any of the "spanking" categories depending on what happened in the six
months before the survey was conducted. No mothers in that study can move
from "spanking" to "non-spanking," so the "non-spanking" category can never
be forced to succeed where spanking failed in order to look good, whereas
the "spanking" categories can be forced to succeed where non-spanking
methods failed in order to look good.

Also, mothers who fail with spanking, try non-spanking techniques and fail
with those, and then go back to spanking would end up in the spanking group,
while those who fail with non-spanking techniques, try spanking and fail,
and then go back to non-spanking techniques would also land in a spanking
group (usually the "not in the last six months group) instead of in the
non-spanking group. If any such mothers were among the ones surveyed, that
would create a bias.

Perhaps more importantly, I reject your characterization of this movement as
"random noise" that should be expected to cancel out. When parents change
from spanking to non-spanking or from non-spanking to spanking, they do so
for a reason, not just as a random event. That reason might have to do with
not being satisfied with their current results, or with having someone
persuade them to change, or with some combination of the two. But because
it is not a random process, there is no way we can really know whether the
shifts roughly cancel out or whether they tend to follow some particular
pattern until someone gets around to conducting good research into the
phenomenon.

My own speculation is that because so much of our society takes a "get
tougher" attitude toward unacceptable behavior, and because practically
everyone knows how to spank but learning good alternatives to spanking
requires more specialized knowledge, it is probably more likely that parents
who start off planning not to spank but are unhappy with their results would
start spanking than that parents who start off spanking but are unhappy with
their results would stop. In absolute numbers, more spankers would probably
switch just becasue there are so many more of them. But in percentage
terms, my guess is that a larger percentage of dissatisfied non-spankers
could switch. I have no evidence to support that, and I will admit that my
biases may well be clouding my judgment, but in the absence of evidence in
either direction, all I can do is guess.

For another thing, your argument essentially reduces to special
pleading: somewhere in the interstices of the research data of the past
half century, you would have us believe, there are parents inflicting pain
on their children harmlessly and with long term beneficial results. No
one has actually come up with a research protocol yet which can separate
out these alleged successful spankers and clearly demonstrate their
existence. Are we to believe that it is only a matter of time before one
of the prospankers in academia who have been trying without success for
decades will finally get just the right set of variables and controls in
place to demonstrate this? If spanking is so harmless and beneficial to
the young, why has no one yet managed to document this fact in the form
of a publishable study after all this time and so many failed attempts?

If it weren't for the "lost it" factor, I would be inclined ot give this
argument more weight. As it is, I think it seems pretty clear that
researchers who support spanking either are not making nearly as
comprehensive an effort as you describe or are not doing a very good job of
figuring out where to look.

Another issue that complicates matters is that a significant amount of the
research regarding spanking (Gunnoe and Mariner's 1997 work among it as I
recall) is done on a "scavenger" basis working from data originally
collected for other reasons that happened to include questions about
spanking. When that type of approach is used, the researchers investigating
spanking are not the ones writing the original questions, so no matter how
much they might wish they could explore particular issues in greater depth,
they cannot explore those issues any more deeply than the questions asked in
the original survey allow. Consider, for example, the issue of "parental
warmth" as measured by observation when a person conducting a survey visits
a home, and the possibilty of "Jeckyl and Hyde" personalities in which a
mother might be loving, attentive, and wonderful when she is in a good mood
but dangerous to be around when she is in a bad mood. (And the way alcohol
and drugs affect some people can make "Hyde" even more dangerous.)

Beyond those issues, keep in mind that my conceptual model of how spanking
works is a lot more complicated than those usually applied in conducting
studies. First, in my view, it is the credible threat of spanking, not
spanking itself, that influences children's behavior. In a few very rare
cases, the threat of spanking may have an effect without a chld's ever being
spanked at all. Consider, especially, what might happen if a child sees or
hears an older sibling get spanked on very rare occasions and decides it is
something he or she wants to avoid taking a chance on experiencing first
hand. In less extreme but more typical cases among those where spanking
works relatively well, spankings do take place occasionally but the threat
(both implicit and explicit) is usually sufficient to produce acceptable
behavior without the need for actual spankings.

In contrast, if whether or not a child gets spanked has more to do with a
parent's mood than with the child's behavior, the threat of spanking is far
less credible as a deterrent. Similarly, if a parent threatens a lot but
only rarely carries out the threats, the deterrent value of the threats is
relatively low. In either of those cases, the threat of spanking is not
particularly credible, and can therefore be expected to have far less effect
on the child's behavior. Worse, even spanking itself does not create a
particularly credible threat of spanking if children can't figure out what
makes the difference between the few times they get spanked for doing
something and a much larger number of times when they do essentially the
same things and don't get spanked. (Or the children may learn to avoid
certain behaviors when a parent is in a bad mood without having their
behavior affected the rest of the time at all.)

Unfortunately, if any studies have attempted to pursue this complex a model
of how spanking works, I'm not aware of them. Instead, the studies I've
seen stick close to a much simpler does-response model that ignores how the
credible threat of spanking can play a large role in families where actual
spankings are relatively rare. That creates a serious disconnect between
the metric used to measure the role of spanking and the role spanking and
the threat thereof might actually play.

In addition, my conceptual model views the potential long-term net benefit
of spanking as MUCH smaller than the benefit that using positive techniques
whenever practical can provide. Thus, if parents who spank make
significantly less use of positive techniques than is made by those who do
not spank, it would not be hard at all for long-term benefits from the
occasional use of warnings/threats and spanking (if such benefits exist) to
be offset by a reduction in positive effects from other techniques. In the
past, I've referred to the manner in which reliance on spanking can displace
positive techniques as the "displacement effect." (Although actually, the
effect is not entirely a matter of displacement. Some of it comes from the
fact that the same sources that persuade parents not to spank often provide
them with useful positive tools, while parents who spank are more likely to
be ignorant of those tools.)

If this conceptual model is valid, it may be impossible to find spankers who
get a long-term benefit compared with non-spankers without carefully
controlling for the displacement effect. To the best of my knowledge,
efforts to control for that effect to date have not been particularly
strong. (For example, consider the wide range of possibilities "talk to the
child about his behavior" can encompass, some positive and others highly
negative.)

Finally, spanking does not necessarily have to produce a LONG-TERM benefit
to be useful. Most of the problems parents spank or threaten to spank over
are in reality short-term issues, albeit in many cases recurring ones. And
some of them involve situations where the chld's chance of not being caught
is essentially zero because the behavior occurs right under the parent's
nose. If parents can obtain a beneficial short-term result and essentially
neutral long-term results from spanking, and as long as parents are
balancing their own and their children's needs and desires in a reasonable
way, I contend that that is sufficient to justify the use of spanking. So I
do not accept the idea that spanking has to produce a demonstrable long-term
benefit in order to be justified.

At present, what we really have are two competing hypotheses that are both,
to the best of my knowledge, consistent with the data. You contend that the
correlation between spanking and negative outcomes found in most studies
exists because spanking itself is inherently harmful. I believe that the
correlation comes from a combination of factors, with the two primary ones
(at least of what I'm thinking of at the moment) being:

1) Some ways of using spanking do in fact cause significant harm while
providing little or no offsetting benefit. If the reasons for spankings are
unfair, or if parents' expectations are clearly unreasonable (which is
really another form of unfairness), or if parents are inconsistent enough
that the children have no clear picture of what behaviors will get them
spanked and what behaviors will not, I would not expect good results. (I
don't call out the "lost it" factor separately because a spanking given as a
result of a parent's having "lost it" is always given for an unfair reason -
the parent's having "lost it" - even if a spanking might have been justified
for some other reason if the parent had calmed down first.) The inclusion
of families where spanking is used in such ways in the "spanking" category
of a study will inevitably drag down the average results for families who
spank.

2) Under my hypothesis, much of the "harm" attributed to spanking is in
reality a result of the absence or significantly reduced presence of
positive parenting techniques. The spankings and threat thereof may be
producing a long-term net benefit, but that benefit is more than offset by
the loss of a greater long-term benefit that could have come if parents used
positive techniques as long as they worked reasonably quickly and
effectively. (Of course if positive techniques always end up working
reasonably quickly and effectively, the parents may end up never spanking
even though they kept the option of doing so theoretically open - and that
has very "interesting" potential ramifications for research that might try
to compare parents who almost never spank with those that never do.)

As best I can tell, both your hypothesis and mine seem to fit the evidence
that is currently available. If that is true, the evidence provides no real
indication of which hypothesis is more likely to be true and which is more
likely to be false. In which case the fact that I can't cite evidence that
shows my hypothesis to be better than yours doesn't really mean anything at
all.

I'm sorry about taking so long replying to this. The issues are complex
enough that I didn't want to just give the kind of "off the top of my head"
response I usually do, and some of my moods are better for thoughtful,
careful writing than others. Unfortunately, in the meantime, I lost the
original version of my response when my computer crashed, but I think I'm
recapturing the gist of it here.

"Chris" wrote in message
...
In alt.parenting.spanking Nathan A. Barclay wrote:

: Of course that still leaves the issue of how many mothers might have
: started off never intending to spank, didn't like their results, and
ended
: up changing their minds and spanking at least once. When a group is
: allowed to eject at least some of its less successful results into
another
: group, that can easily make the group look more effective than it really
is.

Fair enough, but for one thing, Nathan this works both ways. Mothers
who started out spanking, recognized that it was a pernicious damaging
addiction which was harming their child and their relationship with their
child, and switched to win/win nonpunitive methods of discipline with
outstandingly good long term results, would still be counted as among the
"spanking" group. (I personally have met a couple of mothers in this
category, former spankers who are now ferverent antispankers after seeing
how cooperative discipline approaches transformed their whole parenting
experience for the better.) Use of sufficiently large sample sizes
permits random noise like this to cancel out.

Yes, it can work in more than one direction, although the situation in
Straus and Mouradian's 1998 study is not entirely symmetrical. When
spankers stop spanking, they eventually move into the "not in the last six
months" category. When non-spankers start spanking, they might be found in
any of the "spanking" categories depending on what happened in the six
months before the survey was conducted. No mothers in that study can move
from "spanking" to "non-spanking," so the "non-spanking" category can never
be forced to succeed where spanking failed in order to look good, whereas
the "spanking" categories can be forced to succeed where non-spanking
methods failed in order to look good.

Also, mothers who fail with spanking, try non-spanking techniques and fail
with those, and then go back to spanking would end up in the spanking group,
while those who fail with non-spanking techniques, try spanking and fail,
and then go back to non-spanking techniques would also land in a spanking
group (usually the "not in the last six months group) instead of in the
non-spanking group. If any such mothers were among the ones surveyed, that
would create a bias.

Perhaps more importantly, I reject your characterization of this movement as
"random noise" that should be expected to cancel out. When parents change
from spanking to non-spanking or from non-spanking to spanking, they do so
for a reason, not just as a random event. That reason might have to do with
not being satisfied with their current results, or with having someone
persuade them to change, or with some combination of the two. But because
it is not a random process, there is no way we can really know whether the
shifts roughly cancel out or whether they tend to follow some particular
pattern until someone gets around to conducting good research into the
phenomenon.

My own speculation is that because so much of our society takes a "get
tougher" attitude toward unacceptable behavior, and because practically
everyone knows how to spank but learning good alternatives to spanking
requires more specialized knowledge, it is probably more likely that parents
who start off planning not to spank but are unhappy with their results would
start spanking than that parents who start off spanking but are unhappy with
their results would stop. In absolute numbers, more spankers would probably
switch just becasue there are so many more of them. But in percentage
terms, my guess is that a larger percentage of dissatisfied non-spankers
could switch. I have no evidence to support that, and I will admit that my
biases may well be clouding my judgment, but in the absence of evidence in
either direction, all I can do is guess.

For another thing, your argument essentially reduces to special
pleading: somewhere in the interstices of the research data of the past
half century, you would have us believe, there are parents inflicting pain
on their children harmlessly and with long term beneficial results. No
one has actually come up with a research protocol yet which can separate
out these alleged successful spankers and clearly demonstrate their
existence. Are we to believe that it is only a matter of time before one
of the prospankers in academia who have been trying without success for
decades will finally get just the right set of variables and controls in
place to demonstrate this? If spanking is so harmless and beneficial to
the young, why has no one yet managed to document this fact in the form
of a publishable study after all this time and so many failed attempts?

If it weren't for the "lost it" factor, I would be inclined ot give this
argument more weight. As it is, I think it seems pretty clear that
researchers who support spanking either are not making nearly as
comprehensive an effort as you describe or are not doing a very good job of
figuring out where to look.

Another issue that complicates matters is that a significant amount of the
research regarding spanking (Gunnoe and Mariner's 1997 work among it as I
recall) is done on a "scavenger" basis working from data originally
collected for other reasons that happened to include questions about
spanking. When that type of approach is used, the researchers investigating
spanking are not the ones writing the original questions, so no matter how
much they might wish they could explore particular issues in greater depth,
they cannot explore those issues any more deeply than the questions asked in
the original survey allow. Consider, for example, the issue of "parental
warmth" as measured by observation when a person conducting a survey visits
a home, and the possibilty of "Jeckyl and Hyde" personalities in which a
mother might be loving, attentive, and wonderful when she is in a good mood
but dangerous to be around when she is in a bad mood. (And the way alcohol
and drugs affect some people can make "Hyde" even more dangerous.)

Beyond those issues, keep in mind that my conceptual model of how spanking
works is a lot more complicated than those usually applied in conducting
studies. First, in my view, it is the credible threat of spanking, not
spanking itself, that influences children's behavior. In a few very rare
cases, the threat of spanking may have an effect without a chld's ever being
spanked at all. Consider, especially, what might happen if a child sees or
hears an older sibling get spanked on very rare occasions and decides it is
something he or she wants to avoid taking a chance on experiencing first
hand. In less extreme but more typical cases among those where spanking
works relatively well, spankings do take place occasionally but the threat
(both implicit and explicit) is usually sufficient to produce acceptable
behavior without the need for actual spankings.

In contrast, if whether or not a child gets spanked has more to do with a
parent's mood than with the child's behavior, the threat of spanking is far
less credible as a deterrent. Similarly, if a parent threatens a lot but
only rarely carries out the threats, the deterrent value of the threats is
relatively low. In either of those cases, the threat of spanking is not
particularly credible, and can therefore be expected to have far less effect
on the child's behavior. Worse, even spanking itself does not create a
particularly credible threat of spanking if children can't figure out what
makes the difference between the few times they get spanked for doing
something and a much larger number of times when they do essentially the
same things and don't get spanked. (Or the children may learn to avoid
certain behaviors when a parent is in a bad mood without having their
behavior affected the rest of the time at all.)

Unfortunately, if any studies have attempted to pursue this complex a model
of how spanking works, I'm not aware of them. Instead, the studies I've
seen stick close to a much simpler does-response model that ignores how the
credible threat of spanking can play a large role in families where actual
spankings are relatively rare. That creates a serious disconnect between
the metric used to measure the role of spanking and the role spanking and
the threat thereof might actually play.

In addition, my conceptual model views the potential long-term net benefit
of spanking as MUCH smaller than the benefit that using positive techniques
whenever practical can provide. Thus, if parents who spank make
significantly less use of positive techniques than is made by those who do
not spank, it would not be hard at all for long-term benefits from the
occasional use of warnings/threats and spanking (if such benefits exist) to
be offset by a reduction in positive effects from other techniques. In the
past, I've referred to the manner in which reliance on spanking can displace
positive techniques as the "displacement effect." (Although actually, the
effect is not entirely a matter of displacement. Some of it comes from the
fact that the same sources that persuade parents not to spank often provide
them with useful positive tools, while parents who spank are more likely to
be ignorant of those tools.)

If this conceptual model is valid, it may be impossible to find spankers who
get a long-term benefit compared with non-spankers without carefully
controlling for the displacement effect. To the best of my knowledge,
efforts to control for that effect to date have not been particularly
strong. (For example, consider the wide range of possibilities "talk to the
child about his behavior" can encompass, some positive and others highly
negative.)

Finally, spanking does not necessarily have to produce a LONG-TERM benefit
to be useful. Most of the problems parents spank or threaten to spank over
are in reality short-term issues, albeit in many cases recurring ones. And
some of them involve situations where the chld's chance of not being caught
is essentially zero because the behavior occurs right under the parent's
nose. If parents can obtain a beneficial short-term result and essentially
neutral long-term results from spanking, and as long as parents are
balancing their own and their children's needs and desires in a reasonable
way, I contend that that is sufficient to justify the use of spanking. So I
do not accept the idea that spanking has to produce a demonstrable long-term
benefit in order to be justified.

At present, what we really have are two competing hypotheses that are both,
to the best of my knowledge, consistent with the data. You contend that the
correlation between spanking and negative outcomes found in most studies
exists because spanking itself is inherently harmful. I believe that the
correlation comes from a combination of factors, with the two primary ones
(at least of what I'm thinking of at the moment) being:

1) Some ways of using spanking do in fact cause significant harm while
providing little or no offsetting benefit. If the reasons for spankings are
unfair, or if parents' expectations are clearly unreasonable (which is
really another form of unfairness), or if parents are inconsistent enough
that the children have no clear picture of what behaviors will get them
spanked and what behaviors will not, I would not expect good results. (I
don't call out the "lost it" factor separately because a spanking given as a
result of a parent's having "lost it" is always given for an unfair reason -
the parent's having "lost it" - even if a spanking might have been justified
for some other reason if the parent had calmed down first.) The inclusion
of families where spanking is used in such ways in the "spanking" category
of a study will inevitably drag down the average results for families who
spank.

2) Under my hypothesis, much of the "harm" attributed to spanking is in
reality a result of the absence or significantly reduced presence of
positive parenting techniques. The spankings and threat thereof may be
producing a long-term net benefit, but that benefit is more than offset by
the loss of a greater long-term benefit that could have come if parents used
positive techniques as long as they worked reasonably quickly and
effectively. (Of course if positive techniques always end up working
reasonably quickly and effectively, the parents may end up never spanking
even though they kept the option of doing so theoretically open - and that
has very "interesting" potential ramifications for research that might try
to compare parents who almost never spank with those that never do.)

As best I can tell, both your hypothesis and mine seem to fit the evidence
that is currently available. If that is true, the evidence provides no real
indication of which hypothesis is more likely to be true and which is more
likely to be false. In which case the fact that I can't cite evidence that
shows my hypothesis to be better than yours doesn't really mean anything at
all.

"R. Steve Walz" wrote in message
...
Nathan A. Barclay wrote:

Adults have the freedom to change jobs, change roommates, and do
various other things to get away from speech that is bothering them. In
a workplace, the "take it to the boss" option is available. If the boss
accepts the complaint as valid, the boss can tell the other person to
stop
using offensive language or he'll be fired.
-------------------
That's PC bull****, no one should have the expectation that another's
message will be silenced just to please them, ESECIALLY merely because
that message is not popular. How then should we decide whom to suppress?
The proper approach is to tell them to cease contacting a specific
person. Our work life IS our life, for most people.

That's basically what I had in mind. As long as the person who is offended
is not subjected to the offensive language, there is no problem.

big snip

And any public venue where this is the only manner certain experiences
are offered can be a protected space in this manner, requested
non-contact can certainly be defended, but break-time or out-of-class
suppression of views or expression merely for content cannot fairly be
exercised, it is unfair, it is anti-free. If the collective endeavor's
leadership cannot publically and sufficiently shame someone for their
speech, then you are probably WRONG to try!

I find the contrast between how you stand up for free speech here and how
you want to silence the freedom of speech that would come with vouchers
interesting. You seem very hypocritical to me, standing up for free speech
except when someone wants to teach children something you disagree with.

"R. Steve Walz" wrote in message
...
Nathan A. Barclay wrote:

Adults have the freedom to change jobs, change roommates, and do
various other things to get away from speech that is bothering them. In
a workplace, the "take it to the boss" option is available. If the boss
accepts the complaint as valid, the boss can tell the other person to
stop
using offensive language or he'll be fired.
-------------------
That's PC bull****, no one should have the expectation that another's
message will be silenced just to please them, ESECIALLY merely because
that message is not popular. How then should we decide whom to suppress?
The proper approach is to tell them to cease contacting a specific
person. Our work life IS our life, for most people.

That's basically what I had in mind. As long as the person who is offended
is not subjected to the offensive language, there is no problem.

big snip

And any public venue where this is the only manner certain experiences
are offered can be a protected space in this manner, requested
non-contact can certainly be defended, but break-time or out-of-class
suppression of views or expression merely for content cannot fairly be
exercised, it is unfair, it is anti-free. If the collective endeavor's
leadership cannot publically and sufficiently shame someone for their
speech, then you are probably WRONG to try!

I find the contrast between how you stand up for free speech here and how
you want to silence the freedom of speech that would come with vouchers
interesting. You seem very hypocritical to me, standing up for free speech
except when someone wants to teach children something you disagree with.

Tori M. wrote:

Both you and Kane have this problem.
--------------
We have no "problem", YOU do!


I really want to get something out of
what you are saying but then you get into all this swearing stuff.
and name calling.
---------------
We are simply political advocates of free sexual speech. Get used
to it. Rightist assholes want to prevent people from insulting them,
like the cowards and mind-control proponents they are, so they want
people silenced.


If you took out half to most of the swears and anger your posts
might be better to read and maybe people would listen to you. It is obvious
your mom did not believe in washing your mouth out with soap either.
Tori
-----------------------
If any mother of mine had tried that, I'd have beaten and killed her
at my first opportunity.
Steve



"R. Steve Walz" wrote in message
...
Nathan A. Barclay wrote:

"Kane" wrote:

The children that are only occasionally punished are in a quandry.
They are in a state of constantly wondering about that other shoe
falling.

That depends. If punishment comes out of the blue without any clear
warning, you're right. But if children are punished only when they are
deliberately doing something they know is wrong, such as violating a
rule or
ignoring a warning, the children can feel perfectly safe as long as they
are
not doing something they know is wrong.
----------------
They don't REALLY "know" those things are wrong, and they DON'T AGREE
with you that the things they want are wrong. They just have learned
to LIE to you! They hate lying, they hate not being able to be
themselves around you without being ASAAULTED, and they hate your
****ing guts for that!!

You see: They always feel that they don't dare be authentic, they
are terrified that they might slip and not care about the outcome
for a moment because living like that isn't WORTH IT, and that they
might reveal who they really WANT to be and that THEN you'll ASSAULT
them for it!! THAT'S what you do to children by your form
of antihumane sicko MIND-CONTROL! It's the same thing as a dictator
keeping a population under his heel by terror, it's not different
in ANY WAY!


Just to be crystal clear, what I am suggesting is NOT that it's okay for
a
parent just to whack a child out of the blue because the child is
bothering
him or her. I view that kind of behavior by parents as inherently
abusive
because it practically makes just being a child a punishable offense.
-----------------------
ANY hitting or coercing of a child is IMMORAL AND WRONG because it
damages their real good human nature, and converts it to hate and
the desire to give up on their own life for the chance to do evil
to you and anyone like you, to live a life empty to themselves
other than the embittered chance for revenge upon you, because
they know they won't be allowed to live THEIR OWN life!! Children
who give up on their life are the kids who do drive-by shootings!


Rather, what I am saying is that I consider it reasonable for parents to
sometimes make rules and give instructions and warnings and expect them
to
be obeyed
----------------
Expecting to be obeyed is ritualistic abuse. That's all it is!!


But I don't think parents' ability to do things they want to do
should be entirely at the mercy of their children's willingness to
cooperate, especially once children are old enough to understand that
the
universe does not revolve around them.
------------------
The Universe revolves around each one of us, each in our own universe.
You stay in YOUR ****ing universe, and leave them the **** alone in
theirs!!!

What you get to do depends totally on your obligations you voluntarily
incurred, those obligations are NOT YOUR CHILDREN'S FAULT, even though
your obligation is TO THEM!!


And I do NOT believe that parents who take such an approach, making time
for
their children's genuine needs and for many of their children's desires
but
not placing their freedom entirely at the mercy of their children's
willingness to cooperate, are being so selfish that "child bearing is
pointlessly selfish" for them.
-------------------
Overstepping your boundaries by insisting on control of anyone else
but yourself is sick abuse, it is an emotional illness!! Their rights
do NOT inconvenience you, unless what you WANT is actually merely to
sickly and abusively CONTROL THEM, instead of living YOUR OWN ****ing
life and keeping your ****ing hands to yourself!!


Nor, I suspect, would you have much luck
persuading their children that the exercise was "pointlessly selfish" on
the
part of their parents.
-----------------------------
Since your fixation on the obediance of others puts you in the
position of relying on others artificially for your gratification,
your desires are disjointed and pointless, and they rob you of
your own life, your own hobbies and interests, and your own
self-containment of your life.


In connection with the issue of children's knowing when they are at risk
of
being punished and when they are not, I might also mention the
importance of
consistency.
-------------
Consistently sick and evil.


If the official rules bear only a superficial resemblance to
what is actually permitted (or at least tolerated) in practice most of
the
time, the existence of the official rules is almost meaningless. The
children get used to breaking the rules and expecting not to be punished
for
doing so, and are thus taken almost as much by surprise on the
relatively
rare occasions when they do get punished for breaking the rules as if
the
rules didn't exist at all. The same is also true if parents only rarely
punish when warnings or threats regarding the children's behavior are
ignored.
------------------------
Nonsense, consistently evil acts merely make them SURE they hate your
guts EVEN SOONER AND SURER!!
Steve

Tori M. wrote:

Both you and Kane have this problem.
--------------
We have no "problem", YOU do!


I really want to get something out of
what you are saying but then you get into all this swearing stuff.
and name calling.
---------------
We are simply political advocates of free sexual speech. Get used
to it. Rightist assholes want to prevent people from insulting them,
like the cowards and mind-control proponents they are, so they want
people silenced.


If you took out half to most of the swears and anger your posts
might be better to read and maybe people would listen to you. It is obvious
your mom did not believe in washing your mouth out with soap either.
Tori
-----------------------
If any mother of mine had tried that, I'd have beaten and killed her
at my first opportunity.
Steve



"R. Steve Walz" wrote in message
...
Nathan A. Barclay wrote:

"Kane" wrote:

The children that are only occasionally punished are in a quandry.
They are in a state of constantly wondering about that other shoe
falling.

That depends. If punishment comes out of the blue without any clear
warning, you're right. But if children are punished only when they are
deliberately doing something they know is wrong, such as violating a
rule or
ignoring a warning, the children can feel perfectly safe as long as they
are
not doing something they know is wrong.
----------------
They don't REALLY "know" those things are wrong, and they DON'T AGREE
with you that the things they want are wrong. They just have learned
to LIE to you! They hate lying, they hate not being able to be
themselves around you without being ASAAULTED, and they hate your
****ing guts for that!!

You see: They always feel that they don't dare be authentic, they
are terrified that they might slip and not care about the outcome
for a moment because living like that isn't WORTH IT, and that they
might reveal who they really WANT to be and that THEN you'll ASSAULT
them for it!! THAT'S what you do to children by your form
of antihumane sicko MIND-CONTROL! It's the same thing as a dictator
keeping a population under his heel by terror, it's not different
in ANY WAY!


Just to be crystal clear, what I am suggesting is NOT that it's okay for
a
parent just to whack a child out of the blue because the child is
bothering
him or her. I view that kind of behavior by parents as inherently
abusive
because it practically makes just being a child a punishable offense.
-----------------------
ANY hitting or coercing of a child is IMMORAL AND WRONG because it
damages their real good human nature, and converts it to hate and
the desire to give up on their own life for the chance to do evil
to you and anyone like you, to live a life empty to themselves
other than the embittered chance for revenge upon you, because
they know they won't be allowed to live THEIR OWN life!! Children
who give up on their life are the kids who do drive-by shootings!


Rather, what I am saying is that I consider it reasonable for parents to
sometimes make rules and give instructions and warnings and expect them
to
be obeyed
----------------
Expecting to be obeyed is ritualistic abuse. That's all it is!!


But I don't think parents' ability to do things they want to do
should be entirely at the mercy of their children's willingness to
cooperate, especially once children are old enough to understand that
the
universe does not revolve around them.
------------------
The Universe revolves around each one of us, each in our own universe.
You stay in YOUR ****ing universe, and leave them the **** alone in
theirs!!!

What you get to do depends totally on your obligations you voluntarily
incurred, those obligations are NOT YOUR CHILDREN'S FAULT, even though
your obligation is TO THEM!!


And I do NOT believe that parents who take such an approach, making time
for
their children's genuine needs and for many of their children's desires
but
not placing their freedom entirely at the mercy of their children's
willingness to cooperate, are being so selfish that "child bearing is
pointlessly selfish" for them.
-------------------
Overstepping your boundaries by insisting on control of anyone else
but yourself is sick abuse, it is an emotional illness!! Their rights
do NOT inconvenience you, unless what you WANT is actually merely to
sickly and abusively CONTROL THEM, instead of living YOUR OWN ****ing
life and keeping your ****ing hands to yourself!!


Nor, I suspect, would you have much luck
persuading their children that the exercise was "pointlessly selfish" on
the
part of their parents.
-----------------------------
Since your fixation on the obediance of others puts you in the
position of relying on others artificially for your gratification,
your desires are disjointed and pointless, and they rob you of
your own life, your own hobbies and interests, and your own
self-containment of your life.


In connection with the issue of children's knowing when they are at risk
of
being punished and when they are not, I might also mention the
importance of
consistency.
-------------
Consistently sick and evil.


If the official rules bear only a superficial resemblance to
what is actually permitted (or at least tolerated) in practice most of
the
time, the existence of the official rules is almost meaningless. The
children get used to breaking the rules and expecting not to be punished
for
doing so, and are thus taken almost as much by surprise on the
relatively
rare occasions when they do get punished for breaking the rules as if
the
rules didn't exist at all. The same is also true if parents only rarely
punish when warnings or threats regarding the children's behavior are
ignored.
------------------------
Nonsense, consistently evil acts merely make them SURE they hate your
guts EVEN SOONER AND SURER!!
Steve

Nathan A. Barclay wrote:

Let me ask the question regarding women's rights another way: what arguments
were used by those OPPOSED to granting equal rights to women?
-----------------
Simple, they used LIES. Evil ALWAYS uses only LIES. That is what
Evil does, that is what it ALWAYS does and IS!. Women were not
being enslaved because anyone ACTUALLY thought they were retarded or
anything, but because men wanted them to be under their thumbs!
They were enslaved because they were weaker, and COULD be enslaved,
and any of the other rationalizations for that were simply intentional
lies!

Even IF women WERE retarded, men COULD have treated them as equals
merely because they WANTED to, because treatment has much more to do
with moral good will, than reason or supposed cause of oppression,
because actually, there IS NO good cause foor oppression, of ANY kind!
It is ALWAYS Evil, and ALWAYS based solely upon LIES and secret wishes
for unfair advantage and control over others by insecure and immature
people!
Steve


Was, or was
not, the concept that women are significantly less capable than men,
including the analogy with the parent/child relationship, a central argument
in support of men's having authority to punish their wives?
---------------------
No. Punishment is not some necessary procedure to deal with people
who are less able than you are! It is merely EVIL and a means of
OPPRESSION!

Wake up, Thou Conscience!!!!!


If you don't
think it was, then obviously one of us is off base regarding the historical
aspect of the situation.

Nathan
-----------------------
Yup. YOU are!
Steve


"Kane" wrote in message
om...
On Wed, 23 Jun 2004 01:53:36 -0500, "Nathan A. Barclay"
wrote:

....yet another steaming pile of duplicitous double talk and attempted
mind rape to cover up the exposure of his morally corrupt and
ethically crippled biases against children, and now women as well.
Tsk, Nathan, Tsk.

I've already spent more time than I really should be spending on
these
newsgroups, and I've about decided that you aren't much more worth
trying to
have an intelligent discussion with than Steve is.

But of course you'd never consider descending to the level of ad hom.

It's so generous of you to lavish us with your time and opinions.
We'll be eternally grateful for your gallant efforts to education the
savages.

You have some points
worth listening to, but you're so focused on repeating your core
material
over and over ad nauseam that it's a lot harder to have an
intelligent
discussion with you than it ought to be.

More misleading double talk. You, Walz, and other's posting here ALL
focus on our "core" material...our beliefs and knowledge. There is
very little repetition going on except in reframing and offering our
position yet again in response to YOUR REPETITION OF YOUR CORE
BELIEFS.

You are playing with words and f***king up your OWN mind by such
pretenses that are attempts at reframing the truth you know in that
locked part of your memory, and are being told again here, into
something evil.

If I thought you were honestly
interested in listening to me, I might feel differently, but it looks
to me
like the only reason you bother to ask anything at all is to try to
set up
your next attack.

Nathan, you are a master at it. Not an artist, but obviously well
practiced...and unconsciously. You are sick with your own childhood
trauma unresolved and your attempts to ease, as well as hide from,
that miserable pain you had to reframe into something okay so as not
to risk the loss of your parent's "love." quotes for emphasis.

There is, however, one issue in this message that I'll go ahead and
expand
on a bit more.

I just knew you would. {:-

"Kane" wrote in message
. com...
On Tue, 22 Jun 2004 04:07:26 -0500, "Nathan A. Barclay"
wrote:

The argument for why husbands should have
authority over their wives was, "Women aren't as smart and capable
as men, so wives need for their husbands to look after them and
take
care of them and exercise authority over them the same way that
children need for their parents to do so." The women's rights
argument was, "Women are just as intelligent and capable as men,
so they don't need a man to take care of them and tell them what
to do." The women's rights argument won because objective
reality does show that women can take care of themselves.
There was a clear practical issue at stake, not just a purely
abstract moral one.

Please define "abstract moral" vs "moral." Thank you.

If you were paying attention, you should have caught the distinction.

I didn't ask for an attack on my capacity to observe and attend. I
asked a question...and you haven't answered it here.

"There was a clear practical issue at stake, not just a purely
abstract
moral one." Think about it. I'm contrasting "practical" with
"purely
abstract."

That does NOT answer the question I asked. In fact it is a classic
setup to go on with what YOU wish to present....in fact it is an
attack, just as you accused me of by the same means.

You are setting me up by ignoring what I asked and through pretense,
answering a "question" I did not have, did not ask, but YOU wish to
pontificate on.

You are a fraud, plain and simple.

You are dodging the truth of your own childhood experience.

You are trying to claim that husbands' power to spank their wives was
eliminated based on a purely abstract principle of equality or
something
along those lines.

That does NOT define "abstract moral" as you used it. It's a Droan.
Pure and simple.

I make NO such claim. I simply pointed out that it was driven by
social mores, just as will take down the practice of spanking children
by laws motivated by the growing disgust moral people against the
practice.

You are all over the map trying to avoid this simple truth.

Social mores are themselves a somewhat more complex paradigm so you
can wander at will, picking this point and that pretending that what I
said isn't true because some small point was about something
else...but overall, the issue was and always will be, as it is today,
a moral one. .

I am pointing out that the central argument was a
practical one: Are wives like children that need someone to act in
the role
of a parent for them, or are they adults who are perfectly capable of
looking after their own interests without having to have someone act
as a
parent to them?

You have such a way with words. You use "practical" as a descriptor,
then DEFINE A MORAL PRINCIPLE.

Anything but admit I was right, right?

THAT QUESTION IS A MORAL QUESTION. THE PRACTICAL ASPECTS ARE
MINISCULE. Such practicabilities involved are subordinate, very.

Read your moral statement above outloud to someone, without your
preamble ("I am pointing out that the central argument was a practical
one") and ask them if this is a moral issue or a practical one. Keep
count of their answers.

Once society was convinced

As a practical matter or a moral one?

that women were fully capable of
looking after themselves as adults instead of needing a father or
husband or
some other male to play the role of a parent, the whole argument for
why
husbands should have legal authority over their wives evaporated
(except in
the eyes of people who took some of Paul's writings a bit farther
than Paul
did).

There's no mistaking the intent of Paul. I may be an atheist but I am
a learned one when it comes to scriptures. Make no mistake about it.
He was as much a misogynist as Solomon was a misanthropic bully,
brute, and mad man, besotted with his unlimited power. He WOULD have
had the child cleaved in two.

To quote Proverbs or Paul is NO support for any socially moral
position.

And you are wrong. The proof women were capable of self determination
and self support had been proven for a millennium. In times of war
they proved themselves again and again.

It took a MORAL attack to force the power mad twits to give it up and
give them the vote and stop beating them and give them the right to
inherit and to contract.

Law, came out of MORAL certitudes, not some cold calculated analysis
of the realities of the time. Men, misogynist men, had been fighting
the reality of women's capabilities for hundreds if not thousands of
years.

People who act on moral issues, from a moral base, on the facts, that
is reality, don't need LAWS to control them.

And it will prove true with children and pain parenting. It is
inevitable.

Even some women fought suffrage for their own sex. They had been
thoroughly conditioned, as you were as a child, and deeply feared both
the loss of love of their men and MORE beatings if they did not toe
the line.

But that argument hinges on the fact that wives ARE adults, that they
ARE
able to look after their own rights and interests on a symmetric
legal basis
with their husbands. That argument does NOT apply with children.

Poppycock and babbling twittery. Both sentences. I could as well claim
the argument for women's suffrage was based on hair length. That the
COULD care for themselves was a matter of fact for long before
suffrage. It was a moral issue that forced the exploiters to face the
law. Not "reality."

The only difference between children, and women, is that children are
underdeveloped. Nothing more. And that does NOT give license to use
pain and humiliation on them. Their incapacity, in a moral society,
demands they be protected from that kind of brute force care and
parenting.

So what you're arguing, in effect, is that since we stopped allowing
their
husbands to spank their wives because we realized that women are not
children, we should eliminate the power for parents to spank their
children
as well.

Where did I say we "should" do anything of the sort. I am arguing with
considerable more content than a simple "should."

You duplicitously put YOUR argument in my mouth. Shame on you.

My argument is that for the very same reason, reasons of morals and
ethics, we will stop spanking children as we stopped spanking women.
Moral issues.

That there ARE practical aspects is undeniable. Most moral issues have
very practical issues as a part of them.

That position is nonsensical. In order to make it stick, you have
to engage in some serious revision of history and try to portray the
issue
of women's rights as different from what it really was.

Liar. You have no idea of women's rights historically except from PBS
or whatever bits and pieces you have picked up and failed to sort out
intelligently.

http://www.rochester.edu/SBA/history.html

for a warmup, then:

http://www.rochester.edu/SBA/convention.html

"Individual women publicly expressed their desire for equality, but it
was not until 1848 that a handful of reformers in Seneca Falls, New
York, called "A Convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious
condition and rights of Woman." "

Does that look like they are trying to sell the electorate on the
practical matters of their real capacities, or are they about to
embark, as this pulled quote context states, they are about to bombard
America with a moral message?

And look at what they called their proclamation:
"The Declaration of Sentiments "

You are a pompous bellowing fool, pretentious and confused, but
convinced that children have to be hit.

You don't debate, you babble your creed of camouflaged child abuse.

That is a sickness. Get it fixed

I recommend you read Tom Gordon to discover the simple uncomplicated
language of love and caring for children. Three simple skills even a
pompous ass such as yourself could learn. IF you can give up your
belief in the infallibility of your parents, and the need to
perpetuate the pain on other small children.

Kane