Spanking your kids might be fine, or...it might be child abuse.

Once upon a time, two women faced a very similar problem. Their kids were out of control. The women had done a nanny-share together, and now their kids attended the same preschool. Neither of these mothers were explicit adherents of gentle parenting: they hadn’t read the books and probably couldn’t tell you the tenets of gentle parenting. However, these two women still had the non-confrontational parenting style that was common to members of the laptop class.

Neither of these moms used time-outs or formal punishments. They did a lot of persuading and cajoling. They tried to distract their kids from bad behaviors instead of staging direct confrontations.

One of the mothers, Julia, simply couldn't make her four-year-old daughter stay in her room at bedtime. No matter what, the girl would scream and cry and run out—going to bed was a many-hours-long process. It usually ended around eleven p.m. with the girl collapsing in her own bed, but sometimes even then she woke in the middle of the night and got into her parents' bed.

The other mother, Phoebe, had a similar problem. Her son was a hitter. He bit and hit. Not always, and usually only when he was tired, but often enough that she was sometimes afraid to tell him no, for fear that he'd hit her! Which meant the hitting was accomplishing its purpose! He was cowing her with physical violence! The hitting and biting didn't hurt, but it was behavior for which she had no real response. Sure she could tell him "No!" and give him a lecture, but that felt very inadequate, since it didn't stop him from doing it in the future.

“I don't know what to do,” Phoebe said.

"Yeah,” Julia said. “All of the advice online is something like Set boundaries with your kids! Set firm boundaries! But…don't punish them. How can this possibly work?"

"I don't know," Phoebe said. "I think it's all bullshit. Like…have you ever read Spare The Rod?"

"Excuse me? The book about hitting your kids?"

"It's a book about the history of corporal punishment. Okay, hear me out. It's by an economist at Harvard Business School—"

"Yeah I've heard of Emma Dalrymple. But it's about hitting your kids."

"It's very, very common throughout history and even in most parts of the world today to use mild physical correction on your kids. We know lots of people today who eat paleo, because gluten isn't natural, and our guts evolved to eat caveman food—well, our brains also evolved to get hit! I'm sorry, I've been reading this book, and—"

"Let me read it," Julia said.

So Julia read this book, and she found it to be full of well-constructed studies designed to test whether corporal punishment was actually harmful for kids.

The problem with most studies on this question is that they tend to use the frequency of corporal punishment as an independent variable: they measure how frequently a parent used corporal punishment and correlate that against the child’s mental health, school outcomes, etc. But in reality, it’s not necessarily independent, because it’s possible that parents who are mentally ill, have drug or alcohol problems, etc, simply use corporal punishment more often. And it’s also possible that kids with behavioral issues simply spur more correction from the parents.

But you can create a natural experiment by taking a large group of people from a society where corporal punishment is common. You divide this group of people into two cohorts, which are equal in education, health, and other indicators. Then you give one of these cohorts a short-course on how terrible corporal punishment is and how it's bad for kids. That group is likely to substantially reduce its overall level of corporal punishment. But you know a priori that both groups are equal in every way, aside from this intervention, and now you can measure differences over time between these two cohorts of kids.¹

In several studies of this nature, researchers found that the group with less CP actually had measurably-worse outcomes for its kids in terms of behavior, school performance and, most importantly, depression and anxiety. It turns out that kids really do love boundaries (at least according to Emma Dalrymple) and that corporal punishment provides those boundaries more effectively than other forms of punishment. The study found that parents who do use corporal punishment often use a relatively mild amount—perhaps no more than three or four spankings over the course of the child's ten years of life. It really was the threat of this punishment that enforced compliance, more than its actuality.²

A week later, Julia and Phoebe's kids had a play-date. "I read the book," Julia said. "It was pretty convincing."

"Okay, good..." Phoebe said. "I did it."

"What?"

"After the last time he hit me, I gave him a spanking," Phoebe said. "No hitting since."

"Really?"

"It was like magic. So much less conflict. And now I'm more loving to him, because I'm not afraid. I feel in control of our family."

"Okay..." Julia said.

It was true that Phoebe seemed more happy and confident. She lost that harried look. Julia started to become shy around her, unable to tell her about her parenting travails, and the two of them grew apart. It's not that Julia was morally opposed to spanking her daughter, necessarily, it's just that...she simply couldn't do it. Like, to spank your daughter because she wouldn't stay in her room for bed-time? It seemed insane! Although, to be fair, Phoebe had never actually advocated that Julia do that.

A year later, Phoebe wrote an article about spanking her son. A backlash ensued. Lots of anger, lots of people texting Julia and saying, Did you know she did that? Julia was a little afraid to say Yes, I did know, and…I didn’t think it was particularly wrong. So…she just didn’t. She said, No I didn’t know about that! The community was trying to assess it's own feelings about Phoebe, and perhaps Julie could’ve weighed in to say, “No, she’s okay.” But the truth is, spanking your kid was one thing, but writing an article was another. To do something once, in desperation, was fine. To advocate that others do it—Julie wasn’t so sure.

Certainly there were some meetings about it at the school, but no formal action, nor even an email. What did happen however was that Phoebe’s youngest child, a daughter, was not offered a place at the school when she came of age. There was some made-up story about there being unusually high demand that year, but there it was: the community did not want Phoebe around anymore.

Phoebe became an evangelist not just for spanking, but for a lot of traditional stuff. Unschooling, unpasteurized milk, not vaccinating your kids, the importance of going regularly to church, etc. Phoebe had a remote job, and her family moved to Philadelphia, where they joined a new church. Through this church they got in touch with a traditionalist community. Entering this community was difficult, but Phoebe shared some ancestry with this group of people—her grandfather had left this very community fifty years ago—and they eventually welcomed her and her husband into their community very provisionally.

Meanwhile, their son was about twelve years old, and he'd once again become very defiant. Phoebe's husband had lost his job a long time ago—back when Phoebe's son was in preschool, actually—and he'd sort of drifted into this community, carried along by the enthusiasm of his powerful wife. Now the man, Phoebe's husband, kept slacking off on his shifts at the dairy. Phoebe’s husband kept saying actually he was wasted at the dairy. Really, he should be doing the books at the gift shop—he understood computers, and he'd done a little book-keeping. He could also chat with suppliers, etc.

Phoebe's son kept staying out late, spending the night at another family's house. Everyone in the community was laughing that Phoebe's husband couldn't keep his son in line. So one day her husband went over, dragged her son back to the house and ordered him to stay here. When the son was caught sneaking out again, the man hit him with a wooden broom-handle.

This pattern went on for several months, with the beatings becoming more frequent, until one day his neighbor said, "This is not the way we do things."

"Why?" said Phoebe's husband. "Spare the rod, spoil the child."

"He is almost a man."

"But I am his father."

"Let him be..."

The next time the father tried to grab the boy from his neighbor's house, the door was locked. He rampaged around the house, rattling on the doors. Finally he stomped home, went into the cellar, and he drank some bourbon they kept around for 'medicinal purposes' (though of course Phoebe would never have allowed anyone else in the village to see it). His wife came home, and they had a big fight. The next day, the man refused to go out to work at the dairy.

Phoebe could see how this was going. Her husband was a problem. He was defiant. He was not really connected to this community. The tools they typically used—shame and social pressure—didn't work on him. All the pressure was really on Phoebe. She could leave her husband (separation certainly existed), but she couldn't live alone! She'd need to go and live in someone else's house until her son came of age. And then what life could he live, if he was the man with a good-for-nothing father? She felt intense pressure to make her husband conform somehow.

But he was good-for-nothing. He was formless. He was mere water. She could talk and talk and talk to him, but nothing would ever change.

The community was wiser than her, however. The next day five men came and got him. They were all very big and burly. He was bleary-eyed, and he tried to beg off, say he was sick. But they waited for him to dress. He went with them somewhere. This happened day after day. By the end of a month, he was laughing and joking with them. He never spoke about what they'd done. But he did his shifts, and eventually they even gave him some administrative duties in the gift shop—an area where he did in fact perform quite well.

---

Ten years later, this same denomination was riven by accusations of sexual abuse. There was a pattern that often occurred in this denomination where a young woman was raped, and if it became known, then…she was despoiled. Nobody wanted to marry her! So there’d be intense pressure to marry her off either to her rapist or to someone else who was poor, lazy, foul-tempered, or otherwise objectionable. After many years of this behavior festering, several women had spoken out about the culture of impunity in this world, and their pleas had finally caused a stir in the broader world, and had resulted in police investigations.

In response to the bad publicity, the elders asked Phoebe to reach out to any writer-friends from her old world who would be willing to hear a different story.

Julia flew out to meet Phoebe, and Julia spent the day with this family she'd once known quite well. The son and daughter were both in their twenties, were both married, had kids themselves. Everything was happy and joyful—really no different from one's vision of a typical American family, except, well, everyone was actually here! Everyone was well-behaved, everyone had time for each other! Julia asked the usual questions to the two kids, "Don't you feel like you missed out on college?"

"Why?" said the son. "I bet Devin is, what, living in an apartment with roommates, dating bad guys, starting to figure out that her dreams aren't actually going to come true. Eventually she’ll want a family and a stable job—the thing I already have!"

"That's true, I suppose,” Julia said.

Julia was worried she wouldn't be able to get Phoebe alone, but that didn't happen. They got into a car. They went away from this community. Phoebe came with her into the city—into Philadelphia.

"Do you want to change clothes?" Julia said.

"I better not," said Phoebe. "I could. Some women do, if they're going to town for schooling or medical treatment. There are clothes you can wear that are modest, but don't stand out. The thing is, women who were born into the Church—they say that they hate standing out, being stared at. But really they're just scared of the city. That's why they change clothes. I'm not, so I don't. And it's a good reminder too. I mean...not that anyone would want me now. But...it's a good reminder that my life is different."

They went to a nice restaurant—new American cuisine, where the portions were small and well-plated, and the AC was set much too cold.

"So how did things turn out with Devin and going to bed?” Phoebe asked.

"Oh eventually it just stopped. She basically wanted to sleep in our bed, right?" Julia said. "She wanted to sleep with mama and papa. But then in maybe second grade the kids started doing sleepovers, and she realized big girls don't sleep with their parents. So she said I'll be brave, and she just stopped. You know...I realized a lot of parents, what they do, is they just buy these devices that lock their kids in their room. You don't call it 'locking them in' but that's what it is. We hired a sleep consultant, and that's what they said to do, but it seemed like a bit much so...we just didn't do it."

"Yes, amongst our people, all the babies sleep in their parents' rooms! Then a new child is born, and previous kid gets kicked out, to sleep with the older ones. So it's perhaps not that different."

"Right...so...tell me about the sex abuse. Tell me what justifies this?"

"One in three girls gets raped on a college campus, I'm told," Phoebe said. "Did anything like that happen to you?"

"I'm not the story."

"Bad things happen," Phoebe said. "Bad things happen to girls and to women. But at least here, we know they're bad. These villages where these things happened—those were sick villages. We talked about these villages. We sheltered people who left those villages. In my own village, we don't allow those kinds of marriages, between young women and much older men. If a man in our community, where I live, is preying on women—we would deal with him. And because the men know that, it doesn’t happen."

"So it was a few bad apples. But…you never went to the police."

"The police? They would either have done nothing, or they would have torn a hole in the center of our way of life. No, no."

"And what if your own daughter—What would stop her from—"

"That would never happen to my daughter," Phoebe said. "These are very bad things. But here, in our village? To my daughter? Never. Ever."

"Because...you have a son."

"She has a brother. And I have a husband. They would protect her."

"And if a more powerful man came after her?"

"We would protect her. And in the end...I have you. I have an Instagram account, although I don't use it much anymore—the followers are still there. People know. We would protect her."

"So you would speak out? Or are you just saying bad things wouldn't happen to you, because you have more privilege, because you have a degree, because you have a good resume, because you have a bank account—because you have all these things you don't allow other girls to get!"

"I am saying these things would never happen to my daughter. You can print whatever you want—I am not censoring myself. It's a very complicated place, but I know in my heart, that she is much safer here with us, than she is outside. And that is not something I think you can say about your own daughter, Julia, so please do not judge me."

Well, Julia went and she wrote her article, and it said the usual things that people say about women like Phoebe. She has a level of social power in her community—a level conferred by her education and former life as a writer and influencer—that most women in her community don't have. At the same time, it is definitely a soft power. She is by no means in charge. The men don't necessarily listen to her. But it is a power that she seems confident enough in thinking she can use to benefit her family.

Julia wondered for some years whether she could really justify her own life and the way she'd raised her child. Devin did go through a period of drinking heavily and a period of unemployment. She wanted to be a museum curator, and she found a job, but the hours were long and the position was low-paid contract work. She kept asking for money from mom, and Julia had to cut her off eventually, which resulted in a lot of fights and hurt feelings.

Julia's daughter—her only child—lived in another city! This thing Julia had done—creating and raising a child—it was not a source of comfort to her. The child was alien, not a part of her anymore. It was so unnatural! Julia yearned for her, but she realized it was a yearning for Devin as a four year old, when they'd slept in the same bed.

Phoebe's home was filled with children. Grand-children. But, on the other hand, she also probably had to take care of them!

Julia and her husband went out with friends, they traveled. And now that her daughter was gone, she was reconnecting with her husband. He'd finally started reading some of the books she'd recommended to him! He'd gotten into Italo Calvino, which was very cute, because her husband took a distinctly male approach to literary fandom, and now he was learning Italian—he always sought mastery over the topic, couldn't just read the book! Which was fun! Julia suspected these weren't the kind of surprises Phoebe got from her husband, but maybe that was just coping on Julia's part. She had no idea.

Julia was happy, that was the point. Phoebe might very well be happy, but Julia definitely was. She had a man she loved and trusted. And she had the freedom to do as she'd liked. She had raised a child, but now her parental responsibility was terminated in a way that, in Phoebe's world, it never could be. Her life could've turned out quite differently—she might’ve ended up lonely and broke, cursing her permissive society. But that hadn't happened, and Julia was happy in the end that she'd trusted to the wisdom of the society that'd educated her, filled her with dreams, and sent her out into the world with the fullest freedom and confidence that those dreams would come true.

Afterword

This tale was very much inspired by Christopher Lasch. I’ve read two of his books now, The Minimal Self and Culture of Narcissism. I enjoyed those books a lot, as I wrote about earlier, but Lasch goes on at length in both these books about how Americans have forgotten how to parent their kids, because Americans have no history or tradition or culture anymore.³

And, I dunno, all this going-on about how people today have no culture and no tradition—it’s a bit silly, isn’t it? The point isn’t that we have no culture—it’s that you don’t like the culture we have!

I find that my kind of people, who I guess one could call the PMC, have very distinct attitudes about a wide variety of things. And in fact there’s a tendency towards conformism that is so strong that it becomes quite difficult to deviate from those consensus attitudes. For instance, I cannot imagine anyone I am likely to meet in SF admitting to me that they spank their child. It’s a practice that I know is quite common even in California. And it’s certainly not illegal. But I would never do it myself because…it’s simply not the done thing! To deviate so strongly from the norms of those around me—particularly when it comes to something touching upon my child?—this is just unimaginable to me. I feel safest doing what others do. You could give me all the evidence in the world, but at the end of the day, I’m just gonna do what other people around me are doing (or at least claim they are doing).

1. My understanding of the data behind the costs and benefits of corporal punishment comes from this meta-analysis.

2. This is a fake book by the way! It’s based on these Emily Oster debunking books that many of my mom friends actually have read. The study I’m describing is quite similar to one Oster cites about the efficacy of breast-feeding versus formula. Mothers in my social class love these books of Oster’s because, fundamentally, they’re about how a lot of parenting advice doesn’t have a strong evidentiary backing. Oster gives us an excuse to ignore all this faddish parenting advice, which most of us do anyway!

If people do spank their kids, maybe it’s fine or…maybe they’re abusing their kids! I certainly have at least one acquaintance who strongly believes that spanking your kids is child abuse, and she’s spoken out often in public on this question. I’m personally not convinced, but, as I said, the consensus in my circles on this question is quite strong, and I’ve never been tempted to go against it.

Central to most critiques of liberalism is the idea that human beings have difficulty determining their values on their own, and that attempting to do so means risking nihilism. I agree, but in many cases it is the traditionalists who are breaking with existing society, and it is the liberals who are preserving some kind of living tradition.

3. For an example of this kind of verbiage, from The Minimal Self, published in 1984:

Industrial production takes the father out of the home and diminishes the role he plays in the conscious life of the child. The mother attempts to make up to the child for the loss of its father, but she often lacks practical experience of childrearing, feels herself at a loss to understand what the child needs, and relies so heavily on outside experts that her attentions fail to provide the child with a sense of security. Both parents seek to make the family into a refuge from outside pressures, yet the very standards by which they measure their success, and the techniques through which they attempt to bring it about, derive in large part from industrial sociology, personnel management, child psychology—in short, from the organized apparatus of social control. The family’s struggle to conform to an externally imposed ideal of family solidarity and parenthood creates an appearance of solidarity at the expense of spontaneous feeling, a ritualized “relatedness” empty of real substance.

As you can see, neo-traditionalist child-rearing advice is not escape from this trap! It is merely another genre of outside experts that disrupt the parent’s organic, natural relationship to their child. To the extent it encodes real lessons, these are lessons that require an entire community’s participation, as when the father's neighbor intervenes to tell him, yeah we believe in corporal punishment, but not like this!