Your Silence About Christ Is Dogma

He's addressing parenting, but there's also a wider application:

It is impossible not to teach children about God, because not to teach them is to teach them plenty. It teaches them that Jesus does not matter much, that Mom and Dad don't consider him nearly as important or exciting as new furniture, or weekends at the lake, or Dad's job, or all the other things that fill their conversation. Silence about Christ is dogma….

It is not true that teaching children about God has to make them close-minded and irrationally prejudiced. It might if the parents are insecure and have their own faith built on sand. But if parents see compelling reasons for being a Christian, they will impart these to their children as well. Nobody accuses a parent of prejudicing a child's cosmology because he tells the child the world is round, and the little stars at night are bigger than the earth, and the sun really stands still while the earth turns. Why? Because we know these things are so and can give evidence to a child eventually that will support this truth. And so it is with those who are persuaded for good reasons that the Christian faith is true.

And, fourth, it is simply unloving and cruel not to give a child what he needs most. Since we believe that only by following Christ in the obedience of faith can a child be saved for eternity, escape the torments of hell, and enjoy the delights of heaven, it is unloving and cruel not to teach him the way….

A second objection some parents may raise is: I don't know enough about the Bible and about doctrine to teach my children and to answer their hard questions. There are two reasons why this should not stop you. First, it is never too late to begin to study and grow in your grasp of Bible truth. You may be a better teacher than a veteran because you are learning it fresh yourself….

The second reason your sense of inadequacy should not stop you is that some tremendously valuable things can be taught when you don't know the answer to a child's hard question. I can think of two. You can teach your child humility. If you are secure enough in God to show your ignorance rather than bluff and be a hypocrite, your child learns the beauty of humility. Second, you can teach your child to take some initiative of his own in solving problems.

(John Piper)

Was the nuclear family a mistake?

https://www.reformation21.org/blog/was-the-nuclear-family-a-mistake

A history of depression

Calvin has a reputation as a mean-spirited individual. However, this raises questions about the history of depression. I'm no expert, but it's my impression that depression must have been very widespread during much of human history. Many children were orphaned. Many mothers died in childbirth. Many fathers died young. Due to high infant mortality, many siblings watched their brothers and sisters die. Os Guinness watched his two younger brothers starve to death.

Some of the survivors were farmed out to older relatives. Among poorer families was the custom of apprenticing a young child to a stranger to teach him a trade. You can imagine the emotional alienation that caused. Even among the royalty and aristocracy, you had emotionally distant indifferent parents who used nannies until the boy was banished to boarding school at an early age. So many men must have been maladjusted due to deficient socialization.

Both Calvin's parents died when he was young. Descartes' mother died when he was two months old, and he had an absentee father. John Knox's mother died when he was young.

Racine was orphaned after both parents died when he was young. Pascal's mother died when he was three. Leibniz's father died when he was young. Swift's father died before his son was born. Isaac Newton's father died before his son was born. He had a checkered relationship with his own mother. Thomas Aquinas was farmed off to Monte Casino Abbey at the age of 5.

Dante was an orphan. His mother died when he was young. The father of Albert Camus died when he was young. Tolkien was an orphan. Catholic philosophers Peter Geach and Anthony Kenny were neglected children.

It's striking that although Newton, Leibniz, and Swift were very eligible bachelors, they never married. This despite the fact that Swift, for one, was very enamored with two women ("Stella", "Vanessa").

This is just skimming the surface. A random sample of famous men. When we assess the acerbic character of some famous men from the past, what this fails to take into account is that many famous individuals had emotionally deprived childhoods due to the death of one or both parents at an early age, not to mention watching their siblings die young. They were emotionally neglected, with lifelong insecurities. That's not to mention other factors like the gin craze, to cope with depression.

It's an interesting historical question to consider what percentage of the human race has suffered from clinical depression. A precarious, neglected childhood doesn't naturally foster generosity, but ruthless competition to survive and succeed. How many men and women stagger through life due to a miserable childhood.

Should we warn children about hell?

Looming large in many deconversion accounts are apostates who complain that their parents terrorized them by threatening them with hell. Their childhood was haunted by fear of God. Should Christian parents warn children about the danger of hell? 

i) Christian pedagogy, like pedagogy in general, needs to be age-appropriate, suited to the cognitive development of children. What we teach a 5-year-old and what we teach an 15-year old may be two different things. We may save some teachings for a later age.

ii) There's certainly a point at which the doctrine of hell should certainly be part of their instruction in the Christian faith. And they can also pick that up on their own when they're old enough to read an adult version of the Bible. 

iii) Is "warning" children about the danger of hell a euphemism for threatening children with hell when they misbehave? The whole issue of whether any children are in peril of hell is an open question in theology. I don't think we have sufficient revelation to answer that question with any degree of certainty. I don't think we should issue a warning unless we have good reason to think they're at risk. Threats should be credible threats, not empty threats. 

iv) It can also be just lazy parental disciple to threaten young children with hell. Especially for childish misbehavior that's quite unlikely to rise to the level of damnable offenses. How much of that is just an expression of parental exasperation, because it's so easy to threaten them with hell? 

v) What about adolescents and teenagers? Do they need to be warned about hell? One question is whether there's a distinction between teaching them about hell and warning them about hell. If they already understand the nature of hell, and the believe it, do they also need a personal parenting warning? I mean, just reading about hell in the Bible will acquaint them with warnings about hell.

vi) Apropos (v), do you need to be warned not to stick your fingers in a blender, then push the start button? If you know what a blender is, you don't need a warning over and above your understanding of the blender not to stick your fingers inside when it's running. 

vii) I think what young children need is not to fear God but to be taught to love and trust God. Taught that God is someone to turn to in time of need. Or pray to for the needs of others. Young children need a sense of security. 

viii) It might be objected that just as it's proper and necessary for young children to both love and fear their parents, the same holds true for God. But I think the comparison breaks down. Although God can manifest himself to children directly, I think God is ordinarily an abstraction for children in a way that parents are not. If, say, Christian parents must spank a misbehaving child, that will be followed by an act of reconciliation–reaffirming their love for the child. That's very tangible in a way that a child's relationship with God generally is not. 

Of course, above a certain age, children should cultivate a more complete and adult understanding of God and hell, which includes a God-fearing attitude, as well as love, trust, devotion. 

BTW, my parents never threatened me with hell, so my own position isn't in reaction to my childhood. 

Not a statistic to me

https://danielbwallace.com/2020/04/06/not-a-statistic-to-me-v-beecher-wallace-jr-in-memoriam-1928-2020/

Coming-of-age

In the modern west, coming-of-age is generally associated with adolescence. The physiological transition from childhood to adulthood. Sexual maturation, greater emotional independence from parents, developing alternative social relationships with age-mates (friends, boyfriends, girlfriends). Coming-of-age involves the assumption of adult risks and responsibilities, adult moral responsibility, and life-choices. 

The coming-of-age story is a stock genre, going back to the Epic of Gilgamesh (friendship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu) and the Odyssey (Telemachus). It's a topic of endless novels, short stories, movies, and teen dramas.  

There's distinction between chronological/physiological coming-of-age and moral/psychological/sociological coming-of-age. Some adults suffer from arrested development because they never experienced challenges that forced them to mature morally, emotionally, or socially. 

In his monograph on A Complete Handbook of Literary Forms in the Bible, Leland Ryken's has an entry under coming-of-age story (p47), where he lists the following examples:

• Jacob fleeing from his ancestral home and going to Haran (Gen 28)

• Joseph sold into slavery (Gen 37)

• David and Goliath(1 Sam 17)

• Daniel going into exile (Dan 1:1-3)

• Esther as a harem girl

One preliminary question this raises is the age of the individuals when they came of age. Roughly what would have been their ages at the time? I asked an OT scholar who gave the following ages or estimates:

Jacob: 76

Joseph: 17 (Gen 37:2)

David: about 20

Daniel: unknown–probably late teens/early 20s???

Esther: unknown–perhaps late teens???

In some cases these are somewhat beyond the chronological range we associate with coming-of-age in the modern west. Most dramatically in the case of Jacob. The larger point is that all of them underwent a maturing experience. In a sense, they were forced to grow up fast, thrust into a situation where they had to make momentous decisions beyond their years inasmuch as that they didn't have the wisdom of seasoned experience. Jacob is something of an anomaly in this group.  

In distinction to chronological coming-of-age, marriage and children or the death of a parent are social and psychological coming-of-age experiences. Other examples include adolescents or even preadolescents who are forced to leave home and make it on their own. Take the dislocations of war. Or forced to assume a parental role if a mother or father dies. They must step into their place to take up the slack, raising younger siblings and helping out the surviving parent. 

Christian conversion is a coming-of-age experience, at whatever age. A maturing experience. 

Raising kids in a horror flick

I do wonder what the longterm psychological impact may be from the message we're sending younger kids during the pandemic. Don't go outside! It's dangerous outside! 

Beware of everybody you see. Everybody you see may be dangerous! Every adult may be the carrier of an invisible disease that will kill you if you get too close. 

Your playmates may be dangerous to you. They may be carriers. 

Your brothers and sisters may be dangerous to you. Be afraid of sleeping with your brother or sister. 

Your parents may be carriers of an invisible disease that will kill you. Be afraid of your parents touching you, hugging you, kissing you, bathing you, stroking your hair, holding you in their arms.  

Be afraid at home. Be afraid outside. Be afraid in the park and playground. Be afraid in the front yard and back yard. The invisible disease is stalking you everywhere. Watch your back! 

People aren't what they seem. They seem human on the outside, but there's a monster lurking on the inside, using their body as camouflage to ambush you. 

Will children shrug this off after the crisis has passed? Or will it seep into their psyche and bedevil their subconscious for years to come?  

Homeschooling During #COVID19

https://shenviapologetics.com/homeschooling-during-covid19/

Sex appeal

1. It's a truism that men find pretty woman attractive while women find handsome men attractive. That's the physical dimension of sex appeal. Some Christians neglect their appearance because they focus on "inner beauty."

There's certainly something important to be said for that. It depends on part on natural endowment and the aging process, as well as priorities in life. It is, however, unrealistic to think members of the opposite sex are blind to physical appearance. So one needs to make allowance for the consequences. 

2. That said, attraction runs deeper than physical attraction. An attraction to something more abstract than bodies: men attracted to femininity and women attracted to masculinity. While those properties are literally embodied, they are not identical with their embodiment. 

In addition to the physical side of things, normal men and women have masculine and feminine psychological traits. And a deeper part of sex appeal is the appeal of masculinity to women and femininity to men. Psychological traits that translate into corresponding actions. 

3. Moreover, it isn't essentially romantic, although it figures in romantic dynamics. Young boys are drawn to manly role models while young girls are drawn to womanly role models. So unlike sex appeal in the narrow physical sense, masculinity and femininity can be appealing to members of the same sex. An ideal to emulate or aspire to. 

Masculinity and femininity have a platonic appeal as well as an erotic appeal. The erotic is more physical, concrete, and geared to attraction between the sexes whereas the platonic is more generic and abstract. The kind of man a man or boy would like to be. The kind of woman a woman or girl would like to be. To exemplify distinctive masculine or feminine virtues.  

Films for boys

1. Some Christian parents have lists of books for kids to read. Classics which every boy or girl should read by the time they reach adulthood. Cliche examples include The Chronicles of Narnia. 

However, I haven't seen comparable lists for movies. I mean, there are lists of "safe" movies for kids. Bubble-gummy G-rated fare. But I mean something more intelligent and growup, parallel to serious literature. 

Due to the overwhelming dominance of the cinematic artform in contemporary culture, it's useful to make a list. At the same time it's a daunting task due to the thousands of films. This post will focus on male-oriented movies because that's what I naturally relate to. 

There are films by categories, like sports, horror, science fiction, Western, war. Sports movies about an underdog athlete or team that defies the odds are popular, and there are movies on that theme which represent different sports:

• Friday Night Lights (football)

• Goal! (soccer)

• Miracle (hockey) 

• Hoosiers (basketball)

• Vision Quest (wrestling) 

There are popular Westerns like the Lonesome Dove series. 

Although it may not be a technical genre, wildness films set in the high country, Yukon, or safaris (African savanna, Amazon jungle) are naturally appealing to guys. 

There's a large category of war films. This can include Arthurian tales which model the virtues of chivalry.

2. From the standpoint of Christian parenting, what interests me more than genre are memorable films that can provide a frame of reference to illustrate and stimulate thinking about philosophy, theology, and ethics. 

3. There are films that explore the relationship between appearance or illusion and reality:

• Harsh Realm

• The Matrix (1999)

• Dark City

• The Prisoner (2009)

4. There are existential films that explore the meaning of life:

• Last Holiday (1950)

• Tuck Everlasting

5. Some films probe moral issues, like Strangers on a Train

6. Final Destination (2000) is a convenient illustration of fatalism. 

7. There are time-travel/parallel universe films that compare and contrast tradeoffs involving alternate life choices: 

• Mr. Nobody

• The Butterfly Effect

8. October Sky is good coming-of-age film

9. An important plot motif, that's not unique to any particular genre, is the story of "friends" or comrades who are thrust into a group survival situation. This can take place in different settings: wilderness, battlefield, island, POW camp. 

This becomes a test of friendship. Will they be altruistic? Will they takes risks for each other? Or will they turn on each other, double-cross one other, leave the sick and injured behind to die? Theme of loyalty, deception, betrayal, revenge, and/or reconciliation. A winnowing process. 

That theme is sometimes explored in war films, wilderness films, and spring break teen films. I don't have any particular titles in mind.

Just as certain books like The Pilgrim's Progress, The Chronicles of Narnia, Lord of the Flies, and Perelandra can function as a lifelong frame of reference which grown children continue to reflect on and refer back to, it would be good for Christian parents to select a dozen or so films which can serve the same purpose. For instance, fathers and sons can watch the same film together, then talk about the significance of the film. Some films may raise important questions but lack the Christian resources to give good answers. 

Puberty blockers

https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2020/01/59422/

Faith and fathers

“The demographic characteristics of the linguistic and religious groups in Switzerland” by Werner Haug and Phillipe Warner of the Federal Statistical Office, Neuchatel. It appears in Volume 2 of Population Studies No. 31, a book titled The Demographic Characteristics of National Minorities in Certain European States, edited by Werner Haug and others, published by the Council of Europe Directorate General III, Social Cohesion, Strasbourg, January 2000.

All this information is readily obtainable because Switzerland always asks a person’s religion, language, and nationality on its decennial census. Now for the really interesting bit.

In 1994 the Swiss carried out an extra survey that the researchers for our masters in Europe (I write from England) were happy to record. The question was asked to determine whether a person’s religion carried through to the next generation, and if so, why, or if not, why not. The result is dynamite. There is one critical factor. It is overwhelming, and it is this: It is the religious practice of the father of the family that, above all, determines the future attendance at or absence from church of the children.

If both father and mother attend regularly, 33 percent of their children will end up as regular churchgoers, and 41 percent will end up attending irregularly. Only a quarter of their children will end up not practicing at all. If the father is irregular and mother regular, only 3 percent of the children will subsequently become regulars themselves, while a further 59 percent will become irregulars. Thirty-eight percent will be lost.

If the father is non-practicing and mother regular, only 2 percent of children will become regular worshippers, and 37 percent will attend irregularly. Over 60 percent of their children will be lost completely to the church.

Let us look at the figures the other way round. What happens if the father is regular but the mother irregular or non-practicing? Extraordinarily, the percentage of children becoming regular goes up from 33 percent to 38 percent with the irregular mother and to 44 percent with the non-practicing, as if loyalty to father’s commitment grows in proportion to mother’s laxity, indifference, or hostility.

Before mothers despair, there is some consolation for faithful moms. Where the mother is less regular than the father but attends occasionally, her presence ensures that only a quarter of her children will never attend at all.

Even when the father is an irregular attender there are some extraordinary effects. An irregular father and a non-practicing mother will yield 25 percent of their children as regular attenders in their future life and a further 23 percent as irregulars. This is twelve times the yield where the roles are reversed.

Where neither parent practices, to nobody’s very great surprise, only 4 percent of children will become regular attenders and 15 percent irregulars. Eighty percent will be lost to the faith.

While mother’s regularity, on its own, has scarcely any long-term effect on children’s regularity (except the marginally negative one it has in some circumstances), it does help prevent children from drifting away entirely. Faithful mothers produce irregular attenders. Non-practicing mothers change the irregulars into non-attenders. But mothers have even their beneficial influence only in complementarity with the practice of the father.

In short, if a father does not go to church, no matter how faithful his wife’s devotions, only one child in 50 will become a regular worshipper. If a father does go regularly, regardless of the practice of the mother, between two-thirds and three-quarters of their children will become churchgoers (regular and irregular). If a father goes but irregularly to church, regardless of his wife’s devotion, between a half and two-thirds of their offspring will find themselves coming to church regularly or occasionally.

A non-practicing mother with a regular father will see a minimum of two-thirds of her children ending up at church. In contrast, a non-practicing father with a regular mother will see two-thirds of his children never darken the church door. If his wife is similarly negligent that figure rises to 80 percent!

Mothers’ choices have dramatically less effect upon children than their fathers’, and without him she has little effect on the primary lifestyle choices her offspring make in their religious observances.

Her major influence is not on regular attendance at all but on keeping her irregular children from lapsing altogether. This is, needless to say, a vital work, but even then, without the input of the father (regular or irregular), the proportion of regulars to lapsed goes from 60/40 to 40/60.

https://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=16-05-024-v

Tips on parenting

Generally good advice, although, in the age of film and TV drama, we have to strike a balance. It can't all be literary fiction. Film is not an inferior art form to the novel. Also, he has a Catholic bias. 

Tony Esolen

Enchanting the world ...

Or rather, allowing the world, which is an enchanted place, to be present to your children in all its wonder ...

Or again, how to scrub away the grime of DISENCHANTMENT, which grime is the stock in trade of our schools ...

I've gotten some requests recently about what to do to work against the grime. Here are my recommendations:

1. Get your kids the hell out of the schools.

2. Find the list of the Thousand Good Books, by John Senior. A very fine list it is. I might have a couple of quibbles here and there, but in general it is terrific.

https://d2y1pz2y630308.cloudfront.net/15750/documents/2017/10/John%20Senior%20The%20Thousand%20Good%20Books%20List.pdf

3. Get your kids outdoors. Do things. Make things. Play games. Visit people. Find food and cook it.

4. Teach your boys to chop wood, hunt, fish, find their way in the woods, etc.; if your girls are interested, take them too.

5. Learn to play a musical instrument. Learn the stars in the sky. Get a pair of binoculars and use them. Get a small telescope. Things like those ....

6. As for BOOKS: Anything by Charles Dickens -- or rather EVERYTHING. Dickens is the greatest creator of literary characters this side of Shakespeare. For that one capacity, he can even stand the comparison with the Bard. Nobody else can, with the possible exception of Dante -- for characterization, I mean. Dickens is a comic genius, and is underrated, because anybody can read him. Read the other great novelists of the 19th century: Jane Austen, Alexandre Dumas, George Eliot, Walter Scott, Anthony Trollope, Victor Hugo, Alessandro Manzoni, Mark Twain, James Fenimore Cooper, Nathanael Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Nikolai Gogol ...

7. Don't ignore art, music, and poetry. Get the 19th century, before the 20th century meltdown in poetry: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Tennyson, Browning, etc. Poetry delivers a lot in a small space: it is TNT. Read Tennyson's Idylls of the King. Read Browning's dramatic monologues: "My Last Duchess," "The Bishop Orders His Tomb etc.", "The Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister," "An Epistle of Karshish," "Andrea del Sarto," "Caliban Upon Setebos," "Fra Lippo Lippi," "How It Strikes a Contemporary," "Cleon," ....

8. Don't go down the Lord of the Flies route, for starters. Lord of the Flies is a great work of art and thought. But it is not for beginners. It is not for your disillusioned young people, nor is Walker Percy, nor is Fitzgerald, nor is Orwell ... Not for starters. They come later ...

Would you indoctrinate your child to save their soul?

A typically malicious analysis on Rauser's part:

https://randalrauser.com/2019/11/would-you-indoctrinate-your-child-to-save-their-soul/

This is Rauser's trademark wedge tactic. 

1. Christian parent aren't ultimately responsible for the eternal fate of their kids because they don't control the outcome.

2. There's a risk of defection if you only show them to one side of the argument as well as a risk of defection if you show them to both. So that's a wash. There's no presumption that if you only show them to one side of the argument, they are more likely to stay in the fold. Consider the countless testimonies of apostates who discovered objections to Christianity and the Bible. They were defenseless because they were never schooled in Christian apologetics.

3. But the most fundamental flaw in Rauser's argument is his defective concept of saving faith in exclusivism. Saving faith isn't an accidental default faith where a Christian is an apostate waiting to happen, who only believes in Christianity because he's been shielded from alternatives. 

That never was saving faith. That never was personal faith in God or Christ or Scripture. Rather, that was childish faith in the authority figures in his life, like his parents or pastor. And that's fine when you're a child, but you're supposed to outgrow blind faith in your parents. You can't leech off of parental faith for the rest of your life. You have to develop your own conviction. 

It's like kids who lose their faith in Christianity when they find out that their parents "lied" to them about Christianity. But that just means they became disillusioned with their parents (for stupid reasons). In a sense it's good to lose that kind of faith, because that frees up space for personal faith. 

How to destroy a child's mind

https://www.redstate.com/brandon_morse/2019/10/24/video-surfaces-trans-child-texas-custody-battle-telling-father-mother-tells-hes-girl/

Anne Georgulas

(Anne Georgulas, above, is James Younger's mother.)

We've already made a few posts on James Younger: first post, second post, third post, fourth post. I believe this is our fifth post on the case.

James Younger update

BREAKING: the judge in the #ProtectJamesYounger case has ruled that the father will have a say over medical decisions, including the "transition" of his son. This is the best outcome we could hope for in a horrible situation all around. I think our outcry made a real difference.

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) October 24, 2019

I'm less sanguine about this development. It may well be that the judge was caught off-guard by the scale of the backlash, both popular and by other segments of the TX political establishment. But the judge has the final say, and to my knowledge the judge has consistently sided with the mother.

My suspicion is that the judge's action is a ruse to preempt the state investigation (by the TX Attorney General's office and the Texas dept. of Family & Protective Services). It takes some pressure off the judge. The story dies down. The judge might then side with the mother on puberty blocks and cross-hormone "therapy". While that would instigate a new campaign and might launch a new state investigation, it buys the mother time to press ahead with her plans to chemically castrate the boy. 

Keep in mind, too, that you can't count on having social conservatives in the TX political establishment in years to come. The balance of power might shift. 

BTW, the judge is up for reelection. Hopefully voters will turn her out of office.  

So I'm inclined to be cynical about the judge's latest ruling. The only outcome that matters is what actually happens to the boy. It would be fatally naive for social conservatives to assume we "won", that's safely behind us, and it's time to move on to other issues. Don't take your eyes of this case. Keep monitoring developments. 

Halloween's creation and recreation

https://calvinistinternational.com/2013/10/30/halloween-creation-recreation/

The ethics of spanking

This is the final installment. The first two were:

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2019/10/child-discipline.html

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2019/10/scientific-studies-on-spanking.html

I'm going to quote and comment on some representative arguments against spanking in this article: A Grogan-Kaylor, J Ma, & SA Graham-Bermann, "The Case Against Physical Punishment," Current Opinion in Psychology 19 (2018).

In general, it suffers from the same methodological flaws and oversights I noted in another study (second link). Moving along:

Attachment theory highlights the beneficial role of a secure attachment in the parent-child relationship [12]. A plethora of research has found that parental empathy and sensitivity towards children’s needs foster trust, safety, and emotional security in children [13]. However, when parents respond to their child’s need for attention, comfort, and care with physical punishment, the child easily feels rejected and degraded and the much-needed secure attachment in the parent-child relationship is likely to be eroded [14]. Thus, children who were physically punished are at risk of developing a sense of unworthiness and maladaptive developmental pathways such as anxiety and depression.

i) Parents have more than one role to play in child-rearing. It's true that there's an element of emotional/psychological tension between their role as disciplinarians and other roles. Spanking provokes temporary alienation. But a child's mood can change within a few minutes. 

ii) Children need boundaries. That's essential to their sense of security. They need to know there are consequences for crossing boundaries. It's because the prospect of spanking is unpleasant that it has deterrent value. The parent/child bond is part of what makes that effective. 

Social learning theory underlines observation and reinforcement as mechanisms through which physical punishment affects externalizing problems such as aggression [16]. When parents physically punish their children for unacceptable behaviors, children observe their parents endorsing the use of violence, and unintentionally, are modeled and taught the legitimacy of violent behaviors to correct the misconduct of others. In addition, by observing that parental physical punishment resulted in successfully stopping their own misbehaviors in the short term, children are reinforced in the idea of the effectiveness of violence in controlling and resolving social and interpersonal conflicts.

That's not a scientific claim. It reflects the utopian outlook of the writers. They act like any kind of "violence" is intrinsically wrong. Do they think a propensity for violence or aggression is conditioned rather than hardwired? 

But there are situations where violence is required to combat violence. It takes a gun to stop a sniper or house-burglar. Violence has a legitimate and indispensable role in social dynamics. That's a necessity evil in a fallen world. 

A recent longitudinal study examined the relationships of parental spanking of 1-year-old children, and subsequent involvement of that family with Child Protective Services between child’s age 1 and age 5 [37]. This study found that reports of spanking of a child when child was one year old were associated with a 33% increase in the chances that a family would become involved with Child Protective Services.

i) That's just circular. If you outlaw spanking, that puts neighbors in a position to rat out parents who spank their misbehaving kids. But that's hardly a justification for outlawing the practice. You can't appeal to a law to justify the law. 

ii) Because the writers oppose spanking in principle, they don't bother to explore the appropriate age-range for spanking. How old should the child be before spanking is constructive? What's the cutoff when the child is too old for that to be constructive? 

"Scientific studies" on spanking

I'm going to quote some representative excerpts of "scientific study" on spanking and corporal punishment:

However, this perspective began to change as studies found links between “normative” physical punishment and child aggression, delinquency and spousal assault in later life...Physical punishment is associated with a range of mental health problems in children, youth and adults, including depression, unhappiness, anxiety, feelings of hopelessness, use of drugs and alcohol, and general psychological maladjustment.26–29 These relationships may be mediated by disruptions in parent–child attachment resulting from pain inflicted by a caregiver...

75% of substantiated physical abuse of children occurred during episodes of physical punishment. This finding was replicated in the second cycle of the study (CIS 2003).40 Another large Canadian study41 found that children who were spanked by their parents were seven times more likely to be severely assaulted by their parents (e.g., punched or kicked) than children who were not spanked. In an American study,42 infants in their first year of life who had been spanked by their parents in the previous month were 2.3 times more likely to suffer an injury requiring medical attention than infants who had not been spanked. 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3447048/

1. There's been a highly successful movement by secular progressives (cheered on by "progressive Christians") to use the totalitarian power of the state to deny parental authority and Christian ethics, even in the private sphere of the family.  

2. I don't concede the premise that you need a scientific study to be justified in many of your common sense beliefs. 

3. I'm of two minds about scientific studies. On the one hand, there's a need for scientific studies on many topics. On the other hand, many scientific studies are unreliable. Many influential studies, which became the received wisdom in academia and certain professions, studies which became the basis for law or public policy, have been debunked over the years. Consider the replication crisis in the social and life sciences. So just quoting a study or studies has no particular cachet with me. It's an unfortunate dilemma. We need studies, but which studies can be trusted, given their checkered track-record? It's not possible to endorse scientific studies in general. 

4. In addition, some studies are like the professional expert witness hired by defense attorneys. You can hire someone with impressive credentials to defend both sides of any position. 

5. A basic flaw in the study is the equivocal use of "physical punishment". Needless to say, that ranges along a very wide continuum. You can't lump all forms of physical punishment, then tar a light spanking with the same consequences. There are degrees of physical punishment, from slight to severe. It's willfully methodologically irresponsible not to draw necessary distinctions. 

Take the difference between swatting a child on the backside with your hand 1-3 times and whipping him on the backside with a belt or ruler. Those just aren't comparable. 

6. Likewise, I doubt pain is the primary factor in the efficacy of spanking. Breaking your arm when you fall from a tree or scraping your knees when you fall off your bike is far more painful then getting swatted on the backside by hand. Do scientific studies which hype the psychological harm of spanking say the same thing about painful childhood accidents? 

I suspect the impact of spanking is primarily psychological rather than physical. Because young children are so emotionally dependent on their parents, to be physically rebuffed by a parent is (temporarily) traumatic. It's easy to reduce a child to tears. 

7. Apropos (6), in biblical anthropology, mothers and fathers play different roles. They have overlapping roles, but there are differences as well as commonalities. In a qualified sense, it's not bad for kids to be afraid of their fathers. I don't mean they should live in a state of fear. But it's good for them to fear the paternal reaction if they cross certain lines. To take a comparison, although a lion protects his cubs, cubs must be more respectful to the lion than the lioness. You don't mess with the lion! 

8. The studies need to be far more selective. For instance, what's the long-term impact of spanking an extroverted, strong-willed boy? Children vary in temperament. Likewise, there are stereotypical psychological differences between boys and girls. What's effective discipline for one child may be ineffective for another.   

9. Do the studies screen out other variables for delinquency, depression, self-harm, domestic abuse, substance abuse, incarceration, and suicide? What about kids from high-crime areas? Kids from broken homes? Fatherless boys (due to divorce and maternal custody)? Kids with stepdads? Kids where mom has a live-in boyfriend, or string of boyfriends? 

10. How do rates of delinquency, depression, self-harm, domestic abuse, substance abuse, incarceration, and suicide for kids who experience moderate spanking compare with their counterparts in secularized nations where spanking is illegal? What's the comparative data? 

11. Do psychologists and sociologists who deplore spanking think a propensity for violence is innate–or the result of social conditioning? Do they think a violence-free society is possible with different socialization?

12. What's their model of a socially well-adjusted or maladjusted male? Consider the faddish misdiagnosis/overmedication for attention deficit syndrome for rambunctious boys. Do they think an aggressive streak is "toxic masculinity"? 

Suppose an aggressive streak or potential for violence is a necessary trait in males who take the initiative. What if the nature of boys to be adventurous, inventive, competitive, and take a risk is inseparable from an aggressive streak or potential for violence?  

13. Is there any correlation between declining crime rates and declining levels of testosterone? Is there any correlation between declining crime rates and a graying population? During the baby boom, young males were a larger percentage of the population.