I want to talk about the arguments for and against corporal punishment. I’m going to start by listing what I think are the 3 most common arguments.

The Success-Oriented Argument: it could be argued that CP can be justified at least under some circumstances because it would make the child more successful in life as an adult. I tend to think that this claim is implausible. For one, psychologists and sociologists have found correlations between strict parenting and stuff like drug addiction and criminality. It’s worth noting that correlation doesn’t necessarily imply causation but I think it’s still hard to sell the idea that CP causes life improvements if it correlates with many kinds of bad outcomes.

The Relationship Damage Argument: it could be argued that CP is bad under most circumstances because it tends to make relationships between parents and children worse in adulthood. Children may resent their parents because of their CP and this produces a negative outcome for both the parent and the child. I tend to think that this relationship damage as a result of CP occurs frequently today but didn’t occur as much in the past when CP was more prevalent. This is because I tend to think that the perception of one’s own trauma and victimhood status is greatly influenced by cultural norms for most people. This would imply that CP shouldn’t be done in an anti-CP society unless it is also worthwhile to do CP in order to try to change cultural norms around CP(which I don’t think it is). Though, it may be argued that if you move to a pro-CP society then CP wouldn’t cause relationship damage. In addition, it could be argued that most children are willing to forgive their parents for CP as long as it seemed well-intentioned and the parents end up expressing remorse for doing it. I don’t that this always works though because sometimes the resentment that the child feels will be kept private and the parents would just be confused about why their kid is shutting them out of her life.

The Trauma Argument: It could be argued that CP causes trauma. My thoughts on this are kinda similar to the relationship damage argument since I also think that cultural norms influence trauma. I think trauma probably produces a worse outcome when relationships damage does and there’s probably less ways to mitigate it after the fact.

The Deontological Argument: it could be argued that CP would still be bad even if it produced a good outcome. This may be because it may be argued that there is a duty that people have to not act violently against those who don’t deserve violence but it may be argued that parents do not have a duty to make their children successful. Of course, this argument assumes that children who receive CP never or almost never deserve violence. Overall, I think this argument is good as far as deontological arguments go but I’m not a deontologist and I don’t believe in the existence of moral duties so I don’t find this argument convincing.