Spanking is a disciplinary measure, not child abuse. Get a grip, people.

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Matt Walsh:

As I’m sure you’re aware, the topic of spanking has been widely discussed this week, after Adrian Peterson, running back for the Minnesota Vikings, was arrested and ultimately suspended for child abuse.

Prosecutors alleges that Peterson beat his four-year-old son with a tree branch. The football star reportedly thrashed his son so severely that it caused injuries to the child’s back, legs, ankle, scrotum, and buttocks, along with defensive wounds to his hands. The scars were visible days afterwards.

It’s an awful story, without question, but is it a story about “spanking,” or a story about an angry and violent man brutalizing a child? The media certainly wants us to answer “both,” which is why they’ve done everything they can to insist that Peterson’s attack on a four-year-old has “reopened” or “sparked” or “ignited” or “stirred” the debate over spanking (personally, I prefer my debates to be rekindled, provoked, or triggered). We are informed in articles like this one, and this one, and this one, and this one, and this one, and this one, and this one, that AP’s vicious assault of a small child ought to, for some reason, bring to mind questions about the appropriateness of swatting your kid on the behind from time to time.

OK then. I have asked myself these questions, as instructed, but still I come back to the same answer: spanking is not abuse, and abuse, no matter what else you call it, is not spanking. The two things are completely separate and distinct.

Now, since everyone is adding their two cents, let me submit my own. I’m feeling pretty lazy today, so I’m going to resort to the trusty listicle format. Here is every thought I have about this subject, in no particular order:

1) If all physical discipline is abuse, and no distinction can be drawn between spanking and whipping a child until he’s bruised, bloodied, and terrified, then it stands to reason that all verbal reprimands constitute verbal abuse, and no distinction can be drawn between a stern talking-to and berating your kid with vulgar insults and threats.

The spanking = abuse formulation can only be understood if you erase from your mind any sense of nuance. But if we’re basing our conclusions on the “Y involves X so therefore all things that involve X are automatically identical to Y” calculation, then why don’t we apply it to other things parents do to their kids?

For example, in my household growing up, it wasn’t uncommon to hear my parents say, in a commanding and unequivocal tone, things like “Don’t interrupt me when I’m speaking” and “Watch your attitude.” In contrast, I knew kids who lived in homes where it wasn’t uncommon to hear the parents say, in a somewhat harsher tone, things like “Shut the f**k up” and “I can’t f**king stand you.” Both involve words spoken at an elevated volume, but one is clearly not abusive and the other clearly is. If we can do this math with verbal discipline, why do we act like it’s so difficult on the physical side?

2) Maybe you respond by saying that there’s nothing inherently wrong with speaking, but there is something inherently wrong with physically touching your kid in a disciplinary and corrective manner. Fine. If that’s your argument then, I ask you, WHAT precisely makes it inherently wrong? You can’t answer “violence,” because that only restates your original premise.

Besides, to call spanking “violence” is intentionally misleading. Even deceitful. It prejudices the jury in the court of public opinion by using a term that Webster defines as “exertion of physical force so as to injure or abuse” to describe smacking a child’s posterior a few times. Spanking — as opposed to beating or assaulting — doesn’t injure and it isn’t intended to abuse.

So if you oppose violence against children, I agree. But if you oppose, on principle, the exertion of any physical force on a child, you’re going to have to explain WHY. And then you’re going to have to figure out a way to maintain that absolute principle while not precluding yourself from grabbing your kid before he runs into the street, or picking him up and carrying him out of the store when he’s having a tantrum, or forcing him to hold your hand when you cross the road. All of these things are physical exertions imposed on a child against his will. All of them, including spanking, are meant to help a child avoid harm, not cause it.

3) If your dad often became enraged and cursed while he whipped you mercilessly with a belt until you were bruised and bloody, marks all over your body and emotional scars that cut even deeper than the lacerations on your skin, I am sorry that you suffered such heinous abuse. But please understand that, although your dad may have called that “spanking,” it was not. It was assault. There is, I assure you, another version — the real one — where a parent acts in love. The discipline is measured and controlled. It’s administered to help correct a child’s behavior, not to hurt them or make them afraid. In this scenario, the parent calmly explains why it is happening and talks to the child about how she can correct her behavior in the future.

Spanking can be quick and effective. I hear people say that, rather than spank, parents should use time outs or take away privileges. But time outs don’t always make an impression on a kid, especially if he’s like I was (and still am) and can sit staring off into space for hours, entertaining himself in his own head. “Go sit in a corner and day dream for half an hour? No problem, Mom!”

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