Here is some of the scientific research Professor Kazdin wants America's parents to take into account:
The negative effects on children include increased aggression and noncompliance—the very misbehaviors that most often inspire parents to hit in the first place—as well as poor academic achievement, poor quality of parent-child relationships, and increased risk of a mental-health problem depression or anxiety, for instance). High levels of corporal punishment are also associated with problems that crop up later in life, including diminished ability to control one's impulses and poor physical-health outcomes (cancer,heart disease, chronic respiratory disease). Plus, there's the effect of increasing parents' aggression, and don't forget the consistent finding that physical punishment is a weak strategy for permanently changing behavior.
All of this is put forth without even a single footnote or citation. We are just to take Professor Kazdin's word for all this. He argues that "the science" shows this and shows that, but anyone who reads scientific reports knows that there is nothing so clearly defined as "the science" about just about anything. The "findings" Kazdin summarizes in the paragraph above appear to be matters of correlation anyway. When a report suggests that spanking (or anything else) is "associated with" a list of ills and bad outcomes, realize that "associated with" is a very thin argument. Non-spanking may be just as or even more "associated with" these same issues, under the right conditions and described by the right definitions.
That sort of nonsense is pretty typical. Spanking can lead to cancer? There are always those who feel that children are best left to raise themselves with only minimal interference from parents. I do appreciate that Dr. Mohler calls Dr. Kazdin out for merely repeating "the science" with no citation of any scientific study, which as he also points out is pretty sketchy stuff when looking at social science anyway. But this guy rolls out some titles and everyone just takes it as gospel truth. He is a "scientist"! That is one of the big shutdown lines of the secular left: "scientist". It is like "racist" or "fundamentalist", used to shut down conversation. Shocking, Dr. Kazdin has a book out The Kazdin Method for Parenting the Defiant Child: With No Pills, No Therapy, No Contest of Wills that purports to have discovered the secret to disciplining a child without any actual discipline. His methodology in his book is apparently the same as in his article on Slate, that is "trust me, I am a scientist!" From the Amazon.com page, this is an excerpt from the review by Publishers Weekly....
Kazdin, director of the Yale Parenting Center and Conduct Clinic as well as president of the American Psychological Association, claims his method works with no pills, no therapy and no contest of wills. Instead, Kazdin uses a practical, science-based method of dealing with behavioral problems in children that relies on positive reinforcement and a reward system. Kazdin doesn't dwell on the scientific research (it seems the reader must trust him on this), though he claims his method works about 80% of the time with serious problems and therefore should have even greater success with everyday behavior glitches.
I love it, just trust him, the "science" agrees with him (we think). What is more disturbing is, once again, the mindset that it reveals among the self-declared intellectual elite. Read this and think of the potential impact of Dr. Kazdin getting his way on our families.
One result of this standoff is that the United States, despite being one of the primary authors of the U.N.'s Convention on the Rights of Children, which specifies that governments must take appropriate measures to protect children from "all forms of physical or mental violence, injury or abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation," is one of only two nations that have not ratified it. The other is Somalia; 192 nations have ratified it. According to my colleague Liz Gershoff of the University of Michigan, a leading expert on corporal punishment of children, the main arguments that have so far prevented us from ratifying it include the ones you would expect—it would undermine American parents' authority as well as U.S. sovereignty—plus a couple of others that you might not have expected: It would not allow 17-year-olds to enlist in the armed forces, and (although the Supreme Court's decision in Roper v. Simmons has made this one moot, at least for now) it would not allow executions of people who committed capital crimes when they were under 18.
We have so far limited our national debate on corporal punishment by focusing it on the schools and conducting it at the local and state level. We have shied away from even theoretically questioning the primacy of rights that parents exercise in the home, where most of the hitting takes place. Whatever one's position on corporal punishment, we ought to be able to at least discuss it with each other like grownups.
Well frankly Dr. Kazdin, no we cannot have a conversation about this because the U.N. and you have no standing to dictate to me or my children. So here is the conversation: butt out. Last time I checked, the United States is still a sovereign nation (until Obama gets in) and as such I don't care what Iceland or Mozambique believes about spanking kids.
These are our children, and we have the right and the responsibility to raise them ourselves. Not to outsource them to secular schools, or day-care, or nannies or the United Nations. If you don't want to raise children, don't have them!
No comments:
Post a Comment