I’ve been spanked with a belt, quite a few times. I’ve never been tagged in the nuts, but that was not his intent. As any long time readers of this blog should readily grasp, I do a lot of inner work, and I don’t consider any of the spankings I got after age 5 to have had any significant negative impact on me at all, and some may have been beneficial.
Now, I don’t remember age 4, and it’s quite possible my first spanking at age 12 months may have left a mark, but according to my best architectural excavations, this does not appear to be the case. You can be traumatized without being touched at all, which appears to have happened in my own case.
As should be blatantly obvious, Peterson did not consider his behavior aberrant or exceptional, or anything but being consistent with “spare the rod–note it says rod, not hand–and spoil the child.” This is very old American received wisdom. It is not stretching it too far, I don’t think, to say it has informed our history of being law abiding and able to work well with others.
Personally, I don’t think spanking works very well. We tried it a couple times on my oldest when she was quite young, and it only made her behavior worse. It was ineffective.
But Peterson himself is very successful, and he was raised that way. There are any number of country songs which talk about being “cane switch raised”. Here is one example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZNsPR6K1xo
So I cannot find myself horrified that Peterson would raise his kid the way he was raised. I cannot join the chorus of those calling for Peterson’s social and professional excommunication for doing something he no doubt honestly thought–rightly or wrongly, we can certainly debate–was for his child’s own best good.
We have reached a time when children don’t know the phrase “Son, this is going to hurt me more than it hurts you.”
Again, we can argue whether spanking works. It does seem obvious to me that we are raising–have been raising–children who feel entitled to everything, who do not understand that pain is a part of life, and who in many important respects NEVER mature psychologically.
Does spanking help with this? I don’t know. I really don’t know. I do know that we will become weak as a society if we let frightened women dictate EVERYTHING. Men and manliness have roles to play, and part of being a man is being tough.
I’ll leave it at that. I don’t have the answers, but the questions themselves seem to be getting overlooked too, and that I can rectify.