Is It Ever OK To Spank?

The image of Adrian Peterson’s son’s legs has ignited a welcome cultural conversation. This is unusual. Most of these contrived “conversations” are efforts to take one headline and shoehorn it into a narrative that liberals want to advance, usually about race and racism. Those “conversations” are never truthful.

But the discussion of a 4-year-old boy’s wounds has elicited some brutally honest commentary.

Writing for CNN, Steven Holmes blasted what he regards as excessive tolerance for spanking and child abuse in the black community. He dispatches the “I was whipped and I turned out all right” excuse. Holmes cites the abundant research showing that “spanking inhibits the learning process. … It leads to anger, depression, violence and alcohol and drug abuse. It breeds hostility toward authority … and spawns other antisocial behaviors.” Physical punishment, he continues, “is associated with legions of sullen, angry, violence-prone boys.”

Peterson advanced the “mean streets” argument. “I could have been one of those kids that was lost in the streets without the discipline instilled in me by my parents.” Holmes replies: “That may have been true for Peterson. But what also could be true is that the streets may not have been so mean if they were not populated by so many kids who are angry at the world because, among other things, they were spanked.”

More