The Library of Spanking Fiction: Wellred Weekly
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Articles
Items of interest regarding all things spanking
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The Psychology of Spankings - Part 2 (cont) By studying a small sample, by excluding hard spankings as abuse, and by including painless pats to the bottom, Baumrind manipulates her research design to reach an untenable conclusion. Spanking, after all, is violence at the hand of a trusted love one. One wonders what Dr. Baumrind is trying to accomplish.  Robert Larzelere Both Dr. Baumrind and Dr. Larzelere are pursuing odd agendas. One might speculate that they see some value in challenging the body of scientific literature on the harmful effects of spankings on children. The "spankings" they describe, however, are highly idealized, like the kind of fictional spankings that Paris Annette Morreau describes so poetically in her short stories. Perhaps Dr. Baumrind and Dr. Larzelere should try their hands at fiction, too, since the "normative" spankings they define simply do not describe how the vast majority angry or angered parents spank their children. A relative newcomer to the pro-spanking camp is Dr. Marjorie Gunnoe, a psychologist at Calvin College. This is a Christian college; Dr. Gunnoe's research reflects the institutional agenda of such a Christian college. In a 1997 study, Gunnoe argues that spanking children under 6 caused no harm, although spanking children over 6 showed increased aggression. Nevertheless, she concludes her abstract by asserting that "for most children, claims that spanking teaches aggression seem unfounded." Her 2006 study provided some support for her hypothesis that fathers that practiced authoritarian parenting (e.g., spanking dads) in conservative Christian families did not harm their teenage children as such parenting does in non-Christian families. In her most recent study in 2009, Dr. Gunnoe asked 179 teenagers to self-report memories of spankings growing up and a series of questions presumed to be positive and negative outcomes of corporal punishment. Her sample is small, the survey cross-sectional, and the data entirely self-reports of events (spankings) that happened long ago and outcomes that are likely to be idealized in the teen's self report. Her findings of no harm from spankings are inconsistent with the bulk of the scientific literature.  Marjorie Gunnoe Dr. Gunnoe's research reflects the organizational agenda of a conservative Christian college. Regard her work with the same skepticism that you would apply to tobacco research conducted by the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. For conservative Christians, the harmful effects of spankings must be repudiated with the same tenacity that tobacco companies try to underplay the harmful effects of smoking tobacco. Putting "Normative" Spankings and Claims of No Harm in Context In the final analysis, some children who are spanked are not necessarily harmed by the experience. However, a large body of scientific evidence shows long-term harmful consequences of spankings as they are administered in the real world. The critics of this research use small samples, restrict data to "normative" spankings that may not be painful at all, and/or use measures of short-term consequences to bolster a weak case against the preponderance of existing scientific literature. Some people who smoke tobacco live to a ripe old age and eventually are crushed to death by an 18-wheeler on the interstate. Nevertheless, study after study documents the harmful effects of tobacco use on health. The parallels between tobacco's harm and the harm of spankings are striking. Likewise, the so-called scientific "debate" over the harm of tobacco and spankings offers similar parallels. Spankos Who Spank Children in Fact and Fiction A spankophile or spanko is somebody who likes to spank or be spanked. I am a spanko. My biography is relevant here, but I promise to keep it short. I was fascinated with corporal punishment as a child. My triggering event was an abusive spanking from my grandmother when I was 4. I began masturbating to spanking fantasies in my early teen years. During my marriage, my spouse (who was severely spanked as a child) would threaten to spank our daughter, but never did. After the divorce (my daughter was 2), I spanked her on about a half dozen occasions (open palm to the bottom) over a period of 2-3 years. I exercised great discipline, always spanking when I wasn't angry. In truth, the anger was only repressed, not absent. I stopped when my daughter was 5-6 years old. In retrospect, I achieved nothing good with spankings. In retrospect, I should have known that I was wrong to spank my child, because it's poor parenting in general and because, in particular, I have a spanking fetish. Of all people, spankophiles know there's a link between spanking and sexual arousal. More than anyone else, we ought to know that the disciplinary spanking of children carries enormous sexual import. There is a line between fact and fiction. There also is a line between consenting adults and non-consenting children. We ought to respect both lines. I have had some heated (but not very illuminating) exchanges with spankophiles who insist that the real-world, non-consensual spanking of children is appropriate, helpful, etc., etc. Having been in that headspace myself, I confess to being somewhat intolerant of folks who refuse to take a hard look at their position, their behavior, and their fetish. The roots of our fetish may be biological or experiential. Some of us feel we were "born with the kink." Others of us feel that our childhood experiences activated something that might have remained dormant without adverse childhood experiences to bring our fetish to the fore. Some of us feel that our childhood spanking experiences imposed a kink on us that would not otherwise exist. We do know that children who are spanked more frequently, and who are spanked at an older age, are more likely to engage in sadomasochistic sex as teens and adults. The point is, if adverse childhood experiences with spankings force even some children to develop this fetish, then such punishments of children is unconscionable. Then consider the other scientifically documented, long-term negative consequences of spankings on children. A reasonable person can reach only one conclusion: reserve spankings for fiction and consenting adults. The Harmful Effects of Spanking Fiction The beauty of spanking fiction is that we can explore the eroticism of our kink without hurting anybody else. As writers and readers of spanking fiction, we can explore the darkest spaces of our sadomasochistic schemas, imagining ourselves in the dominant role, the submissive role, or both. Sublimated eroticism operates as a subtext to seeming prosaic spanking experiences, involving adults, teens, and children. My favorite theme is the precocious girl who explores her "itch" for spankings, either consciously or unconsciously. She devises numerous schemes to get herself spanked by different people for different reasons and in different social and historical settings. You probably have your own favorites. Some say that writing fiction about spanking children (especially extremely hard spankings) will encourage the unstable to do something that they might not otherwise do (i.e., spank their children severely). Perhaps. But if that's the case, then the Greek tragedies (I can't believe I killed my dad and screwed my mom), Shakespeare, and the Holy Bible need to be recalled immediately as a threat to public safety. I have a standard disclaimer that I used when posting elsewhere: The author does not in any way endorse the spanking of real children in real life. Closet Spankos? Now let's return to Drs. Baumrind, Larzelere, and Gunnoe. What's up with these researchers? One can safely assume that all three were spanked as children. After all, they grew up in the United States, where 90% of 3 and 4 year olds in 1985 were subjected to spankings, as documented in one study. For the "Silent" generation (born 1925-1945) and the "Baby Boomer" generation (born 1946-1964), spanking percentages were even higher. Given the fact that a spanking is a sexually arousing act even for a child, one can speculate as to how their spankings may have affected the schemas and lovemaps of Drs. Baumrind, Larzelere, and Gunnoe. One possibility is that these researchers are emotionally shut down. Perhaps their childhood spanking experiences caused them to simply "drop out" emotionally. Their implicit advocacy of spankings may cause great pain for many children, as well as long-term negative outcomes. These emotional implications may simply not register with Drs. Baumrind, Larzelere, and Gunnoe. This shutting down has a parallel to incest and child molestation. I treated one client who was sexually molested by her mother, her father, and several other relatives. She described spankings from her father as follows: he would simply "flip" her over after a spanking to sexually molest her. She, in turn, married a man who molested her children. Her son, a molest victim as a child, was arrested for molesting an underage teenage boy. Spankings and molestations are embedded family practices that are amazingly impervious to external social norms or scientific evidence of harm. The victims of molest want to be molesters. The spankee wants to be the spanker. All that's required is a lack of empathy. All that's needed to replicate the abuse generation after generation is to be emotionally shut down. The other possibility, of course, is that Drs. Baumrind, Larzelere, and Gunnoe may be closet spankos. Why this passionate interest in justifying corporal punishment? Perhaps Drs. Baumrind, Larzelere, and Gunnoe would like to post their comments here. Perhaps they would like to write fictional spanking stories, rather than questionable scientific studies that end up implicitly advocating the non-consensual, sadomasochistic spanking of children. If Drs. Baumrind, Larzelere, and Gunnoe would stick to pure fiction, nobody would get hurt. 30 comments
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