A word - perhaps a hundred - on "studies" --
Years ago, one of my primary professional functions was final review of "studies" prior to presentation or publication for peer review. There were about 1,300 of these a year and my interest was focused on findings that might have some national security significance.
Subjects of the studies were a wide range of clinical medicine issues, medical issues related to aviation; esp. military aviation, global epidemiology, causes and effects of military operations on the environment and psychological and sociological issues with an impact on unit effectiveness, personal reliability and training methods.
This job had two significant effects on me.
1. I never went home at night without certain knowledge that barely noticed personal physical characteristics were, in fact, definite markers of various incurable diseases that I had never heard of when I left the house in the morning.
2. I concluded that the vast majority of papers dealing with non-medical issues were, essentially, busy work for people who had spent years earning various advanced degrees. The first tip-off is that nearly all of this work is nearly unreadable (deliberately, IMO). Some of the work is downright faddish and, because of often dubious measurement standards, subject to very rigid pressures from "leaders" of whatever points of view happen to be in vogue.
The point of this is not to dismiss findings of various studies mentioned here. They all probably contain varying amounts of useful truth. But, without reading any of them (and I certainly do not intend to do that), I feel safe in speculating that what the studies ignore is often as important as what they report.
There are lots of reasons kid can be ****ed up and physical and emotional abuse is at or near the top of any list. I do not consider a light slap on the hand or the butt "abuse". Frankly, unless used as the primary routine method of kid control, the value of action is probably the startle effect v. any pain to be avoided effect. Lest anyone think I am soft on whacking kids, I have confronted more than one parent in the supermarket and told them in no uncertain terms to cut that **** out.
I think the reasons many parents rely so heavily on physical discipline (and perhaps their parents before them) is simple ignorance, personal frustration and a complete lack of patience or ability (or willingness) to put personal needs and desires on the back burner.
I do not mean to imply that I have any expertise in child rearing. I was a pretty strict daddy (and a single parent during the HS years) but my kids survived the experience and have wonderful families of their own (and own their own homes and pay huge taxes!). Rarely a day goes by without all of us talking on the phone or by e-mail. I am a very lucky person and will be the first to credit good luck as much as anything -- except paying attention.
Knocking on wood.....
Mike |
