When I was growing up, parents would whack their kids on the ass if they didn’t obey.

No one thought anything about it. But if you hit your kid with your fist, you were going to jail. Not cool.

In the classic ass-whack, the Dad would grab his kid’s left forearm with his left hand, lift the kid in the air, then give him a couple of swats on the butt with the open palm of his right hand. If the Dad was talking to a friend, this whole sequence could happen while Dad continued talking to his pal. It was such a small thing that kids often forgot to cry.

In those days, an aerial ass-whack was the equivalent of your mom speaking your name sharply and waggling her finger at you.

Then someone wrote a book suggesting that Dads should use something other their open palms to whack their kids. “If you swat them with your hand, your child will fear YOU. But if you whack them with a thing, they will fear the THING instead.”

Okay. If you say so.

Then someone decided that it wasn’t cool to whack your kids at all. You should just say mean and hurtful things to them.

Uh-oh. Now we’re listening to a psycho.

Then came the day of tiger moms, always hovering, always pestering, always causing their kids to be fearful of failure, fearful of falling short, fearful of not being the child their parents were hoping they would be.

If you are a kid today and are not being raised by tigers, you are likely being raised by helicopter parents, always hovering, pestering, causing you to be fearful of dangers, fearful of strangers, fearful of friends from bad families, fearful of bullies, fearful of mean girls, fearful of falling down and skinning your knee, fearful, fearful, fearful of climbing that sweaty, steep, rocky trail that is this wild adventure we call life.

– Roy H. Williams

“While I def see both sides, this is my experience. I was spanked, and while I can’t say my memories were pleasant, I remember being a brat, so I might have deserved it. My brother wasn’t really spanked because he came around later when I guess my parents were more tolerant (or they loved him more, who knows.) My brother has been to jail twice, flunked out of college, and has to borrow money from my parents for rent. I graduated, never had run-ins with the law, and am happily married with a good-paying job. I doubt either were direct results from being spanked/not being spanked. But from my perspective my brother doesn’t seem to have a sense of consequences, which is why he has issues, where I avoid situations more because of the fear of said consequences. So from my perspective, I feel like punishing your child is important for their development. If you can find an effective way of punishment (grounding, spanking, etc.) then I personally think it’s a benefit for their development.”
– sman2002