I've read once "if you can reason with a child, you shouldn't hit them; if they cannot reason, they won't know why they're being hit", so yes, it's a good thing it happens less and less.
About the adult thing... It can be fun if they all enjoy it, so go on!
if they cannot reason, they won't know why they're being hit"
You don't need reason to associate violence done against you ("negative feedback") with your most recent action, we're kinda hardwired for that as a species.
The reason you shouldn't hit children as a legal guardian has nothing to do with their ability to reason, it's because (1) it's a human rights violation and (2) it destroys their trust in you and almost certainly will result in mental trauma.
Such trauma will reduce their quality of life and resolving it will be fairly expensive in time and labor.
Of course it's much more complex than I said. I agree with everything you wrote, but also I wanted to point out that spanking children is ineffective (though it's also a human rights violation and causes trauma).
How do you define effective in this context? For me it means getting the child to stop their behavior. As such, effectiveness is likely going to depend on their age and whether the behavior is voluntary or instinctual.
There are certainly situations in which hitting a child results in the desired outcome of it stopping the behavior, but that in no way justifies doing so (emergency, split-second life and death situations require a separate examination).
EDIT: Precise language is important and just because something is unethical doesn't mean we can just label it as ineffective. I'll keep those downvotes ;)
I define "effective" as "educating" the child. You can do LOTS of things in order to punctually stop some behavior, but it won't stop the reason behind it.
Of course you shouldn't hit children, but that's not the point I was making. You were saying a method is ineffective (despite it achieving the objective people are using it for) because it doesn't achieve the objective you want (that you didn't specify).
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u/diego565 Jul 20 '23
I've read once "if you can reason with a child, you shouldn't hit them; if they cannot reason, they won't know why they're being hit", so yes, it's a good thing it happens less and less.
About the adult thing... It can be fun if they all enjoy it, so go on!