Preparing for the Spanking Debate!

Stefan Molyneux

In preparation for a debate on spanking, philosopher Stefan Molyneux examines the ethical complexities of spanking as a disciplinary method for children. He opens with personal reflections in anticipation of a debate, then critiques the moral justifications for physical punishment. Arguing against the power dynamics that permit adults to hit children, he highlights societal inconsistencies in attitudes towards aggression. He challenges the logic of punishing those who cannot reason and emphasizes the efficacy of non-violent discipline methods, supported by research showing better outcomes in children raised without physical punishment. Additionally, Stefan critiques historical views on child behavior and advocates for a societal shift towards recognizing children's rights and dignity, envisioning a violence-free future.  SUBSCRIBE TO ME ON X! https://x.com/StefanMolyneux  Follow me on Youtube! https://www.youtube.com/@freedomain1  GET MY NEW BOOK 'PEACEFUL PARENTING', THE INTERACTIVE PEACEFUL PARENTING AI, AND THE FULL AUDIOBOOK! https://peacefulparenting.com/  Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!  Subscribers get 12 HOURS on the "Truth About the French Revolution," multiple interactive multi-lingual philosophy AIs trained on thousands of hours of my material - as well as AIs for Real-Time Relationships, Bitcoin, Peaceful Parenting, and Call-In Shows!  You also receive private livestreams, HUNDREDS of exclusive premium shows, early release podcasts, the 22 Part History of Philosophers series and much more!  See you soon! https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/UPB2025

Transcript

00:00All right, so this is a little bit, oh, debate prep.

00:04Debate prep, I have a debate tomorrow at 6 p.m. Eastern Standard.

00:09Well, I guess this will be in the past, because I'm not going to put this out before the debate,

00:15but a little bit of debate prep.

00:16Oh, it's been a while since I've done a sort of live debate.

00:20So I'm going to put this forward as prep, and you can hear the prep after the fact.

00:28This is my sound check. It'll be played after the concert. All right.

00:32So spanking, of course, is the use of physical force to inflict pain to change a child's behavior,

00:39or I guess ideally with the goal of changing the child's behavior,

00:41although, of course, spanking occurs in other contexts out of frustration, anger, impatience, and so on.

00:49So it is a glaring exception to the general rules of society.

00:55And in fact, it is a complete reversal of the general rules in society.

01:01Now, that is not necessarily making it false.

01:04We don't allow children to sign contracts.

01:08We don't allow children to drive cars.

01:11We don't allow them to vote.

01:13So just because we have opposite rules for children or restrictive rules for children

01:18doesn't make them automatically wrong.

01:20However, none of the categories make any sense regarding hitting.

01:27So, for instance, we generally consider it bad when a man hits a woman because,

01:34or worse than the reverse, because a man is usually bigger and stronger than a woman.

01:39We generally don't like it when a bigger child bullies a smaller child because of the size and strength disparity.

01:50So, of course, we generally say that people who are bigger and stronger have a special consideration to not bully others.

02:01So, for instance, if our child is very weak and in a wheelchair, we generally don't have to give them a lot of lectures on bullying,

02:10whereas if our child is some really fast-developing, you know, six-foot-tall-by-grade-six kind of kid,

02:17we might be a little bit more concerned about bullying.

02:20So, in general, we say the bigger and stronger you are, the more requirement you have to be peaceful and to not use violence.

02:31We also generally say that where there is a power disparity, then violations of moral codes are even worse.

02:39So this is why, in general, a boss is not allowed to date his immediate employee, because the power disparity is too great.

02:47In other words, if your boss asks you out and you say no, is that going to harm your career because he might misuse his power and so on,

02:54generally, if a cop commits a crime, we view that as worse than an average citizen committing a crime

03:02because the cop has all the power of the state behind him.

03:06And so the more powerful you are, the higher your moral requirements, not the lower.

03:12So, the fact that parents are larger, stronger, more powerful, and have infinitely more legal, moral, and economic strength and power,

03:23and independence, should erase their moral standards, not collapse them completely.

03:31It would be like saying, well, if you're a small kid, bullying is really bad and wrong, but if you're a big kid, bullying is really good and great.

03:42Well, we wouldn't say that, in general, that wouldn't make any sense, but we say it with regards to hitting children.

03:49Now, of course, the other reason why people say you have to hit children is because children don't reason.

03:56You can't reason. You can't reason with a child. Well, how do we abstract that moral rule and make it universal?

04:04Because moral rules have to be universal, otherwise they're exploitation and a justification for immorality.

04:11If we say only redheads can steal, then that's not a moral rule, that's just permission for redheads to achieve their final form of demonic pilfering.

04:21So, if we say, well, you can hit children because children can't reason, or, let's say, won't reason, then we have a problem.

04:32Is the moral rule that we can hit people who are incapable of reason?

04:37All right? Well, if that is the moral rule, we have a challenge, which is, can we then hit people who suffer from mental retardation?

04:47Can we hit people who suffer from Alzheimer's? Can we hit people who have other sorts of degenerative brain disorders?

04:55Can we hit seniors who are notoriously forgetful? There's even a phrase for it called having a senior moment where you can't remember where your keys are,

05:03or you drive forward when you think you've got the car in reverse, or vice versa.

05:07Can we hit people who are incapable of reasoning? No. In fact, in most common law systems, you have higher penalties for hitting the disabled rather than you have permission to hit the disabled.

05:26So, it's a reversal of the more strength means more moral responsibility.

05:33We actually lower it considerably with children.

05:36We create a special category called you can hit people who are incapable of reason,

05:43and that's considered good with children, but would be egregious in any other situation.

05:49For instance, if you have your lovely, wonderful mother or grandmother is in an elder home, right, an elder care home, an old-age home,

06:02and you arrive, and she tells you that the orderly hit her because she forgot to clean up after lunch, and she's crying.

06:14Why wouldn't you be appalled at that? But why? But why? I mean, that's a really important question.

06:23Why would you be appalled? And let's say that your elderly mother was forgetful, or had some sort of brain issues, and so on,

06:29or was just old. I mean, it happens, right? Why would you be appalled? Say, ah, well, you know, but only family members can hit.

06:35Well, no, in loco parentis is a Latin for acting in the guise of parents.

06:40I, myself, was hit by a headmaster who was not my parent, and, of course, in, I think, 18 American states,

06:48teachers can hit children. So, if teachers can hit children, why wouldn't orderlies be able to hit elderly grandmothers

06:55for being forgetful? Well, we'd say, well, you can't hit them just because they forgot something.

07:01You can't hit them just because they were acting badly. You can't hit them just because they soiled their diapers.

07:06You can't hit them even if they are, as a result of their Alzheimer's or whatever it was,

07:14that, let's say, that they're even aggressive, and yell at or hit other people in the old age home.

07:23Would we say, well, yes, then you must be able to hit them in order to correct their behavior

07:27because they can't be reasoned with? Well, we would consider that appalling.

07:30But why? Why would we consider that appalling? Every single standard that we say makes it good

07:38to hit children somehow makes it evil to hit people who aren't children. Well, that's no good.

07:47That doesn't make any sense. We say, well, if you have more strength and size and power,

07:52you have higher moral standards, not lower. And if somebody who is abled hits somebody who's

07:59disabled, we consider that even more egregious, then less. Hmm. Now, let's say that somebody can

08:09reason but doesn't reason. Well, if me, as the old saying from Hamlet goes, treat each man according

08:17to his desserts, none shall escape the whipping. Can you say that you have always acted with perfect

08:23rationality in this life? I know I can't. And I think it would be an inhuman and ridiculous claim

08:29to say that you and I have always acted with perfect rationality in this life. The other day,

08:37I got all huffy about a caller for putting forward some insults after I'd called his hobby

08:43gay and retarded. That was hypocritical. Should I be beaten for that? I was in the wrong.

08:48So, if somebody cannot reason, does it make sense to hit them for not being rational? If

08:55somebody can reason but chooses not to reason, can we hit them? No. No. So, the use of violence

09:06is sharply curtailed and proscribed, curtailed and proscribed, not prescribed, it's kind of an

09:13important difference. In Western civilization, we curtail reason, violence. And why do we curtail it?

09:21Well, because we don't want to live in a violent society. So, in general, under common law, we allow

09:29violence only in very, very specific and immediate circumstances. So, we say that violence is only

09:40justifiable in an immediate moment of self-defense when you are facing grievous bodily harm or death.

09:49That you can use violence up to and including lethal violence in situations of lethal or imminent

09:57lethal threat or imminent bodily harm. Grievous bodily harm, not just like a slap. So, you can't shoot

10:04someone for spitting on you. But it is interesting that although spitting on you is almost certain to

10:10cause no harm whatsoever, we still consider it assault and punish people with a year or more

10:17potentially in jail. So, it's really, really bad and wrong, you see, to spit on people, which causes

10:26them almost certainly no bodily harm. But it is good to hit children. And euphemism aside, it doesn't

10:34matter. It's still hitting. We have to invent new words because we're not proud of what we do. So,

10:43we only allow for self-defense in very specific situations of immediate and intense danger, again,

10:51of death or grievous bodily harm, and only then to the proportion to which you eliminate the threat.

10:59Right? So, if somebody is about to hit you and you pull out a gun and then they start running away,

11:07you cannot shoot them because the threat has been neutralized through the pulling out of the gun.

11:13So, we do not allow violence, except in very specific circumstances, almost none of which

11:23apply to raising children. A toddler cannot really inflict death or grievous bodily harm on you,

11:33except if you count as grievous bodily harm stepping on Lego bits. But a toddler cannot inflict

11:41deadly violence upon you. And therefore, the idea that you are striking the toddler in self-defense

11:46is invalid. Now, arguments can be made such as, what about grabbing a child who's about to run

11:55onto the street? Well, let's look at that one and ask ourself, is it universalized? And the answer is,

12:03yeah, it is. So, if you see a blind man with his headphones on about to wander into traffic and

12:13you grab him to restrain him, then that would not be assault. Now, if you then slap him repeatedly to

12:22train him not to walk into traffic, that would be assault. But you can certainly use force, in a sense,

12:28to prevent imminent harm from somebody who's unaved. So, if your child is about to stick a fork into an

12:35electrical socket, not knowing the consequences, of course, which you should have trained him about,

12:39but let's just say there's some circumstance in which there's not a deficiency on your part,

12:43but impulsivity on the child's part, then yeah, you can absolutely grab the fork and take it away,

12:48and so on. But that is not the same as hitting. Restraint is not the same as hitting. So, again,

12:56these are universalized, and it is not the case that it is specific to childhood. A more apt analogy

13:06might be something like inoculations. So, a child cannot understand the reason for inoculations,

13:17vaccinations, but you may choose to vaccinate your child nonetheless. That is, the infliction of harm,

13:26upon the child, in order to help the child's health down the road. And that is not equivalent

13:35to spanking, because the introduction of medicine or medical procedures that is unpleasant to the

13:42child is not the same as initiating the use of force against the child to correct his or her behavior.

13:49If your child gets a bad cut, then your child may need stitches, and the stitches will be unpleasant

13:57and painful for the child. But that is not the same as you initiating the use of force against your

14:03child in order to correct his or her behavior. Now, the question is, also, if there is a peaceful

14:13alternative to a conflict, surely we should take the peaceful alternative rather than the coercive

14:24alternative, even if the coercive alternative is legal. In other words, if you want to teach your

14:29child about right and wrong, good and bad, virtues, immorality, good behavior, politeness,

14:34reasonableness, and so on, diplomacy, which these are all good things to teach our children and

14:39children in general, in general, we would prefer the more peaceful alternative to a potentially

14:45violent situation. So, if somebody is beginning to threaten us in some public place, if we have

14:55the option to talk our way out of the threat, I think most people would say that is a better option

15:02than assaulting him. And certainly the law would, if somebody is just starting to become

15:08threatening, like, yeah, you better watch your tone or something like that, right? Like, not a

15:13direct threat, like, I'm going to kill you, but, you know, you better think about your next words

15:18very, very carefully, or you better watch it, Buster, or something like that. And then we just

15:22start pounding him, right? On the face or body or something like that. We assault him. I think most

15:29people would say that de-escalation and not responding to verbal aggression with physical force

15:38violence is better. If we could teach someone a lesson without using violence, I think most

15:46people would say that is preferable to teaching a lesson with violence. Now, let's go one step

15:53further. If it was also true that not only is it better if you can teach the same lesson

16:01without using violence, but you can teach the lesson better without using violence, well, then we would

16:10have an open and shut case. So, in general, we would prefer that a lesson be taught or a situation be

16:18de-escalated without using violence. But if the situation can be de-escalated and the lesson can be

16:27taught far better without using violence, then violence, even as a utilitarian justification,

16:34would cease to be justified at all. So, if you want to teach your children emotional self-regulation,

16:41which we do, if you want to teach your children right from wrong, which we do, if you want to teach

16:46your children good from evil, which we do, if non-violence teaches children better than violence,

16:56in other words, they learn self-regulation and morality better through peace and reason rather

17:02than threats and violence, then the last justification for hitting children falls away utterly.

17:09If you have a sore throat, you might get some antibiotics. You don't get a tracheotomy.

17:18A tracheotomy for a sore throat would be assault because antibiotics are better at curing a sore throat

17:25than a tracheotomy. So, I mean, the studies are very clear on this. There's no ambiguity that parents

17:33who are trained at reasoning with their children can abandon spanking over 90% of the time and have

17:39better outcomes. Children have better emotional self-regulation. They have fewer tantrums. They

17:44learn better. They mature faster, which is exactly what we would expect. It's pretty hard to learn a

17:51lesson. It's pretty hard to learn words if you are taught the opposite of what the words mean.

17:57If you're told that North and South is up is down and peace is slavery, or peace is violence and

18:01freedom is slavery, if you're given the opposite meaning to all these words, it's pretty hard to learn a

18:06language. It's pretty hard to be hit by your parents and learn the lesson that hitting is bad. It's pretty

18:15hard to see your parents get angry and hit you and learn the lesson about emotional maturity and

18:22self-regulation. It is pretty hard to be yelled at and told that calmness and reason is the best way to

18:31solve problems. It is pretty hard to be hit and to be told that you should never use violence to achieve

18:39your goals. This is all innately, rankly, and basically self-contradictory. And of course, I

18:47understand the Christian reasoning. It's right there in the Bible that children are prone to evil. We're

18:52born with original sin or ancestral guilt. Even if we don't inherit the sin of Adam directly, it's

18:57ancestral guilt. And Satan is everywhere and he enters through the new forged portal of the child's heart and

19:04counsels him to all sorts of wickedness. And the only way to purge him of that temptation of wickedness is to hit

19:12him repeatedly, right? The average child who is spanked, I did the math, the average child who is spanked, is spanked

19:20hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times over the course of his childhood. Spanking escalates or

19:29peaks at around the ages of three to four, but spanking still continues. More than a quarter of

19:35parents are still continuing to spank or hit children into their teenage years. Which, of course,

19:41if you have to keep taking the medicine, maybe the medicine doesn't work. It's just a kind of

19:48thought about that. So, the idea that children are born evil and have to have the devil struck out of

19:56them violently is very primitive. This is a form of child sacrifice. And I personally believe that it's

20:05because parents are trying to tell things that children just don't believe and don't have evidence

20:11for and don't understand, right? Like, you know, you say to a toddler, Jesus died for your sins, so you have

20:16to obey mother because of the Ten Commandments. The kid's going to be like, I don't know, but I know that I do

20:22like lollipops. So, children are perceived to be born evil, and the sinfulness or the evil or the devil's

20:31playground has to be thrashed or hit or beaten out of them with a rod, often, otherwise they will fall prey to

20:38temptation and sin. This arises from an idea that is not at all supported scientifically. Like, not even

20:47a tiny bit, not even a smidgen. It is not supported scientifically. The idea that children are born

20:54malevolent or with tendencies to evil and so on, this is not true. Certainly, from six months of age,

21:04three to six months is kind of sketchy. There was some evidence, but it seems to have been

21:07pretty hard to replicate, so we'll kind of discard that. But from six to 12 months, children do show

21:14a slight preference for helper characters rather than harmful characters. They show, six to 12 months,

21:21they show the beginnings of empathy for others who are in pain or suffering, and they begin to show a

21:28preference for what we would call morality or being helpful rather than harmful. They play more with toys

21:36that have been depicted in a positive moral fashion rather than a negative moral fashion. They play more

21:42with those toys and show more interest in them, which is considered a sign of positivity. They look

21:47longer at positive characters than they do at negative characters. So, children can be morally

21:55reasoned with between 18 to 24 months. You can begin to see the first flickerings of it. Before that,

22:01they can't do any particular kind of reasoning, least of all moral reasoning, which is, as we can see from

22:06this debate, some of the most challenging reasoning around. But children cannot reason morally beforehand,

22:13and therefore punishing them for things that they cannot understand. It's like being arrested in a foreign

22:19language when you didn't even know what you did wrong. It would be Kafka asked to be punished for something that you do not

22:25understand. And to punish someone for what they cannot understand, when we have below a certain IQ, we don't

22:35punish people for their crimes. We might restrain them, but we don't punish them for their crimes because they cannot

22:40understand cause and effect. And this is adults who are intellectually unable to process morality, and

22:47children are unable to process morality, and therefore to punish them for that which they cannot understand is wrong.

22:55If I ask you a question in Japanese, and you don't speak Japanese, and you say, huh, or what, or excuse me,

23:01or pardon me, and I just start hitting you because you didn't understand my Japanese, would anyone in their

23:08right mind think that that's right and fair and just? Of course, the answer is no, they would not.

23:16So, when children cannot understand morality, punishing them for, quote, immoral choices is wrong.

23:23When they can understand morality, or at least begin to, then you need to start building the blocks of

23:29their moral understanding. In the same way that you don't read to a two-year-old, Dostoevsky in the original

23:37Russian, and punish him for failing to understand it, and then say, well, I'll switch to English,

23:43if he speaks English, and he still doesn't understand it, well, you wouldn't punish him for that. What

23:47you would do is you would start to build his understanding of Russian or English to the point

23:52where down the road he can read and appreciate the lovely language of Fyodor Dostoevsky.

23:59You would build his knowledge up, but you would not punish him for that which he cannot understand.

24:08Now, people say, of course, well, there are biblical commandments that require this, and with all due

24:16respect to biblical commandments, some of which are perfectly valid, and I would 100% agree with as a

24:21moral philosopher. But I have not noticed killing family members who tempt you with other gods or

24:29atheism. I have not noticed stoning homosexuals to death lately. I have not noticed justifications

24:35for beating slaves, being widely accepted. I certainly see quite a lot of women trying to

24:40instruct men in the ways of religion, and I do not see them being chastised and told to shut up and

24:44sit in the back of the church, and if they have any questions, go ask their husbands.

24:47So, with regards to Bible injunctions, a lot of them have been marked as morally wrong and ignored.

24:57So, when Christians say, no, I don't want to stone a homosexual to death, which I obviously agree with,

25:06don't stone homosexuals to death. When they say, well, no, that's wrong, I reject that teaching. I also

25:12reject the teaching that says, if a man rapes a woman, he should, if she's a virgin, he should pay

25:19a certain amount of money to her father, and then she must be forced to marry him. I don't see that

25:26being pursued with any great depth or avidity in the Christian community. And, you know, it's,

25:33there's a lot that's in the Bible that we now recognize as primitive and wrong.

25:38Yet, somehow, this one has escaped the notice of a lot of Christians. And why? Well, because

25:4980% of Americans, in particular, have been raised, they were spanked. The number is probably higher,

25:58because people might say, I wasn't spanked when I was, but they would very rarely say the opposite.

26:03But even if we take the number at face value and say, well, 80% of parents respond,

26:07that they would, they were hit as parents, or saying it's wrong, means that they're calling

26:13their parents, they say, parents, you did something wrong. And we can give some forgiveness to not

26:17knowing these things or whatever, right? Although, anti spanking has been around for at least 70 to 80

26:24years that I know of, it could have gone back even further than that. But, so, if you were spanked as a

26:30parent, if you were spanked by your parents, then it becomes, you know, emotionally difficult to say

26:37to your parents, oh, we're not going to spank. Oh, why aren't you going to spank? Well, we think

26:40that it's wrong. Oh, so you're saying my spanking was wrong, blah, blah, blah. It's just tough. And,

26:44of course, you tend to speak the language that you were raised with. I speak English,

26:49I was raised with English, I'm not really competent in any other language. And so, people tend to repeat

26:54what they know. I mean, there's good aspects about that that's supposed to give a certain

26:58stability to culture as a whole, but there's bad aspects to it in that we get to repeat

27:04bad ideas and bad decisions and not grow from them. So, I think that's sort of going to be

27:10roughly how I'm going to start out. Obviously, I'll have to go with what they're coming up with,

27:15but that would be my general approach. That spanking violates the non-aggression principle,

27:20it's the initiation of the use of force, not for the sake of immediate self-defense. And we need to

27:25bring children into the general umbrella in which we secure other members of society. The

27:33least vulnerable members of society have been slowly drawn into the fold of non-aggression,

27:38women, slaves, and so on. And we need to continue that process, the last barrier as children, and

27:44after that, we get a great world. So, I hope that makes sense. Freedomain.com to help out the show.

27:50So, hey, afterwards, let's see how this debate went. But that's some of my prep, the non-technical

27:56parts, the rhetorical parts. I hope that makes sense. Lots of love. Bye.

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