Spanking Debate!

Stefan Molyneux
Stefan Molyneux
  • 4 months ago
In a recent discussion, I debated the concept of peaceful parenting with Bob, who argued that children inherently have lower moral standing than adults. I countered by emphasizing the increased moral responsibility towards children, highlighting that they deserve higher moral considerations. We delved into the topic of consequences for parental actions like spanking, advocating for interventions that prioritize education and anger management over punitive measures. Acknowledging the power imbalance between parents and children, I stressed the need for tailored approaches that prioritize the child's protection and well-being. The discourse illuminated the complexities of balancing discipline with the child's welfare and underscored the importance of proactive interventions to uphold the best interests of the child in challenging situations.

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Transcript
00:00 Hey, it's me. So I had a debate yesterday with someone, we'll call him Bob, about peaceful
00:05 parenting and Bob said that, he said, "Steph, look, you're saying that the parent and the
00:13 child have the same moral status or stature, which most political philosophy, particularly
00:18 libertarianism, wouldn't accept because the child is of a lower status morally than the
00:27 parent, right, and the child can't sign their own contracts, can't live alone, can't act
00:31 independently, can't have their own control of currency and so on, like when they're very
00:35 little. So the child is of a lower moral status to the parent and therefore saying that children
00:43 should be treated like adults is invalid." And I said, "I don't believe that children
00:48 should be treated by, like adults and my argument is not that children are lower moral status
00:55 than adults or the same, but the children are higher moral status, that they require
01:02 higher moral considerations." I said, "Look, I don't have to feed everyone, but I have
01:07 to feed my own children. They are deserving of higher moral considerations and greater,
01:11 they have greater moral requirements and should be treated with greater moral consideration.
01:16 So I don't accept that." Then he said, "So are you saying that if I spank my child that
01:23 you would approve of me or want me thrown in jail?" And now I was dealing with people
01:30 who were not exactly pro-status. So I said, "Look, jail is a status concept, right? So
01:36 the question of whether you would deal with parents who hit their children with jail is
01:42 saying, well, the only answer to a moral problem that involves coercion is jail and that's
01:47 sort of a status concept, right?" And he said, "Well, no, there would be jails in a free
01:51 market society and so on." And I said, "Yeah, that certainly could be the case, but it wouldn't
01:55 apply in particular to a parent who hit his child." And he's like, "Well, why not?" I
02:01 said, "If I come and hit you, I go to jail. Why wouldn't I go to jail if I hit a child?"
02:05 "Well," I said, "because we would want to protect the child as much as possible. The
02:09 child has a higher moral status than the adult, than the parent, and therefore what is best
02:15 for the child is the ideal." And can you imagine a parent, a father who spanks his child, loses
02:22 his temper or whatever, to spank his child, and then the authorities find out and, you
02:27 know, they beat the door down and drag the father away to jail with the child screaming
02:33 and crying and so on. Well, that would be very destructive for the child. So that's
02:37 not what would happen. I said, you know, the way that it would occur is if you hit the
02:42 child, there would be interventions, there would be education, there would be anger management
02:46 and so on, because you wouldn't want to further traumatize the child. And he said, "Well,
02:52 this is kind of consequentialism, so I'm going to look at the moral principles here." And
02:55 I said, "Okay, well, so imagine this. Imagine that there's a guy who's locked you in the
03:00 basement. Nobody knows you're there. He kidnapped you, he locked you in his basement, and then
03:03 he gets arrested and taken away to jail for a month. Do you want him to be arrested and
03:08 go to jail?" "Well, of course not, because if he gets arrested and go to jail and nobody
03:11 knows you're locked in the basement, you're going to die. He's run out of food or water
03:14 or whatever it is, right?" So the fact that children are trapped in the house of the parents,
03:20 and that's not a criticism, it's simply a biological fact. So the fact that children
03:23 are locked in the house with the parents and can't leave and don't have independence means
03:27 that because the children are dependent upon the parents, the parents aren't independent
03:32 agents in the way that if Bob were to come and hit me, Bob would get arrested and go
03:36 to jail. Well, that actually makes my life better and safer than a guy who's going around
03:41 hitting people, is in jail. I go on with my day. It doesn't interfere with my independence.
03:45 He's not my source of income. He's not my source of food. He's not my source of protection
03:49 and emotional nurture and shelter and so on, right? So if some guy comes and punches me,
03:54 I get him arrested and he goes to jail, my life is better and safer. However, if a father
03:59 spanks a child, let's say that a father spanks a child, there's no mother around for whatever
04:03 reason, he's a single father. The father spanks the child, and then the father gets hauled
04:07 off to jail. It's very traumatic for the child. Where does the child go? Well, what does the
04:11 child do? Who does the child stay with? It's very, very problematic, right? So you'd want
04:15 to do everything to avoid that as possible. And I said, but to your point, if you kept
04:21 beating your child, yes, you should go to jail, like or whatever the equivalent would
04:24 be in a truly free society. So these kinds of considerations are important. You can't
04:32 say, well, children and adults have the same moral considerations because clearly they
04:39 don't, right? And sort of my argument has been that we have recognized for a long time
04:43 in society that where there is a greater power disparity, higher moral considerations need
04:48 to flow from the more powerful to the less powerful, right? So the old argument is that
04:54 if a boss asks his employee out, right? So he's the CEO and he asks out his secretary
05:03 for a date. Well, the fact that he can make or break a career, that he can fire and so
05:07 on means that he should not. There's too much of a power imbalance. So he has to have higher
05:12 moral considerations for his employee than he would for just some person at a bar or
05:16 some person at the gym or whatever that he happened to ask out. So where you have power
05:22 over someone, you have higher moral considerations for that person based upon the disparity in
05:27 power. I think we generally understand that a corrupt guy at his job is like just some
05:37 Joe job or whatever, right? Some digger or whatever. If he's corrupt, that's bad. A corrupt
05:44 cop is worse and a corrupt judge is even worse and a corrupt Supreme Court justice would
05:53 be even worse, right? Because of the increased layers of power, the higher moral responsibility
06:01 is reserved or as you go up in the hierarchy of power, you have higher moral responsibilities.
06:06 So where parents and their children in terms of power relationships, the parents have the
06:17 highest power disparity in their relationship to children than almost every other relationship
06:22 in society. There's almost no power. I mean, I've been a kid, I've been an adult, I've
06:27 been a boss, I've been an employee and so on. There is no power disparity in human relations
06:33 greater than that between the adult and the child. I mean, maybe you could say you're
06:39 thrown unjustly into some gulag or something like that, but the parent and child is the
06:42 greatest power disparity. I mean, as a kid, your brain is still being formed, your body
06:48 is still being formed, you're not able to leave, you don't have your own independence,
06:53 you don't have your own rights, you can't sign your own contracts, you can't control
06:56 your own money. Like it really is the biggest power disparity. So we have this principle
07:01 that says the greater the power disparity, the higher the moral considerations for the
07:05 person lower on the hierarchy, right? For an employee to yell at a boss is, you know,
07:15 might be unwise or whatever it is, but it's not as abusive as the boss yelling at the
07:22 employee. I mean, I remember this when I was a boss, I had about, I don't know, 30, 35
07:27 people working for me and, you know, when I would need to talk to someone, I had to
07:30 come up with some way so that it didn't say, "I need to talk to you in my office because
07:34 people get nervous, right?" So I'd just say, you know, "So and so, can I just borrow you
07:38 for a couple of minutes? I got a couple of questions." And that way it's not like, "Ooh,"
07:41 you know, don't scare people. So you have to be more delicate about these kinds of things,
07:46 recognizing the power disparity that's involved. So I thought it was a very interesting debate
07:51 and I really do appreciate having these kinds of pushbacks and conversations, but yeah,
07:58 it's not the same. It's not the same. And because the child is in a helpless, independent
08:03 situation, we would treat the violent parent with as much consideration for the benefit
08:13 of the child as humanly possible, which would mean, you know, education, anger management,
08:16 therapy or whatever that would eliminate the spanking. We wouldn't just go and arrest someone
08:21 because that would actually harm the child. And the purpose, of course, is for society
08:26 to protect the most vulnerable and arresting a spanking parent would not serve that purpose
08:31 unless there was some significant violence involved, in which case some other situation
08:36 would be better. So anyway, I just wanted to mention that. I hope that that helps. Please,
08:41 please, please just remember that if you donate this month, May 2024, you get the "Peaceful
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09:07 question. It's not just the "Peaceful Parenting" book that we've loaded it up with, but with
09:10 like a hundred different articles and podcasts that I have about peaceful parenting. So any
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09:26 And it's really, really amazing stuff. And I hope that you will avail yourself of it.
09:29 Thank you so much. Have a great night. Talk to you soon. Bye.
09:32 [END]
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