On Wednesday Night, September 24^th, we will discuss “Spanking.” In recent days, NFL running back for the Minnesota Vikings, Adrian Peterson, has been charged with child abuse for spanking his son with a “switch or tree branch.”   Peterson was spanking his 4 year old son for “scratching the face” of a 5 year old. Later, the son who was spanked was taken to the doctor for a routine check-up. “Welts” were discovered on the child and Peterson was arrested for child abuse.

This incident has once again fired up the controversy over spanking. Various sports personalities are coming to Petersons defense saying that spanking is a part of “Southern culture” which is based on the Bible – “spare the rod and spoil the child” (a very rough interpretation of Proverbs 13:24). On the other side, we have “experts” like Dr. Alan Kazdin, a psychologist at Yale University, who in an interview with ABC News said “By the the time [children] reach adolescence, 85 percent of the nation’s children will have been, at one point or another, spanked… You don’t need spanking to change behavior,” Kazdin said. “It is not effective at all. It increases aggression in children, [and] has emotional consequences.”

What do you think? Is spanking an effective tool in the parenting toolbox or is it just a left over Southern tradition from the “Bible Belt”? Were your parents correct when they said “this is going to hurt me more than it’s going to hurt you?”

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