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00:00:05
Speaker 1: Hello, welcome to the Happy Families podcast, real parenting solutions every single day. Got a question for you. Got a child, 11 years old, breaking a family rule by having her mobile telephone in her bedroom after 8pm. She refuses to hand her phone over, she swears at her parents, and her mother responds with physical force. Is it okay for the mum to grab her hand tightly? Is it okay for her to slap her on the thigh? Is it okay for her to use a wooden spoon? What about a slap across the face? A recent survey published in a respected and peer-reviewed journal, the International Journal of Child Abuse and Neglect, from some ANU, Australian National University researchers, has some results in it from Queensland parents that might surprise you. Stay with us. More on smacking kids next. Hello, this is the Happy Families podcast, real parenting solutions every single day. It's Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast. We are Justin and Kylie Coulson, the parents of six children. We've done it imperfectly. I wish that we could say that we had never made any of the mistakes that we're going to talk about in today's podcast, but we have. That means that if you have, there's no judgment, there's no shame. This is life, but we are trying to help families to be happier. And Kylie, we've got this study to talk about. And also the relentless media that I've been doing on primarily talkback radio stations where a whole lot of people who have already raised their kids and now they've got grandkids, in fact, they finished raising their kids many years ago, usually, suddenly have some very strong opinions about parenting.
00:01:46
Speaker 2: Now, my generation, I'm Gen X, I'm 58, you know, we were all smacked. I mean, I don't know anybody whose household didn't have smacking often involving a wooden spoon or something. And, you know, I don't think it harmed us as a generation. But these days, corporal punishment is rare.
00:02:03
Speaker 3: Well, I can only imagine what is getting everybody upset about this. But tell me about the study. What did they find?
00:02:11
Speaker 1: As I mentioned in the intro, one of the questions in this study was you've got an 11-year-old girl. She's on the phone after bedtime. It's 8 p.m. She swears at her parents, won't hand the phone over. 92% of respondents said parents who grabbed the girl's hand tightly not guilty of assault, that dropped down to 78% who said, yeah, if you give him a slap on the thigh, if there's no bruising or anything, that's fine, not assault. 63% said, if you hit your child with a wooden spoon, go for your life. If that's what you need to do, it's not assault. I think that's interesting because that means 37% said, oh, actually, I think the wooden spoon might be a bit of a problem. But get this, just over half, said, even if you hit them and leave a bruise, not a salt, and the step that blew me away the most, 43% said, it's still okay to slap them in the face. If they're going to behave like this, that's what needs to be done. After all, as a parent, it is, and I quote from the study, the responsibility of parents to discipline their children before they become a burden or danger to society, close quote. So as you can imagine, a study like that got the news talk radio station's Absolutely in a huff and I've been doing non-stop media about it, which is why I thought we should talk about it on the pod today.
00:03:24
Speaker 3: I always find it quite curious when people who are not even actively parenting have such strong opinions about things.
00:03:33
Speaker 1: I knew a lot more about parenting before we had kids. I'm sure if you'd asked me, I would have told you everything.
00:03:38
Speaker 3: But over the last week, you have had a lot of conversations. I'm curious to see which way they went and And what you had to say.
00:03:46
Speaker 1: I was pretty unpopular. I was definitely in the minority. It just seems like there's an enormous, it's not just a small amount of people. There's an enormous part of the population that thinks that it is the, not just the right and the prerogative, but it's necessary for parents to be hitting their children to teach them lessons.
00:04:06
Speaker 3: It just doesn't make sense to me. In any other setting, it would be deemed assault.
00:04:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, if I hit you with a spoon, if I hit you in the face, any of the things they talked about, for sure.
00:04:16
Speaker 3: If you hit me and didn't leave a bruise. I'm speechless because I find it hard to comprehend that good upstanding citizens can recognize and see that it's bad in one situation, but because they have a responsibility to their child's well-being, that they think it's okay.
00:04:40
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:04:41
Speaker 1: One of the things that I pointed to was the I turned out fine defense. I talked about how I wrote an article in the New York Times. It was probably about six or seven years ago now where I just talked about how a lot of parents will say, well, I got hit as a child and I turned out fine. So therefore, smacking or physical punishment must be harmless because I survived it. And the problem here is we're relying on a sample size of one. And it's this biased personal experience. We call it the anecdotal fallacy, the availability fallacy. heuristic and i also think.
00:05:11
Speaker 3: But are we fine well that's the second point i was going to make when you look at the depression and anxiety epidemic that we are experiencing as a society at large it's hard to believe that any of us are doing.
00:05:29
Speaker 1: Okay yeah uh the argument that i turned out fine i just think it's a flawed definition of fine it ignores the the potential hidden or long-term negative impacts that occurred despite harsh parenting rather than because of it. This is what I said in all these radio interviews. Maybe we can unpack this after the break because we need to go to the break real quick. The research evidence, we've got six
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decades of it now, six decades, not into assault, not into abusive parenting, but into what Americans call spanking, what we in Australia call smacking. And there is just no evidence that supports its use.
00:06:03
Speaker 3: It actually.
00:06:04
Speaker 1: doesn't work in spite of what everybody on talkback radio says it it actually doesn't work to do anything other than to achieve short-term compliance sometimes not all the time sometimes and even that short-term compliance is pretty short-lived so after the break let's unpack what that research says and see if we can find better ways to discipline our kids because my goodness we've got to stop hitting them and we'll talk about that after the break We're back. This is the Happy Families podcast. Kylie, when it comes to smacking, the research shows this. There's what we call a dose response. If I gave you some Panadol, the less you take, the lower the response. The more you take, the greater the response. And if you take too many, it'll make you really sick and could even put you in hospital or worse. So smacking is a little bit the same. the lower the dose, the lower the response is a general rule. And so I'm very clearly, very firmly, I'm pretty puritanical on this. I'm anti-smack, but I have to concede from a research point of view that, and this is not an endorsement or an encouragement, but if a child gets a little smack every now and again, it's probably not going to have any significant long-term impacts on their lives. But the more often the smacking occurs, the harder the smacking is, the intention behind the smacking, the way that it's all done The worse that gets, the worse the impact's for the child. That's the very short version of what the smacking research shows.
00:07:30
Speaker 3: I would like to say that I've never smacked my child, but that would be an absolute lie. There have been times where I have lost it with my children. And I can't think of a single time where that occurred. And number one, I was completely in control of my own emotions or actions. No. And nor did I sit back and go, well, I did a really good job at that.
00:07:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, no one ever whacks their kids and goes, that's discipline, nailed it, got it so right. Like, even if it worked, and it doesn't, and this is the thing that I'm at pains to point out on these radio programs and in these media interviews that I do. Even if it worked, nobody's ever proud of themselves after they've whacked their kids. There are better things that we can do. And so, therefore, our job is to work towards that.
00:08:21
Speaker 3: And when you think about how much effort we go to to progress as a nation, as a society, as a world at large, that we're still in this conversation. Yeah. It does. It blows my mind.
00:08:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty intense. What do we do instead? We see discipline not as an opportunity to hurt our child, but an opportunity to help our child. If a child's not doing well, then what we're
supposed to be doing is we're supposed to be saying to them, well, there's a problem to be solved here, so let's see if we can figure this out. And I talked to so many parents who kind of try it and go, oh, my goodness, it worked. I just sat down with my kids when they weren't emotional, when I wasn't emotional, and said, that didn't work out so well earlier. What do you think we should do to make sure it never happens again? And the kids are incredible. They're like, yeah, I need to get this right. Or maybe we could make this the new rule. Maybe we don't have TV at a certain time, or maybe we don't have phones at a certain time. The kids come up with this stuff themselves.
00:09:15
Speaker 3: Why?
00:09:16
Speaker 1: We give them credit for having a brain, basically, being able to figure this stuff out. The research shows that physical punishment doesn't improve any long-term behavior, and it's linked to negative outcomes like aggression, mental health struggles, lower relationship quality. There's some data that points to, especially when it gets bad, IQ impacts. And one of the most fascinating studies, and I know this might sound like I'm drawing a long bow here, so I just want to highlight, this is correlational research, but the countries that endorse smacking, the higher the endorsement of smacking, the more likely it is that that country is going to go to war or is going to be at war. I just find this amazing. In other words, when we see violence as an answer in the family room, we also see it as an answer on the global stage. stage. And those countries where corporal punishment is just part of the course, they seem to be far more likely to be engaged in and oriented towards taking violent action across their borders as well. Isn't that fascinating?
00:10:15
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:10:16
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:10:16
Speaker 3: Well, I don't have much control over what happens globally, but I do have control over what happens in my own home. And while I don't necessarily believe that illegalizing smacking children is the answer.
00:10:32
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's a word, but I like it. I think we should illegalize lots of things. Yeah, let's illegalize it. But I would love to think that.
00:10:38
Speaker 3: As all, decent human beings that we would recognize that we don't need to bring the past into the future.
00:10:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like that you're making this a moral question. Parenting is a moral endeavor, and usually I'm talking about teaching morality to our children, teaching them character. I think the ability for us to model that is exactly what we're talking about here. If there's a problem to solve, let's not solve it with threats and consequences and physical violence or physical attacks. Even if you're saying that I'm using hyperbolic words and going too far by calling a smack a physical attack, there are better ways to do it. And I've written a bunch of books about them and they're all available online and there's free podcast content and all that sort of stuff. You don't have to buy a book, but you will find it easier because all the good information is in the books, but it's available on blogs and articles and podcasts and that kind of thing. So let's improve the discourse. Let's improve the conversation and let's solve problems with our kids rather than just hurting them and punishing them. Happy Families podcast will be back tomorrow. It's produced by Justin Rulon from Bridge Media. Mim Hammonds provides additional research and support. For more to make your family happier, especially on this big topic, check out the resources at happyfamilies.com.au.