The headline read “Spanking Kids Increases Risk of Sexual Problems as Adults,” which to me seemed more like a shocking! horrific! headline straight from a Geraldo episode than actual, scientific and accurate research. But it was research, research done by Murray Straus, the co-director of the Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire. According to Mr. Murray spanking has some potentially serious side effects for sexual adults.

Straus says that spankee’s (those who get spanked by spankers) are more likely to verbally and physically coerce a dating partner to have sex. They are also more likely to engage in risky sex, for example premarital sex without a condom, and they are more likely to enjoy masochistic sex, like being aroused by a good slap on the ass while they’re doing it.

Here’s what I think. I think I hate these types of studies. They’re silly. I was spanked as a child. It feels like a dirty confession these days. To actually say yes, my parents took their hand and flailed it against my young, round bum seems so wrong. Even though then, and now, a lot of people think its right. I’m not a fan of punitive spanking. I don’t think it’s because I got spanked, I actually like sexual spanking, but it’s because I would have rather had my parents try to communicate, as in talk with me, instead of raising their hand. I don’t blame my parents. They were young. I was difficult.

Still, I won’t spank my children. What’s the point? If it’s not for sexual enjoyment, it’s not cool. But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t discipline them other ways. And even if I didn’t spank, I wouldn’t tell a parent to stop because of how it might affect their child’s sex life when they’re older. I’d tell them to stop because, like I already said, what’s the point of a spanking if it’s not sexual?

Whether or not you spank, I’m not going to blame spanking for violence in relationships. No, violence in relationships happens for a lot of different reasons, like it’s the only way we (think we) learn how to effectively communicate. That’s because moms and dad teach children that talking by yelling is the only way to get your point across. Yes, problems occur because of the “good” stuff that so many families do to each other.

And don’t ask me to say that young people who get spanked are more likely to have unprotected sex, when we aren’t teaching children how to have safer sex in most of our school districts. You think kids don’t have safe sex because they were spanked or because they never learned how to effectively use a condom?

So yeah, the one thing I agree with in the article, published in Science Daily, is that there is no reason to use spanking as corporal punishment. When my parents did it to me, I used to tell them that it didn’t hurt, even if it did, because this wasn’t, in my opinion, a fair way to work things out. I got spanked enough, but I didn’t grow up a spanking junkie because of them. I think what we like is something we learn, or something that’s inbred in us from before our parents raised their first hand to our ass, and it has less to do with the spank than it does with our genes. I mean, I know a pie guy who loves to smother pies on the human body, to him its sex, but it wasn’t because his mother fed him pie all the time. It was because when he first saw a pie on TV, it turned him on. The connection was there before he knew why. And that’s what I think happens a lot with sexual imagery and sexual fetishes. Some things are a result of our nurture, and some of nature, but no matter what, Mr. Straus, don’t blame spanking for all of our sins.

Link to article