The Bible is 100% wrong to say you should hit your kids

#maklelan2241

[davidoliver]

“You beat your child because you love them” is absolutely the language of abuse.

[QuinnPrice]

Yes, I got beat many times as a kid. My father was a prominent Mormon. Scary dude. And yes, he used the "spare the rod" to justify his behavior. When I developed a very adult-like assertiveness around age 16, he nearly threw me out of the house for no longer fearing him. My leverage was the threat that I wouldn't serve an LDS mission if he threw me out. I was a good kid, an achiever by any standards. The bottom line, you know what is right. Don't use a book to justify your ugliness.

[DukensteinA]

As someone who was beaten regularly, please don’t hit your kids.

[timothymulholland]

I was raised under the rod. My kids were not. My grandkids are not. I can't thank God.

[leadsheep]

"This hurts me more than it hurts you." Okay...then maybe stop doing it, because it freaking hurts! Stop doing this to both of us! 🤦

[busylivingnotdying]

Violence begets violence as a child matures. Forcing a child's behavior by invading their physical autonomy can prompt them to replicate such actions onto others, thus perpetuating the cycle of abuse.

Furthermore, the "obedience" derived from fear and coercion is not genuine. As a child seeks to establish their own independence and autonomy, the struggle and resistance necessary to overcome the internalized "voice" of an oppressive parent will be significantly greater, potentially leading to:

- crime
- physical oppression
- sexual abuse
- a secret life that noone can help or access until it has done irreparable damage
- compensation and self medicating through the abuse of alchohol and or drugs etc.

This results in society labeling the (now adult) child as "evil" and "disgusting, " etc., yet who holds accountable those who CAUSED such behavior (referring to the violent parent from their childhood)?

[elizabethbutler]

The fact that in 2024 we still have to say that hitting children is wrong is appalling.

[cygnustsp]

When my Jehovah's Witness dad disciplined us, it was with a belt, and he didn't hold back. But you know what, he told us he hated doing it but had to because Jehovah, and they he would hug us and tell us he loved us. Imagine feeling like some deity tells you to beat your kids and you comfess to them you hate doing it. Talk about confliction.

[wayneu]

Years ago I was teaching a college-level Comparative Religions class and this subject came up. A student raised his hand and offered, “My dad beat the shit out of me, and I turned out okay.” My response? “Wouldn’t you rather have turned out GREAT?”

[jimhunt]

A quote from Isaac Asimov, "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." In this context I take it to mean that if you are clever and thoughtful, you can come up with a consistent way to discipline your children that doesn't involve violence. The question is, are you willing to put the extra thought and effort into discipline without hitting? We were, and we have a wonderful daughter who accepts responsibility for her actions - and generally opts for the positive actions.

[dmnemaine]

I grew up in an evangelical Baptist household, and my father beat us. He called it "spanking". It was beating. I still have issues to this day with social anxiety because of that.

[tussk.]

Anytime I hear somebody say that they were beaten as a child and it never did them any harm, I always respond with 'Yes it did. It made you the sort of person that thinks it's ok to hit children'

[aralornwolf]

Debbie Pearl published a book "How to Train up a Child"... In it, they describe what switch you should use, ho to use it, and they advocated to beat infants. Furthermore, they advocated for parents who just began using their 'advice' to "continue to hit your disobedient child until they submit"... this instruction has resulted in a _minimum_ of 7 deaths. One was a recently adopted child. RIP Children. RIP. Yet, the Pearls continue to distance from their words by saying "we never said to 'beat' the children to death!"

[theodorebear]

I was hit when I was a kid by other kids by some adults.
It made me aggressive because wrong was done to me, so I was less hesitant to do wrong to others.
Violence is very dangerous because it tends to leave survivors with a violence and aggression they learned from the attack.
*If you love someone, you will NEVER seek to harm them.*
If a parent thinks it's acceptable to hit their kid then that parent is sick in their soul and the child is in a toxic environment where that sickness could leak into their soul and infect them with a similar cruelty.

[digitaljanus]

So when my children are older, and maybe get into some serious trouble at some point, which I know is possible because I was also that age once: Do I want them to conceal it from me out of fear of pain and punishment and thus they learn deception and to suffer in silence? Or do I want them to be able to come to me because they know however upset I might be, I still love them and respect their autonomy and integrity? The "rod" is not the tool of discipline, it is the tool of domination. Full stop.

[ShadowPaadin]

Stuff like this is why I consider it dangerous to view any text as an inerrant, infallible guide to life. Due to how language works, there can never be such a thing as a perfect translation. Also, the Bible says dumb crap.

[christyadams]

My Mom read it as saying to hold your child to a standard, a rod, and be consistent and attentive to your children. She was very Christian and wasn't beaten nor spanked. My Mom was very loving and didn't spank us, she just gave us a look and we knew better. Just be good parents and treat child with respect and affection and you're good.

[jannetteberends]

I’m from the Netherlands I never heard parents talking about disciplining their children. Parents talk with their children, , teachers talk with their students.Beating your children is viewed as parents that don’t know how to parent correctly.
Dutch children are the happiest children in the world, according to UNICEF.

[donjhoe]

From the people who brought you "its only bad if your human property dies!" comes "neverending cycle of abuse!"

[MikoTerribo]

I’m in my early 50’s, and from Canada. Hitting kids was just the norm growing up, both parents, grandparents, teachers, other kids. Normally the hitting from adults was a scary un-hinged from men, I don’t know how to word this properly but I was a young boy then but the women, my mother or grandmother were more calculating and humiliating when they hit me. You could see my dad realized he had lost control and felt ashamed. My mom and Granny not so much. Hitting kids was the norm, and my family on top of that suffered trauma from our involvement in both world wars, plus the shitty situations that were more common back then. All the people who hit me as a kid got hit as kids, and my dad definitely hit us less then he got hit that’s for sure. Being hit by the caregivers in our lives as kids did not help any of the generations of our family. Stop hitting kids. It sucks.