Did Corporal Punishment Bring Your Family Closer?
Religious Authoritarian Parenting Experts Promised it would. But did it work?
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On Monday, we published our first chapter on corporal punishment in evangelical RAP homes. Next week we will be putting out our chapter that delves into the research on if spanking is helpful or harmful to young brains (spoiler alert: the research overwhelming points to the harms of corporal punishment, regardless if it is inflicted in “anger” or in “calm” and “logical” manner).
One of the main reasons we have decided to publish our work first on Substack instead of going the route of traditional book publishing is because we value having the input of survivors as an integral part of this project.
Many of you have already shared in the comments the particularities of your personal experience, and we are so grateful for your insight, wisdom, and lived experience (as painful as it was to live through it).
Today we wanted to give folks a chance to respond to one of the main claims of RAP experts: that using corporal punishment on children actually makes for a more secure and loving relationship between parent and child.
Dr. Dobson, the Ezzos, John MacArthur and more told parents that not only did children want firm boundaries (and physical discipline that backed up the boundaries) but that it would make for a closer family relationship. Perhaps this is because in their methods they had the parent force a time of closeness / atonement at the end of the spanking ritual, complete with the child telling their parent how much they loved them. It is easy to see from the parents’ perspective how this would feel cathartic and like closeness — however, from the child’s perspective it looks a lot more like a forced fawn response or even a masking of pain, anger, and resentment.