Parents, Relax: It's OK to spank the kids

By Scot Lehigh
September 5, 2001

"Please don't do that," she beseeched. "It's not nice."

To absolutely no avail. And so, the next time her child kicked the back of my seat to skull-rattling effect, I turned and fixed him with a stern look.

"Stop that right now," I demanded. The little miscreant shrank back in astonishment at the unaccustomed tone of voice. And ceased his kicking. He wasn't the only one who was surprised. The Doting Indulgent Modern Parent (Dimpie) looked on with the wonder of a petitioner who has just witnessed a miracle at Lourdes.

It wasn't long afterward that there occurred the disturbing case of the kids who both screamed for ice cream. Another Dimpie was trying to bribe two balky toddlers to behave with the promise of their favorite frozen concoction. Which is where the conflict of tastes arose.

"Haagen-Dazs," screamed one, at the top of his leathery little lungs.

"Emacks," howled the other, just as loudly.

"Haagen-Dazs." "Emacks." "Haagen-Dazs." "Emacks."

Their serial screeches echoed like the wail of banshees as I retreated along Mt. Vernon Street, wondering the same thing I had on the plane. Wouldn't they behave better if she spanked them occasionally?

Now she can. In case you missed the happy news, psychologist Diana Baumrind, a child development expert at the University of California, has given the OK for measured spankings, saying a long-term study of 100 families has shown that mild to moderate spankings have no deterimental effects on children.

Talk about a long overdue (and mild) blow for common sense!

Time was, you knew a nation by its children - and ours spoke pretty well of us, at least by comparison. With the exception of the well-ordered English kids, Western European children were notoriously bratty. For lack of any better theory, I blame the litterateurs for the laxness.

There's Proust, who, in "Remembrance of Things Past," lets his protagonist try to interrupt a dinner party to wheedle a good-night kiss from his mother. Or Joyce, who encourages little Stephen Dedalus to believe he's the very center of the universe. Or Gunter Grass, whose creation - a pint-sized noisemaker capable of such glass-shattering shrieks that he scares off any would-be disciplinarians - has gone from chilling prophecy to everyday reality.

But that's idle theory. In this country, the reason in clear.

It's the advent of the "timeout," the pseudo-disciplinary intervention in which an indulgent parent pleads with his or her child to behave. Or rather, to begin to think about agreeing to consider behaving.

Timeouts changed the entire power dynamic of parenting, replacing the quick chastisement of a firm swat with protracted pleading: "Grendel, aren't you sorry you pushed Grammy down the stairs? Don't you want to go to the hospital to apologize? If you do, we'll stop at Toys R Us."

The result, predictably, was that a generation of toddler/terrorists, always keen to any change in the power relationship, quickly sensed that their assent was critical to make these negotiations a success. And so they became like sulky little Caligulas, ever less regulated and more arbitrary in their moods, prone to throwing howling temper tantrums at the toss of a hat as a tool to get their way.

Inured to screaming, resigned to chaos, stripped of the intimidating authority of a curt command or condign punishment, too many modern parents now spend their days cajoling and bribing their offspring to behave. No wonder the child-free movement has sprung up to ask a telling question: If parents can no longer control their children, shouldn't society provide child-free refuges for those whose hearing is still intact? And since restaurants offer no-smoking areas, why not no-children sections?

Into this impasses has stepped the brave Baumrind, who now offers parents a guilt-free guarantee to regain control. Dimpies of America: You have the solution. Now take it in hand.

Scot Lehigh's e-mail address is lehigh@globe.com.