I Spank My Children

@SW-User You'd be surprised how well adjusted Amish children turn out.

@EllaDisenchanted What is your criteria for "well adjusted"?

@SW-User Well, I'm not on drug or medication.I'm non violent. I have never been arrested, pushed little old lady down stairs, been drunk or disorderly. I'm quite boring, actually. Have raised a goodly number of foster children. I'm quite average outside of my lingering cultural habits and convictions which just make me a bit of square peg in the wider world. But hardly maladjusted.

I can only explain it by giving myself as the example.

@EllaDisenchanted That's good, and I'm glad it's worked out okay for you. But those aren't all valid criteria, well adjustment goes beyond not having been on the bad fringes of things, it's your day to day life.

And you alone as an example isn't enough.

@SW-User Agreed. And your assumptions about an entire group based on distaste over practices likewise aren't an example of anything.

@EllaDisenchanted This isn't a matter of distaste or an attack towards an entire group, there's plenty of research done on this that proves it can have pretty bad effects.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/good-thinking/201604/what-really-happens-when-parents-hits-their-kids

@SW-User There is also plenty of research done that proves lack of discipline in the home leads to increased crime and suicide rates.

What it comes down to is the individual and the culture and society that springs up around that person.

So if you want a comparison then I suggest you look at western society in general and what's going on there versus the Amish community or the mennonite community in general.

Compare and contrast then tell me which is better overall as far as civility and adjustment.

@SW-User In the mainstream media the impression is given that “the science is in” – spanking is the worst possible thing a parent could do. But the science is not in. The American College of Pediatricians, an organization of some 60,000 pediatricians and pediatric researchers, just last January issued a warning "Research on Disciplinary Spanking is Misleading" https://similarworlds.com/2327115-I-Am-A-Strict-Mom/596949-Recently-there-has-been-a-tsunami-of-reports-in But, for what can only be ideological reasons, the American College of Pediatricians is totally ignored.

There is actually some very good research which reached the conclusion that spanking is the very best way to get children to comply with their parents' wishes (research which has been peer reviewed as the ACP points out).

And then there is the experience of parents -- for eons it has been noticed that spanking is a helpful parenting tool. The Amish are not the exception. It seems strange that the wisdom of the ages is being overturned by fifty years of research – research that has often been not just shoddy, but ideologically motivated.