The big meme on the internet recently – at least on my parentcentric twitter feed – was about a study supposedly demonstrating that spanking leads to a host of mental and behavioural problems. Not an open palm. Not spanking. Not OK. Yahoo ran a story on the study titled “Spanking Linked to Mental Illness, Says Study.” Lots of other news outlets trumpeted the same message; spanking = mental illness. Suddenly everyone on my twitter feed was posting #Idontspankmykidbecause statements. Which is fine, except that the press misrepresented the study's findings. This is how we end up at the autism vaccine situation, people! As Melinda Wenner Moyer pointed out in this Slate.com article , the study that got everyone spanking mad didn’t say what Yahoo said it said. Instead, the study in question asked 34,000 adults about their experiences as children with being pushed, grabbed, shoved, slapped or hit by their parents. There is a long road between light corrective measu...
We tried for one, and we ended up with a bushel of fun.