Why is it seen as wrong in the US to hit your own kids ?!?

I'm from Europe and this kind of behavior is frowned upon here as well.
I feel sorry for you that you take children beating as a norm.

To try to give a complete answer?

First, there is a difference between punishment with a spanking and slapping a kid across the face.
Second, it is now considered that there are better/alternative punishments. Especially for a teenager ... why smack the kid when you can just cancel their cell phone service or take their computer away?
Third, there is a substantial amount of evidence that spanking as a normal form of punishment often causes more harm than good. It is correlated with children growing up to have increased (not decreased) behavior problems in school, and is correlated with all sorts of violent behavior, anger management issues, and decreased (not increased) respect for authority. You can have corrective behavior that doesn't rely on physical violence.

I happened to be hit by my parents a few times and I believe that thanks to this I was brought up as the decent and respectful person I am. And yes, I do think that hitting your child every now and then when he/she does something really bad is a good way of teaching them to be thankful and respectful.
When my father hit me, I would be upset because I knew I did something wrong and it was my fault, I also would be somehow afraid of him and that he would hit me again which made me try hard not to misbehave in any way. A little later, of course, the fear turned into respect. This is why I am so grateful to my parents and haven't once said anything disrespectful to them - a quality which seems that very few kids nowadays have.
On the other hand, I see that whenever they have their laptop or phone taken, children get rather angry at the parent thinking it's unfair and calling them with ugly names. Completely oposite of my case, this time the teenager would lose whatever respect he had towards the parents and misbehave even more.
I understand why this is some kind of taboo in some families and even whole countries. However, in Eastern Europe where I live this is not considered wrong and none of the people I know who have been hit as children are now agressive, they are rather really well-brought up people.

Hitting your child (otherwise called assaulting a minor) is a socially acceptable form of behavior for people who are unable to cope with ordinary child misbehavior. If you think that hitting is effective as a method of teaching something, you ought to use it in many other situations: in grade school, in the workplace, in the army, in college, etc. Why do we not use physical punishment in these situations? Well, first of all, it is an expression of a complete lack of respect for the other person. You can explain the correct way to behave without striking the person. Hitting is acceptable on children for one reason only: They are unable to hit back. They are smaller, weaker, intimidated by those who have power over them, etc. IF CHILDREN COULD DEFEND THEMSELVES, I guarantee that hitting children would have disppeared ages ago. That is the only reason why parents do it; they know that there will be no consequences.

Hitting only teaches a child that the stronger person gets his way. It teaches nothing about the right way to do whatever it is that the parents are angry about. And it reinforces the belief that physical violence is an acceptable method of dealing with disagreements between people.

Parents sometimes respond, "Oh, you have no idea what raising children can be like...You can tell them over and over not to do something, and they refuse to listen." Well, this is like a husband and wife. Husband says, "I have told her and told her not to leave her stockings in the bathroom, and nothing helped. So I simply had to hit her. Now she'll learn." Would any civilized human being think that this is permissible?

One last example. When I was growing up, if one of us spilled a glass of wine on the white tablecloth, my father launched into raising his voice and criticizing one of us for not being careful enough. If the same thing had happened at a dinner party, he would almost certainly have responded to the dinner guest, "Oh, don't worry. It's nothing. It will come right out in the wash." He would never even dream of criticising a dinner guest, even if he was really careless with the glass of wine. What does this show? It shows that children are small, weak, defenseless targets of a parent's anger, which the parent is unable to control. If an adult did the same thing, the parent would react in a completely different way: Usually like a civilized human being.

I am 62 years old. My parents did hit us occasionally, and criticized us constantly. When I was hit, the only thought I had was, "Now you are stronger than me, so you can bully me around; One day I will be stronger than you, and then we will see what you think of physical punishment." A really effective way to raise and teach children...NOT.

In sum, it is NEVER right to strike a child, whether your own or someone else's. It is NEVER a profitable way to educate or teach. Parents who do hit children have a serious personality disturbance, as well as an anger management problem. They really should be treated by a psychiatrist.

Allen Roth

"I look up; I look down."

I will stick to talking about the movie, 'cause the problem sure wasn't in the way it was filmed, for God's sake. The father truly was a judgmental prick and deserved the insult, but as he couldn't take it for face value he decided to slap his daughter. Usually anywhere a person knows enough to distinguish right from wrong, good from bad, he/she will react just the same as both the kid and the wife. I mean, of course calling her father such a word was extreme, but can someone say it wasn't warranted? He had dinner with this family, their neighbors for years, and had no appreciation whatsoever for their genuine nice characters. He showed no interest in getting to know them, yet was ready to make all sorts of accusations and criticism.

What happened during that scene again? Haven't watched this movie in a long time.








- Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.

I'm born in Chicago and my mother would whoop me and my brother n sister's ass if we mouthed off. Today I live in Sweden and here it's against the law to hit your kids.

It's wrong because the girl was an US citizen. That's it.

But, it's totally ok to invade other countries and kill thousands (or millions)of non-US citizens. ;)