Raising Parents with Emily Oster - Ep 2: Have We Forgotten How to Discipline?

Episode Date: September 25, 2024

There are a lot of different approaches to discipline, and they’ve changed wildly in America over the decades. On one end of the spectrum, there’s the old school, 1950s approach: spanking. Then, there are middle-ground approaches: time-outs, warning systems, consequences, and punishments. And then, there are the fairly new approaches on the way other end of the spectrum. These are the kind of approaches that claim that the right way to parent is not to punish your child, but rather to help your child understand why they’re frustrated and to help them work through their frustration. “Gentle parenting”—sometimes called “respectful parenting” or “attentive parenting”—has become really popular in the last few years, and if your social media feeds are anything like ours, you’ve heard all about it and been told you need to do it. The question many parents are asking is: We have been told that spanking was bad, and we shouldn’t go back to it. But have we gone too far in the other direction? Has gentle parenting led us to permissive parenting, where kids are learning that they can do whatever they want, whenever they want? And yes, there are consequences of being too hard on your kids, but what are the consequences of being too soft on them? Today: How should we be disciplining the next generation of kids? And have we gotten too soft on them along the way?  *** Resources from this episode: Abigail Shrier: Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up Dr. Thomas Phelan: 1-2-3 Magic: Gentle 3-Step Discipline for Calm, Effective, and Happy Parenting Dr. Becky Kennedy: Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be Hal Chaffee: How to Spank Your Kids the Right Way

Hi, everyone. Emily here, and you're listening to Raising Parents, my new podcast in partnership with The Free Press, where we interrogate all of the big and pressing and confusing questions facing parents today. Before we get to the show, I'm so excited to tell you that this season is in partnership with Airbnb. If you know anything about me, you know how much I love Airbnb. I think I'm currently holding like six Airbnb reservations in my account. Airbnb has provided incredible experiences for me, my family, and our friends across the country and the world time and time again. More on that and how you too can use Airbnb on your next family trip later in the episode.

For now, on to the show. Yes, I do believe that we're too soft on kids. I don't think that we're creating a generation where children have to earn something, right? I think now when kids are little or even with my own kids, I've seen the experience where even at a very young age, everybody gets a trophy for just showing up. For my generation, I grew up in the 70s and discipline was very rules oriented. Like whenever our parents said, do something, we just did it. There was no questioning and if we didn't adhere to like what was being asked of us, we would definitely have repercussions. I don't think we know how to discipline our kids anymore because we're scared to discipline them just in

case our kids feel any sort of negativity towards us because we're so busy wanting to be friends with our kids that we forget that we're actually their parents. Your child is angry. They didn't get what they wanted. Maybe they're two and they just wanted a cookie before dinner. Maybe they're five and you didn't buy them that light-up blue hippo they were asking for at Target. Maybe they're five and you didn't buy them that light-up blue hippo they were asking for at Target. Maybe they're eight and they're not allowed to play with mud inside. It's not fair. You're so mean.

I'm going to hit you. And then maybe they proceed to do just that, to hit you. Or maybe they proceed to rip pages out of a book. Or maybe if they're a teenage girl, they just run up to their room, slam the door shut, and give you the silent treatment for a week. These are among the very hardest moments of parenting. What do you do when your child misbehaves? How do you discipline them when they're doing something they should not be doing? And if you don't tell me the truth, I'm going to put you across my knee. There are a lot of different approaches to discipline, and they've changed wildly in America over the decades. If you go near that man again, I'll put you across my knee. There are a lot of different approaches to discipline, and they've changed wildly in America over the decades.

If you go near that man again, I'll take you over my knee and give you a spanking you'll never forget. Of course, on one end of the spectrum, there's the old school 1950s style approach, spanking. And I think a good waiting would help you to change too. Oh yeah? Who's going to give it to me? I am. Which, as you might guess, has declined in popularity over the decades.

If your parents are spanking their children, the form of discipline has been on the decline among U.S. parents, both rich and poor, since 1988. Then there are middle ground approaches of timeouts, of warning systems, and of consequences and punishments. Count one, two, three, then you have a timeout. Look at me. I don't have to listen to you.

If you leave this table, you will go in timeout. Do you understand that? There'll be no more fresh voices and naughty behavior. We're going to go right back into timeout. Okay. And then there are the fairly new approaches on the way other end of the spectrum. We reject the notion of authoritarian discipline

where the adult is the authority figure and the child must obey without any rhyme or reason. Instead, we're encouraging collaboration between the adult and the child. These are the kinds of approaches that claim that the right way to parent is not to punish your child, but rather to help your child understand why they're frustrated and to help them work through their frustration. Gentle parenting,

sometimes called respectful parenting or attentive parenting, has become really popular in the last few years. And if your social media feeds are anything like mine, you've heard all about it from accounts like Big Little Feelings, Mr. Chaz, Laura Love, and a billion others. So respectful parenting is basically having an awareness of your child or baby's perspective. That's as simple as it is. Jonas, time to get ready so we can go to the store. No. Are you not ready to go to the store yet?

No. Do you need two minutes or four minutes before we go to the store? Three minutes. Three minutes? Yeah. Okay, I'll give you three minutes, and then we'll go get dressed to go to the store. Let's put your three-minute timer on. You want Mama to do it, or you want to do it?

I'll do it. Time's up. No. Do you want to skip over there so I can put your clothes on, or do you want to hop like a bunny? Hop like a bunny. You're going to hop like a bunny? Okay, come on. Let's hop, hop, hop. And it sounds promising. After all, based on the name, it would appear that the alternative is something like harsh parenting, which I may occasionally veer into but would certainly like to avoid. Gentle parenting is, to be clear, a completely made-up term, and it isn't one well-defined thing.

But it is, broadly speaking, a method of parenting which centers around managing difficult behaviors without consequences or punishments. So you might redirect your child or set a boundary, but you won't use any disciplinary approaches when a kid is misbehaving. Also, this approach has a strong focus on talking it out, even with smaller children. In many ways, I think that gentle parenting can be explained as a backlash to authoritarian parenting, which characterized the previous generation. Our parents were really tough, so now we're going to be really forgiving. It's all cyclical, isn't it? The question I think many parents today are asking is,

okay, we've been told that spanking was bad, definitely bad, and we shouldn't go back to it. But have we gone too far in the other direction? Has gentle parenting led us to permissive parenting where kids are learning only that they can do whatever they want, whenever they want? And yes, there are consequences of being too hard on your kids. But what are the consequences of being too soft on them? Is it true that we're getting a little too soft on our kids and it's not making them as mentally tough as they should be to be prepared for the world. We don't have to unpack every last emotional experience that our children have. A lot of people say gentle parenting is going to create a bunch of self-centered children. And some parents might even be asking,

was spanking all that bad? So what does the data say? A few facts right from the start. According to the World Health Organization, around 60% of children globally regularly experience physical punishment by their parents or caregivers. However, physical punishment has been shown in a variety of studies to be associated with worsened behavior in the long term. In contrast, there is experimental data showing positive parenting approaches. That's a catch-all for approaches which rely on consequences like timeouts, but not physical punishment, can improve behavior and family function. Gentle parenting goes a step further, but here we have no good data. That is, nothing in the academic research literature which would tell us that gentle

parenting produces better outcomes or worse ones. Our information is incomplete. So with this in mind, for today, how should we be disciplining the next generation of kids, if at all? And have we gotten too soft on them along the way? I'm Emily Oster, and from the Free Press, this is Raising Parents. Emily Oster, an economist by trade, has gathered the data, crunched the numbers, and is now debunking some of the most controversial myths about parenthood. I think what everyone is most interested in, like pregnant women, they're like,

can I drink? You know, you shouldn't have like a lot. Where is this data coming from? The fundamental answer is we get data on people by asking people about their behaviors and what they do and by collecting information on how their kids do. Oster doesn't shy away from other charged topics. People are using your database as an example as to why schools should reopen. What kind of reaction did you get to that? I imagine that was a little controversial. It was a little controversial, yes. You're an economist.

You're not a doctor. I mean, what do you think people are going to take away from what you've written in this book? All that I'm trying to do here is really show women, here is what the evidence is, and why don't you think about some of these decisions for yourself? Episode 2. Have we forgotten how to discipline kids? I think as a parent, I've struggled with the question of how to discipline my kid

probably every second of every day since I became a mom. This is Jessica. She's a mom of a two-year-old boy. Yesterday, I took my child to the bike shop to buy him a helmet for the bike that we share. He gets a Popsicle, we buy the bike helmet, and he has a meltdown that I can't let him out of the stroller. And despite his very loud, shrieking, and bodily protest, I continue to push him home without necessarily doing much to intervene, other than to just let him live through the feeling as you know other people on

the street sort of watch me push a absolutely wild violently shrieking toddler down the street and by the time we got home he'd cooled down and i think it passed but i don't know was i supposed to stop the stroller and kneel down next to him and interrogate his feelings and ask him what he was going through? If I had done that, would that have helped? Would it have made it any shorter? Would he have felt validated by my attention? Or was it a good thing that I sort of spent on home and decided not to attend to the outburst and just waited till it passed? I don't know. I have no idea. If you're listening to this and you have at some point had a toddler, you're probably thinking of a similar situation to Jessica's. Tantrums are at the more extreme end of toddler acting out, and nearly everyone has a story about

one, usually one that occurred in public. And usually there's at least one that will stick with you for the rest of your life. So how to stop it? Well, I'm sorry to say that that's a trick question, and there really isn't a one-size-fits-all answer here. That's because, and I know it is terribly cliche to say this, but every child is different. Take my own experience as a child. When I misbehaved when I was little, my mother's solution was to ask me to sit on the stairs and think about it. I would toddle off to the stairs, sit for a while, I would contemplate my mistakes, and then return to explain what I did wrong and that I would not do it again. My mother congratulated herself on being an amazing parent who was deeply in touch with her child and didn't need to resort to the kind of go-to-your-room discipline that others practiced.

And then my brother Stephen arrived. He didn't want to sit on the kind of go-to-your-room discipline that others practiced. And then my brother Stephen arrived. He didn't want to sit on the stairs and think about it when he misbehaved. In fact, he loudly refused. Things escalated to him being sent to his room, also refused. My mother found herself physically carrying him to his room, shutting the door, and holding the door closed with all her strength while he screamed and tried to get out. The point is, parenting is more about the child than about the parent. Side note, Stephen is a wonderful and successful adult who was and remains a great brother.

When my own kids were born, I repeated a similar pattern. Penelope, my oldest, never had a tantrum. When Finn, the second, had one, I couldn't believe it. There was so much yelling. I asked my husband, do you think he's sick? Should we take him to the doctor? He looked at me like I was a crazy person. He's not sick.

He's two. And so suddenly, unexpectedly, as a second-time mom, I found myself needing help. I think we are too soft. I don't think we expect much of anything of our kids. And I don't think we know how to handle trouble when it comes up. This is Dr. Tom Phelan, and he's the guy who helped me with Finn. But God knows our ability to encourage kids' independence is not there. We're too soft that way.

We're afraid of consequences. We think you can talk everything out that's too soft also. Dr. Phelan is a clinical psychologist, a dad of two, and the author of a book called One, Two, Three Magic, which teaches how to discipline children from the age of two to about 10 to 12 years old. It was first published in 1995 and has since sold over 2 million copies. Now I know what you're thinking. And let me tell you, I too was skeptical about a parenting method with the word magic in the title. But it worked. I would love for you to just start by explaining the goal of this approach or how it works in general terms. The idea is that to get along well with your kids, you need to have fairly orderly house. And I'm a believer that parenting is not a democracy, that the parents are in charge. But no arguing, yelling, spanking.

So what we do in 123 Magic, we tell parents you got three jobs, discouraging negative behavior, encouraging positive behavior, and bonding with your kids. You do those three things, you'll be a pretty good parent. One of the things I like about your book, it is very simple and in some ways formulaic. I mean, in a positive and not a negative way, it's not difficult to implement. Yeah. So for discouraging negative behavior, we have the famous counting, what you could call signaling.

And it's extremely simple. You know, you hold up one finger and say, that's one when the kid's tantruming or throwing the football in the house. And it's easy for parents to do, especially under conditions of emotional stress, which parents experience a lot of the time. For the positive behavior, we do routines. You want a routine for bedtime, routine for homework. And for bonding, my favorite tactics are active listening. And el numero uno of anything for people getting along is shared fun.

And it does seem a little formulaic, and I suppose it is, but that's there because of the emotional stress, among other things, because when people are stressed, they lean toward yelling and spanking, which I think make things go the wrong direction. Let's talk about what you mean by counting. And this is not just in the context of bedtime, but any kind of bad behavior when you say we're going to count. Tell me what that means. Counting is a signal. You can do two things when a child's doing something you don't want them to do, like whining. Whining drives parents insane. So when a child is whining, you can say, use your big girl voice. If that works, that's fine. If it doesn't, we're going to use a signal. And the signal that we use is counting. I hold up my finger, one finger, I say that's one. That

indicates from previous experience, we've also rehearsed this, that you have now been given a warning because you're involved in some kind of obnoxious behavior. You got five seconds to shape up. If you don't shape up, I give you a two, five more seconds to hit the three. Then we're going to use rest period timeout. So I want to talk about the no emotion piece of this or the part of this that's about parenting, because it's discipline for parents, because so much of what you talk about is focused on the idea of parents not engaging emotionally with bad behavior in particular. Why is that important? It's really important for a lot of reasons. One is it doesn't work very well. I mean, it's true, you can yell or intimidate a child into compliance some of the time, but as a long-term strategy,

that's really bad news. You don't want to do that. But one of the discoveries I think of 123Magic is the evil of talking. We say communication is great. The more communication, the better. That is absolutely wrong because a lot of these conversations go through what we call the talk, persuade, argue, yell, hit syndrome. I talk to a kid, it's bedtime. Bedtime's not negotiable. Now the kid's got me negotiating about bedtime. So talk, and then I persuade them to go to bed, and then I argue with them, then I yell, and maybe I hit them. A lot of parents will choose hitting at that end. So what we're getting is a transition to violent parenting or yelling parenting because the parent talked at the wrong time or didn't use the right technique, which

would have been a routine for bedtime or a signal for a tantrum or something like that. And these days, people are geared toward talk. You got to talk everything out. There are parents that believe everything has to be talked out. I'm sorry. It's not a democracy. That's wrong. I was trained to work with parents in a very behavioral approach.

I was trained how to give a time out, how to do ignoring, how to do praise, how to do sticker charts, what type of consequences were natural consequences, like the whole thing. And I started to see in my practice as I delivered this method, because I did, I was kind of young at the time. I kind of took it for granted. Like this is what people do. And I want to do the right thing. And that there were things that we assume to be true that I really think are worth questioning. This is Dr. Becky Kennedy. She's a clinical psychologist and a mom of three with, get this, over 2.7 million followers on Instagram. And she only started her account in 2020. Three words that can stop a toddler tantrum in its tracks. I believe you. Your toddler's very upset that you said no to having an ice cream

sundae for breakfast. Say these words to your you said no to having an ice cream sundae for breakfast. Say these words to your toddler. You really wanted that ice cream sundae now. I believe you, while you hold your boundary. Your child is looking for your support, not your solutions. This is true at every age. Let's say you have a toddler and they can't figure out a puzzle and they're frustrated.

They're looking for you to say, oh, this is a hard puzzle. Not, I'll do that piece for you. I want to tell you why I'm not getting my kids a dog. I am at maximum capacity in my life right now. I feel that almost every day. And I know that even more than wanting a dog, my kids want a safe and secure family home. Remember, you might be saying no to your kids' requests for a dog, but what you are saying yes to is really their ultimate need for a parent who is as sturdy and grounded as possible. And knowing your limits as a parent is a sign of... I think her skyrocketing popularity shows

just how desperate parents are today to figure this out. Number one, why does a kid need to be punished after they engage in a bad behavior? Why? Like, it sounds like a silly thing to question, but to really be curious, like, why? Is that helpful? Is that going to help people learn? Number two, why do kids engage in all this bad behavior then? Like, why do, and it's kind of a big question, why do good people do bad things? And I really do believe it comes to like a lack of skills. Like we actually understand how skills play out in most areas of life. Why doesn't my three-year-old know how to swim? Because they don't have the skills to swim. If I want my kid to swim, I have to teach them the skills. Age on its own does not bring skills. We know this because there's adults who can't swim. Okay, if I have a good kid having a hard time, what would my kid need? Like, just very practically, okay, well,

he would need to feel connected to me because kids need to feel secure to behave well. But also, like, he'd need a skill, a literal skill to manage whatever feeling came up right before he hit his brother. Okay, so what if I taught my kid some of those skills and practiced them with them? And you know what happens when you do that? Your kid's behavior improves. There's no trade-off here. Dr. Becky is the founder of Good Insight, which she describes as a new method for working with parents. To be honest, it's a bit hard to pin down in a sentence or two.

But it's basically a method of disciplining which doesn't believe in disciplining. Instead, it's based on the premise that there are no bad kids or even bad behaviors, and it's our job as parents to understand what these quote-unquote bad behaviors signify and what our child might need from us at that moment. She's often characterized as a gentle parenting guru, which despite its overwhelming popularity with millennial parents today, also comes with a good amount of eye rolling and criticism. Here's how comedian Claude Stewart described it. So my wife wants to raise our child in the style of a gentle parent. Now, for those of you who don't know, let me explain. If you're a gentle parent, that means no spanking, no yelling, no shaming. If you're a gentle parent,

your only form of disciplining your child is just to acknowledge their feelings and just hope they stop being a little jerk. I understand this reaction. And as I said before, I use the one, two, three magic approach with my own kids. But Dr. Becky pushes back on this pushback. She thinks these approaches are misunderstood and wouldn't call her approach gentle parenting at all. Instead, the good inside phrase is sturdy parenting. Here's step one. We need to replace we don't and please stop with I won't let you. It's a huge difference. And it's not just the semantics.

It's actually the stance. And I call that stance embodying your authority as a parent. Your kid is hitting, and this is going to come full circle, because they're having a set of feelings that they don't yet, yet have skills for. Feelings without skills always manifest as behavior for adults too, all the time. Bad behavior is a sign we had a feeling that was too big for skills. So I can't expect my kid in that moment to stop their behavior. It's my job.

I need to protect my kid from seeing himself as the kid who hits. So I'm going to stop their behavior. I'm not going to let them do it again because I love you. So that step one is a boundary. A boundary is something you tell your kids you will do, and it requires your kid to do nothing. Please stop is not a boundary because it's asking your kid to do something. We don't hit, not a boundary.

I won't let you hit. And then actually getting between my kids is a boundary because it's literally an embodiment of my authority. And after we set a boundary to kind of stop the damage, we connect to the good kid under the bad behavior. Because if we can't differentiate who our kid is from what they did, they won't be able to differentiate that either. And then they start to form their identity as a bad kid. And you know what kids with bad identity do? They engage in bad behavior. And how do we prevent that bad behavior without timeouts or punishments, you ask? We want to teach our kids that their feelings are real and matter. We also want to teach our kids that their feelings don't get to

dictate what everyone does. That is a dangerous thing to teach. And I think that's the overcorrection. And to me, the second correction toward the middle is your feelings are real. And my boundaries and role as your parent is also real. And I will not let you turn feelings into out of control behaviors. And when I show you, I can differentiate and I show you the feeling is okay. This behavior is not. And I will also teach you a skill so you can express that feeling differently. Now, all of a sudden, my kid is going to go into adulthood with the repertoire of skills that kids really need, which is just that I'm allowed to have feelings. I've learned how to manage them. My feelings don't mean I get to dictate other people's world. My

feelings don't mean I get to do any certain behavior at all. My job is to manage my feelings so I can show up in a respectful way. And that's actually where we get kids to with this approach. And I think when kids over and over, their kind of quote undesirable behaviors are met with a timeout, what they actually learn is there's a whole set of undesirable feelings. And I'm not really learning skills to manage those. I'm actually kind of layering in my circuit, like, shame and distance on top of those, which ironically just make them harder to manage. I'm not here to say that Dr. Becky's methods are not good. Many people say they work and they might work for you. It's just that we don't have any systematic evidence that they will. As I said before, this approach to parenting, the broader

scope of gentle parenting, it isn't a defined thing. And so we don't have any systematic data on it. The idea that gentle parenting supports attachment, that's theory, not data. The thing I can say is I talk to a lot of parents in my work, and many of them tell me that gentle parenting is really, really hard to implement in practice. It feels like an almost impossible task for a parent to take on amidst everything else going on in the house. One mom, Erin, who has a seven-year-old daughter, told us that she loses her temper too often to do the gentle parent approach.

I try the whole acknowledging her emotions, which I don't think is bad. Like I think that she actually tends to calm down and she's starting to reason more now with not the gentle, but like acknowledging the feelings. Like the other day she snapped at me and then she started crying a few minutes later. And she's like, I'm so sorry. That wasn't right of me to do.

So I was like, okay, maybe this is working a little bit, but I lose my temper a lot. So I don't think I could ever call myself a gentle parent. My read of the literature is that timeouts work in the sense that if you look at randomized evaluations of some of these kind of programs that have timeouts as a component, that you will see changes in family behavior functioning. It is a thing that works for many people. And by works, I mean that it improves behavior. And I want to differentiate between at random being like, that's it, go to your room, from a sort of measured, like, that's a warning, that's a second like, that's it, go to your room, from a sort of measured, like, that's a warning, that's a second warning, that's a timeout

in a way that kids expect in a consistent manner. The sort of perfectly implemented Tom Phelan, one, two, three magic approach to timeouts. I really try not to be a purist about most things. Again, Dr. Becky. So like, do timeouts mess up your kids forever? No, no, I would not say that. Okay. But there's a couple things. Number one, data is only part of a story. If I told my kid that they had to sleep on the street every time they hit their brother, like I promise you they would change

their behavior. Now, is that data worth bragging about? Like, did that work? Like, I think we have to really break down what work means. I think change in behavior, I think it's a dangerous outcome on its own to measure working by. Number two, timeouts are a far superior option to physically abusing a child. I mean that, to hitting a child in any way. And they are, right? And so if I think about the prevalence still of physical abuse, and if I think about a parent who's saying, okay, instead of hitting my child, I'm going to send them to their room, which, by the way, would literally physically stop a parent from doing that because there'd be separation. I think that makes a lot of sense. You know, spanking your kid is not going to cause some kind of emotional damage that's going to be with them for the rest of their life. This is Hal Chaffee. He's a pastor at a church, a dad of six, and he blogs about parenting.

Now, I should say up front that there is a large body of literature on physical punishments, in particular, like spanking, showing that they are associated with worse behavior at older ages. And to surface my personal views, I do not believe in spanking, completely independent of anything in the data. Even if the data suggested this was the best form of discipline, I would not do it because I don't believe in it. Still, I wanted to talk to him and hear him out. After all, a lot of parents do spank. I think that's what people believe. I think they're just, they're convinced that spanking is going to somehow scar their child for life. Why do you think people think that?

Because people equate spanking with abuse. Yeah. There are extremes on every end. Spanking is perfectly fine and acceptable, but if you go to an extreme, that's abuse. How do you see that line? I think that is blurry, I guess. But I think the best way to never even get close to that line is to make sure that everything you're doing towards your child is in love and respect and honor. You know, I spank my kids not because I'm angry that they did something wrong. I spank my kids because I love them and I want to see them succeed in life. And I know that if I let them be undisciplined, then it's going to hinder their future. This philosophy can most aptly be summed

up as sparing the rod spoils the child, or that kids who aren't spanked are more likely to grow up entitled or lacking respect for themselves and others? Well, practically, your kids should do what you tell them to do. And if you live in a household where your kids don't listen to you, you're going to have chaos and misery. You're going to be a miserable parent. In my household, I have a general expectancy that my kids are going to do what I tell them to do. Now, I know some people might think, well, you know, he's just a dictator. He just dictates things and his kids do it. No, that's not how it rolls. The way it works is, you know, if I have an idea in my head of something I want my kids to do, you know, I say, hey, you know, you got to clean your room. And most of the time I give my kids to do, you know, I say, hey, you know, you got to clean your room. And most of the

time, I give my kids the opportunity to protest if they'd like to. I think that's reasonable. And, you know, if it's a reasonable protest, sometimes I'll say, okay, you know, finish your TV program, and then you got to clean your room. But the bottom line is you got to clean your room. And that's going to happen. And if it gets to the point where they're defiant and they're not going to, you know, which doesn't happen in my household, by the way, you know, there isn't defiance in my household, then that's when some kind of discipline is called for. Usually that happens at a real young age. From my experience, as my kids have grown older, I have a, my oldest is a 14 year old and my youngest is a two year old, but I have, you know, in between

as they're younger, you know, they have that natural defiance. I mean, it my youngest is a two year old, but I have, you know, in between as they're younger, you know, they have that natural defiance. I mean, it's there in a two year old, you don't, you don't put it there. It's just there. And they will test you and they'll, you'll tell them to do something. And you, as a parent, you, you know, that they know what you're saying, you know, you know, you know, that they understand you. And if you let them get away with that defiance, that defiance is, you know, continues into their older years. But if you say, hey, hey, buddy, and this is how my parenting rolls. Hey, buddy, listen, I asked you to do this.

You can either do it or you get in a spanking. You know, what are you going to do? And, you know, there'll be a couple of times you have to give them a spanking. But after they realize that, hey, I got to do what dad says, then the spankings happen way, way less often. And I pretty rarely spankings happen way, way less often. And I pretty rarely spank my kids, very rarely. I haven't spanked my girls since they were probably, you know, four or five years old. I just haven't needed to. Now that they're older, I use different punishments with them. I'll give them extra chores or extra cleaning or

something like that. But I do think that in the younger formative years, spanking is really important. A lot of people get the idea that if kids don't follow rules, there should be consequences. That makes sense. But physical punishment to me seems like a slippery slope when emotions are high. But Hal has specific rules when it comes to spanking. So I don't spank them with my own interest in mind. I spank them with their interest in mind. And so when I do that, I'm not going to do it in a way that's abusive. So are you an angry person? Don't spank your kids

when you're angry because when you're angry, you do stupid stuff. So I never spank my kids when I'm angry. And I rarely get angry. It's like when my kids do things that are wrong, it doesn't surprise me. It's like, that's what kids do. So I'm not going to get upset about it. And there are times, I'm not going to lie, there's some times I do get angry, especially when my kids like hurt each other or talk bad to each other. But I've never have grabbed my kid and run off in anger and spanked them. I just, I think that's wrong. And if you don't do that, I don't think you're going to abuse them. And what about timeouts or other forms of discipline?

First of all, you know, how do you put a two-year-old in timeout? It's very difficult. And it's not like you got to really whack a two-year-old. Just a little swat on the rear end or something like that will help them to understand, you know, what they're doing is wrong. And it works, you know. Done it with all my kids. Never had terrible twos like people talk about. Actually, two years old is one of my favorite times as their children. They're so cute and so much fun. So I think that other forms of discipline are fine. I just think if you're trying them and they don't work, spanking your kid is not going to cause some

kind of emotional damage that's going to be with them for the rest of their life. And I grew up among many people, many who I've talked to who are now grown, functioning, well-adjusted adults who were all spanked when they were children. And not only did they say, well, I turned out okay, they'll say, listen, I believe that because my parents spanked me, it helped me to become the person that I am today. And they have great relationships with their parents. There's no problems there that some people think that people would have because of spanking. And it's just common. I saw some people in my culture started this idea that spanking is bad,

kind of seeped in, started to seep into our culture. And they're like, I'm afraid to spank my kid because people might judge me or this and that and this and that. And their kids got out of control. So I said, listen, it's okay to spank your kids. There's nothing wrong with this. This is good. This is fine. People have been doing it. I mean, it's been common throughout history for forever.

You know, this is a relatively new thing not to spank your kids. It's been common throughout history forever. And throughout history, we've had good people. They've all been spanked. You know what I'm saying? Yes, we've had some bad people. They're all spanked. We've had abuse. but the old saying, don't throw out the baby with the bathwater certainly applies here. We see some kind of abuse and then we want to run to the

other extreme and not do spanking at all. And I think that's wrong. And I think it's so wrong that we're hurting children who, if they were properly spanked, would turn out great, would do well in school, would not have to be put on ADHD medicine or drugged to death so that they sit quiet. We wouldn't have out of control schools. And so I think we're really, really hurting society by making this a thing that's taboo when it shouldn't be. Talking to Hal didn't fully change my mind about spanking. I still haven't done it, and I wouldn't do it. I don't think the data supports spanking,

even though it is a difficult question to answer with data for a lot of reasons. First, parents who spank are different from those who do not. So if you look at just the raw correlation between spanking and later outcomes, you'll overstate the downsides. Second, even within the group of parents who spank, it stands to reason that children who are more difficult may be spanked more. I will, however, say these final two things about spanking. First, there is no evidence to suggest that spanking is more effective than an approach

that relies on timeouts, where there's definitely no evidence of harm. And second, spanking is disproportionately race and class-based in America. In a representative study of kindergartners in the U.S., 27% of mothers reported spanking their child in the previous week. That was 40% of black mothers, 28% of Hispanic mothers, 24% of white mothers, and 23% of Asian American mothers. All of that said, there is a point in what Hal was saying that I actually agree with about the possible unintended and negative consequences of not disciplining our children at all. After the break, what are some of the consequences? Is gentle or gentler parenting hurting society as much as Hal claims it is?

And what explains the big swing away from harsher or stricter parenting strategies in the last decade? Stay with us. If you're a parent, you know that traveling with kids is very often a total pain in the butt. Between the plane ride and the time changes and the schlepping of all the gear and the packing of all the food, the list goes on and on. But really, on top of it all, it's really expensive to travel with kids. But it doesn't have to be that way. That's why I love staying not at a hotel, but at an Airbnb. In fact, there's one Airbnb we stayed at many times over the years through many child ages, and every time they made it work for us. A crib, a high chair, a booster seat, as the kids grew. Plus, at an Airbnb, you get to avoid that awkward elevator ride

where you have to bring your breast milk baggies down to the concierge and ask if they can please just put it in the kitchen freezer. And here's the really cool thing. While you're away, your home could also be an Airbnb. And yes, that means you can actually make cash while you're on vacation. It's really a no-brainer. Or maybe your in-laws made you build that back house when the baby was born, but now that your cute little newborn is an angsty, stinky teen they only visit three times a year, definitely consider hosting on Airbnb. Your home might be worth more than you think.

Find out how much at Airbnb.com slash host. Now, back to the show. I think that our whole conversation about this topic of spanking is really extreme. I mean, I don't think there's any topic that people are more so-called triggered by in the world of parenting than spanking. This is Abigail Schreier, an independent journalist who most recently wrote Bad Therapy, Why the Kids Aren't Growing Up. But I know we're living in a context where if you even mention spanking, you get a very extreme reaction and we regard it as a source of trauma. And there just isn't good evidence that it produces traumatic injury in general. Well, let me just say, like, I'm not an advocate for spanking. It's not like I think this is a

wonderfully efficacious tool. I haven't seen evidence of that. So I'm not an advocate of it. But do I think it produces traumatic injury? I haven't seen evidence of that either. But it is true. And in a society in which we all assume that it causes traumatic injury, then haven't seen evidence of that either. But it is true. And in a society in which we all assume that it causes traumatic injury, then yes, we are likely to see people who think they've been traumatically injured by it. What do you think happened to change the attitudes in this way? I think 30 years ago, if somebody had said, or 40 years ago, you had said, I spanked my kids, that would not have been perceived in the way that it is now, at least in a lot of places. And I'm curious, what do you think is the change there? Well, we can describe this change in a few ways, but parents got much more involved

in raising their kids in terms of time and attention and where that attention was placed. We became, you know, moms and dads, men and women became much more, they poured many more hours into child rearing or parenting. And one of the things we decided we were going to do for various reasons is be there to attend to every emotional bit of distress our kids felt. And we decided our goal as parents was to make sure our kids never sat with distress, never felt unsupported, even for short periods of time. And even for, you know, even the slightest period of time. And that's why it became harder and harder for us to ever punish a child. Because of course, if you punish a child, no matter what the punishment is, they're going to be upset with

you. And I think we had, as parents, we had a much harder time riding out our kids' displeasure. Can you describe some of what you call in the book a perfectly average markers of an 80s childhood? Well, I think, you know, this was the latchkey kid generation. Kids often came home to an empty house that wasn't considered, you know, neglect or a reason to call child services. That was just what happened. Parents weren't home from work yet. And parents did not show up at every sports game, you would get cut. And that was that. If you scored higher, you'd be in the high class. And if you didn't, you'd be in the lower class and that you just sort of lived with. There were all kinds of sort of indignities of childhood, either being made fun of, no one called that bullying. They just called it being made fun of or being teased. You know, look, some of it was really unpleasant. I mean, especially if you look back at things like say the way gay teenagers were treated, the language that was used could

be really awful. You know, a certain amount of that went along with a general toleration of discomfort. Now I don't, I certainly don't want to just go back, dial the clock back. A lot of that was really cruel and unnecessary. And, you know, making fun of kids for racial, cultural, ethnic features, sexual orientation, whatever is, is really beyond the pale. But there wasn't a sense that anything that, that hurt your feelings or any emotional injury would be debilitating and you would live with it for life and that you needed now a therapy or a pill to handle your life. That there wasn't the sense of. And I think that the general resilience culture of knock it off, shake it off, you know, you'll live. Those things we used to say, sticks and stones may break my bones, those kinds of

things. They did communicate a message of you're going to be fine. And in general, most kids are, but does it feel bad? Does it feel bad? You know, in hindsight that our feelings weren't always supported? Sure. But the question is, is that, are we way exaggerating the injury and exaggerating just how many times we need to be there to support and affirm and accommodate our kids. And are we in the process making them weaker? And I think we are. I think we threw out way too much of the 80s childhood. So I think this is to me the most interesting thing that came out of all of these conversations is the distinction between the boundaries and the consequences. In particular, I think everybody we have talked to is in agreement that authoritative parenting

is the appropriate version of this. And where the disagreement seems to come, and I'm curious how you would land on this, is the question of whether you can have boundary setting without consequences. Is it possible to set boundaries without consequences? No, because I don't think you're really setting a boundary at all. What you're doing is you're turning yourself into a slave to the child. And I'll tell you something else. I think that these scripts for parents are terribly unhelpful. The therapeutic scripts.

Say to a child, I'm setting a boundary. Say to a child, I can setting a boundary, say to a child, I can see that your feelings are very bad. They come with consequences. And what the consequence is, is I'm no longer being your parent. I'm no longer being someone, you know, as mom or dad or whatever you call me. I'm now pretending to be a therapist because those are the ultimate authority in this house. I need to ape their expert techniques with my own child. Okay. Now I don't think their techniques are terribly expert. I think they have very unimpressive results, but more importantly, the fact that they're going around giving parents these incredibly artificial scripts

and introducing this real falseness in the parent-child relationship, I think is a negative thing. Where does all of this leave us? First of all, there is no approach to toddler discipline that is perfect. Sorry, there are multiple choices here and you need to choose what works for your family. And like my mom's experience with my brother and me, and my own experience with my two children,

that solution may differ by child. That said, I think there are some important takeaways that everyone I talk to, from Dr. Becky to Dr. Phelan, agrees on. One, the parent is the authority. Dr. Phelan talked about how your home is not a democracy. Dr. Becky talked about setting boundaries by embodying authority. Hal Chaffee made clear that he sets the rules of engagement. At the same time, they all rejected the idea of the parent as the authoritarian dictator.

Even Hal Chaffee was clear. I'm not the dictator. In this way, all these approaches are trying to be a form of authoritative parenting, where the parent is the authority and is firm, but is still warm and loving. Second, consistency. Whatever approach you take, you need to implement it the same every time. Kids need to know what to expect. The final thing that everyone agreed on is that parents should not get angry. And beyond that, that families need an approach to behavior which

they can implement without anger. Don't yell is a shared theme. Don't punish in anger. This not getting angry may be the hardest thing of all to implement, and for me, this is where the rubber meets the road. When I think about the biggest concerns I have with spanking, one of them is what happens when parents do get angry. On the other side of the coin, a common concern I hear from parents about gentle parenting, however they define it, is that it's gentle parent, gentle parent, gentle parent, yell. The time that it takes to use talk to get your child to learn skills can feel like too much. If we rely only on the data, the approach with the best empirical support is the one, two,

three magic style that Dr. Phelan discusses. The approach which is most associated with worsened outcomes is physical discipline. But none of this evidence looks far into the future. Some of it struggles with correlation versus causation. And we have literally nothing empirical which would test a strong boundary setting approach relative to a timeout or consequence-based one. So good luck. Just kidding. In the end, much of this comes down to what approach you can consistently implement with your child without getting mad. That's going to vary across families. It may vary across kids within a family. Promoting a happy and well-functioning home is not one size fits all.

You might have to mix and match. Find an approach or a balance of approaches that feels like it fits your family and that you can do mostly without getting mad. It's about what works for you, not the latest fad. Finally, please don't let this take over your life. I have found in my many years of talking to parents that disciplined approaches can be all-consuming. This is perhaps more true with gentle parenting than other methods. Because gentle parenting approaches typically take much more time, it can feel like all you're doing with your kids is discussing their behavior.

The goal of these systems is to create a calm and happy family where you can prioritize fun and connection when you're together. So don't overthink it. And sometimes, just put in your earplugs. Thanks for listening. Raising Parents is a production in partnership with The Free Press. It was produced by Liz Smith and Sabine Jansen.

Thanks as well to producers Tamar Avishai, Sam Deer, and Kiran Sampath for additional production support. The executive producer is Candace Kahn. Last, thanks to my guests today, Dr. Tom Phelan, Dr. Becky Kennedy, Hal Traffey, and Abigail Schreier. I'm Emily Oster. See you next time on Raising Parents.