Spanking Kids Stupid

As a child, I was spanked. I never understood the memeing or the method in spanking — except for a parent to prove to a child they were stronger and meaner. My spanking experience was humiliating and hate-inducing. My momentary stepfather was especially brutal and sadistic in that he required you to pull down your pants and underwear if you did wrong.  He then bent you over and told you to hold your ankles while offering your naked rear — anus always facing him — so he could hit you as hard as he could with a Holiday Inn fly swatter for ten minutes. Crying was not enough to stop him. Time was his only guide. He cannot die soon enough.

Learning the glorious news last week that spanking creates stupid children, I began to hold hope that, perhaps, sparing the fly swatter might have saved the man:

Parents who spare the rod just might end up with smarter kids.
Two new studies suggest that children who are spanked have lower IQs than children who aren’t, regardless of where they live.

In one study, researchers analyzed the intelligence scores of roughly 1,500 children in the U.S. who took part in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. They found that these scores were slightly lower among children whose mothers reported using spanking as a form of discipline.
In the other study, national average IQ scores were found to be lower in countries where spanking is common.

If parents don’t love their children enough not to spank them — perhaps they’ll hold their rage just long enough from physical expression in order to salvage, in some small way, the intellect of their developing offspring.

Spanking is never about forcing discipline — it is only about breeding contempt.