Quote:So what if there are peer reviewed journal entries that disagree with your peer reviewed journal entries?
I'm sure you won't read that, though.
No, I won't. I will browse parts of it, and it doesn't disagree with them at all - that journal entry is very specific in its scope. It's looking only at spanking, which it defines
very strictly as "physically non-injurious [...] and [...] administered with an opened hand to the extremities or buttocks".
I wouldn't argue against very controlled use of spanking by that definition in certain circumstances. What AP did, and what a lot of people are advocating in this thread, goes a
long way beyond that.
The journal entry also specifically limits itself in a number of other ways - to spanking in the most appropriate situations, for example, and comparing with what would happen under an outright spanking prohibition without parents being trained in other approaches - where spanking is taken away as an option without any alternative being provided. You, having read the article, no doubt, will have noted that in their analysis of Gershoff's paper the main reason they give for being concerned about its results in this case is that it includes more extreme forms of punishment than open-hand spanking, including spanking with an implement, slapping in the face, and beating with a stick (exactly what AP did in this case and what some people are defending him for).
They also raise some methodological problems with their own study (one of the advantages of peer review is that it becomes more important to identify and acknowledge the flaws in your own studies rather than waiting for someone else to do so), including the fact that there's very little data comparing the specific definitions of spanking they're working with to a complete absence of said spanking, and the same-source problem, where a parent is responsible for providing data on spanking frequency and causes/effects, with the result that they're likely to overexaggerate the bad behaviour of the child prior to the punishment and the corrective effect in order to justify the spanking.
They certainly don't come to a conclusion that all forms of corporal punishment are appropriate and undamaging, so I wouldn't say it actually disagrees with the peer reviewed studies I cited (not that I cited them - someone else did - but let's not let accuracy get in the way of things here). It actually uses them as sources, cutting into their data to try to find data for their heavily slimmed down question.
I don't think I'm in favour of a blanket ban on spanking as defined in that paper, though it
should be a last resort, not a first port of call. I
am in favour of a blanket ban on more extreme forms of corporal punishment, where the evidence is very much stronger against it.
Edit: Incidentally, the Roberts study that provides a lot of the evidence used by the paper you linked is very specific in terms of how spanking should be used, and looks at a best-case usage of spanking which includes its use:
* Only with behaviourally difficult children
* Only after non-compliance with parental instructions and a timeout
This does not represent the majority usage of spanking (of any sort) in most countries.
All of which is fine, because that's what the paper is looking at - whether best-case spanking is something that should be banned.