Do you spank your kids as a means of discipline?
According to a new study, if you live in the southern portion of the United States, then you probably answered the aforementioned question with a hearty: “Yee-haw!” or “Yes, Ma’m.”
Seriously, some company paid to conduct a poll regarding the make-up of spank-happy parents.
The result: Sixty-two percent of folks, who live below the Mason-Dixon Line, admit to slapping their kids on their backsides when they don’t mind their manners.
The poll also revealed that Yankees are really not that cranky (or at least they don’t pop their kids on the butt when they are), Californians are as laid-back as everyone says they are, and midwestern parents use other means to discipline their kids rather than a stiff swat to their kid’s rump.
According to the poll, 59% of the aforementioned parental demos admitted that they were against spanking, and use other forms of discipline to get their kids to do what they are told.
So why are Southerners more apt to say, “If you don’t stop that, I’m going swat you on the can,” and mean it? An assistant professor of sociology at Middle Tennessee State University, who spoke out after the poll results were published, reasoned that Southern parents view spanking as “a way of delivering children from hell.”
So are we to assume that the Bible condones a good butt whooping, and that God-fearing Southerners are simply using swatting as a means to avoid eternal damnation?
I don’t know about that.
I was raised just miles from the southern most point in the United States, and I suffered through my fair share of spanks. Though, I think my swats had more to do with the fact that I was a stubborn rule-breaker than anything else. What’s more, I doubt the reason my dad spanked me was because he was trying to follow Biblical inspirations. Rather, he simply found it to be more effective than sending me off to a room full of toys to think about what I did wrong.
Are you a spanker from the north or south?
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