Editor’s Note: Here on the Kingdom Outpost, we welcome submissions from readers with testimonies and thoughts to share. These may represent a range of views – the editorial team has a range of views on many issues as well.
This essay is a firsthand account of the effects of physical punishment in relation to sexual violence from a man and father who grew up in a conservative Mennonite church. He wanted to share his experience as it relates to how we perceive violence and the nature of God. We welcome comments and responses from readers.
Why spanking children is sexual violence and a violation of God given bodily autonomy
Depending on your own childhood experience, your framework for raising children, or your worldview this title may be quite jarring. It may seem like an over-exaggeration or click bait.
Maybe it causes you to rise up in defense of your parenting choices.
Perhaps it’s extremely triggering because it rings true to your own experience.
Whatever you feel in reading this title, I ask you to give me a chance to tell you a story, my story.
For years, Evangelical Christianity’s parenting paradigm has often been built around some sort of defense of the idea that Biblical parenting includes spanking children. Some communities with this kind of parenting philosophy view spanking as the only kind of discipline that will produce godliness and well trained children. Some spaces have developed an entire system built on spanking as a method of foolproof results, getting creepily detailed in the way a parent should spank, down to the instrument used to spank, how to make it hurt enough, how often to hit and how often to repeat the procedure.
I’m writing this as someone who was raised in those spaces. I am writing to the Christian community because I am part of this community.
I am not writing to develop a hermeneutical argument as to why spanking children as it is done in many conservative Christian spaces is not actually biblical. There has been some really good work done in a couple places by some Christian scholars including Dr. David and Amanda Erickson from Flourishing Homes and Families. They explore the concept of the rod in Scripture, and they provide context and solid biblical exegesis on these often-quoted verses. This is important and needs to be an integral part of the conversation. I will leave that for the biblical scholars to continue to develop and share with the broader Christian community.
I am writing to share my story, my deeply painful story, and my secret experience of spanking as a young child. I’m writing for other little people like me who have a nervous system that cannot handle being hit by a caregiver and are confused and deeply ashamed by the experience.
Trauma loosely defined is anything that overwhelms our nervous system, causing us to be unable to process and getting stuck in our body.
I believe that is what happened to me when I was spanked.
I think now is the time to make something as clear as I can. I had a pretty happy childhood, I felt safe most of the time and had lots of close friends and wonderful experiences. I was a rule follower, didn’t get in trouble that much and genuinely loved my parents and family. If you asked me for happy memories, I could spend a lot of time telling you about those long summer days growing up beside the corn and cows, swimming holes, campfires and straw forts and I would feel the joy that came with those days.
But my parents were firm believers in spanking. They had been spanked. Everyone in our church community believed that spanking was how children were taught obedience. Children were understood to be disobedient by nature and spanking was how authority was established. And so if I acted in a way that was deemed to be worthy of a spanking I was spanked.
Spanking can mean different things to different people. In our community and as I’ve discovered in many conservative spaces (not just Christians) spanking gets closer to beating. It is not a single smack on a clothed bottom, at least in the vast majority of those I knew. It was methodical, hitting with an instrument on a child’s bottom. Often these instruments included wooden spoons, belts, even garden hoses or wooden boards. It was also sometimes done on a child’s bare bottom. It was a series of hard hits that was very painful and at times left marks. This was normal and this was thought to be godly and right discipline. This was what happened to me.
I’m telling my story because I believe spanking is Russian roulette. Many kids I grew up with were spanked this way and seemed to be “fine.” They joked about it, felt they deserved it, and would declare they would spank their kids in the same way so they didn’t become brats.
But for me, there was no blank in the gun. There was a bullet. Spanking completely overwhelmed my nervous system and along with the fear and pain, there came arousal. Especially the times I was spanked on a bare bottom, it was a horrible mixture of shame, pain, fear and sexual arousal. I had no idea as a young child what was happening to me. I was just very confused by my response to it. And this was my first encounter with sexual arousal and violence intertwined in a brutal cocktail of bewildering confusion.
As you can imagine, this would shape my sexuality in some unpleasant ways, creating confusion and setting up neurological pathways of distress wired into my developing and malleable brain. Something created for beauty and closeness becomes shaped by fear and pain.
So from where I sit, spanking is sexual violence. It is the act of striking a child on an erogenous part of their body to purposely cause pain. The buttocks are a sexual part of our body. The spankings that I experienced and thousands of other children experienced were acts of sexual violence. Many kids don’t experience them that way, but I did. I am not alone: many other kids did and do.
People argue that what makes spanking different then abuse is because it is something that is done in love. I would argue from personal experience that “loving spanking” is the most dangerous kind. I knew my parents loved me, but when that love mixed with fear and violence, when it invaded my bodily autonomy in ways my young child’s mind could not understand, it led to my body responding in the way it did.
My bodily autonomy was being invaded, and my mind and body became overwhelmed and attempted to process the pain and fear every time I got spanked. I learned to follow rules, I learned how to please people, but I suffered in silence wondering why I was a freak. Nobody else that I knew of was aroused by being spanked.
I begged God to take it away, to make me forget it, but once trauma has rewritten pathways in your brain, the trauma teaches you how to shut down, to learn new ways of going numb.
Christian parents, I appeal to you, don’t spank your children. It’s Russian roulette. Little humans are attempting to process their world, and are super trusting and loving. Don’t snuff that out by following a kind of parenting that is cold, calculated and demands you turn off a part of your natural nurturing heart put there by God. There is enough trauma in this world…please don’t give them more.
The way of Jesus is one of turning the other cheek, of choosing love over power, of compassion and healing.
So let’s stop spanking our kids. Jesus already overcame violence when he allowed others to beat and kill him. He showed us that true humanity rises above violence and that all people are worthy of love.
Spanking is violent and invasive. It teaches children that they are not in control of their bodies, that adults have the right to cause them pain and don’t need consent to violate their bodily autonomy. We are embodied creatures, bodies and souls woven together by a good God. Our bodies matter to God, the way we experience the world happens in our bodies as much as in our soul. We are all image bearers, children included. Spanking tells children a different tale. You matter less, your feelings, your body matters less. The pain I am causing you is love, different, painful, fear inducing, but love. And when the body responds to the trauma of those messages the way mine did, it sets the stage for the kind of disconnect that became my reality. It was a reality that to escape the pain and seeming betrayal of a spanking, my body found ways to cope that I will wrestle with for the rest of my life. I learned how to shut off my feelings. I would do anything I could to avoid pain, and in doing so I became disembodied – my body and spirit, the seat of my emotions, were separated.
Maybe as we come home to our bodies, we can come home to our kids. We can with love and compassion see God’s kingdom, gentle and kind, revealed on earth.
A woman I knew, now dead, was beaten every day by her father. He beat her the day her mother died. He beat her when she got polio, and every other day.
Two, possibly three results, one sexual.
She dissociated so successfully she gor dissociative identity disorder. “I get mail addressed to other people,” is the way she put it.
Serious drug and alcohol addiction and self-cutting.
And, as a tiny little girl, she sexualized herself prematurely via masturbation to eradicate the pain. Sex was one of the only things that got her back into her skin.
It definitely was sexual abuse.
Thank you for your witness.
Thank you for this thoughtful, honest writing. I too was raised with spanking by Christian parents. It didn’t affect me in quite the same way, but it enacted a theology of sin and shame that has been hard to overcome. Also, a few times it was especially unjust–a slap across the face with a hairbrush, spanks with a ruler that left cuts on my legs. I am sorry to say that I also spanked my own children. But my son is father to my only grandchild, who has never been hit (or insulted) by parents or other caregivers, and who is a caring, tenderhearted young person with no “behavior issues.” I am grateful for my son’s ethic of parenting, and yours.
“Stop spanking” has reasons and traumatic experience behind the two-word term. Since it necessarily means scissoring out parts of what Jesus calls “the word of God,” it’s obviously a humanistic “quick-fix” attempt.
When the purpose of Spanking, and its method, are incorporated along with the parents’ seeking God to guide regarding each individual child’s created needs, there will be God’s blessing even when parents make mistakes and confess them to their little ones. In preparing to spank ours for acts of defiance, we reviewed together what they knew (if they indeed knew it), what they then had instead done, asked them if they understood that God disciplines us all and calls for corrective measures. Sometimes God leads to instill correction by another means, sometimes not. Then we hug and pray together. Then we spank. Then we hug again while the tears fall, and often pray again. Bare butt when they’re young, with underpants when older, since humiliation is NEVER sought, only associating pain with their sense of guilt and God’s healing with forgiveness accomplished.
Um. This might explain a few things.
So, my parents spanked us (me and my little sister). I was like the author here – the rule follower. My sister was a little more of a rebel. 🙂 But we were basically good kids. Still, we got spanked. My mother was raised cons. Mennonite. My dad was not raised in a religious family, but got saved as a teen, went to college, and became a Wesleyan pastor the year I was born. Both believed in spanking. That was what you did. I remember a few instances at a young age, but I don’t have super clear memories of my childhood – just flashes and impressions and some incidents (not all related to spanking, thankfully!) which stand out.
I remember being around 4 and getting pulled into the bathroom (me crying and resisting) by my dad for a spanking because I had disobeyed him and gone outside when he had told me to brush my teeth and get ready for bed. I remember being told as an older child or teen about one time when I was still in diapers, pre-verbal, maybe age 1-2, being spanked (a few swats through my diaper) because I wouldn’t stop crying in my crib and go to sleep. Apparently, I cried only a bit more and then went to sleep. The impression I got was that my dad was happy to have figured out how to “train” me that I was to go to sleep when I was put in my crib, and not fuss. I remember him repeating more than once something he heard from a radio preacher: “Don’t spank them til they’re mad! Spank them til they’re glad – that you’ve stopped!” He didn’t really follow this prescription, thankfully, but he thought it was a clever turn of phrase.
When we were older, the instrument of choice was a paddle, traced out from a ping pong paddle and cut from half or three-quarter inch plywood. It was kept on top of the fridge. I remember my mom using it on us once because we kept jumping on our beds. I remember being told as I got older and bigger that if my dad thought I needed a spanking, I was to willingly lay down on the bed or couch and take my punishment. The one time he actually tried that, I must have been around 12, and I remember treating it like a joke and laughing/giggling and kind of swatting at his hands until he gave up and left the room, and that was the last time he ever tried.
I remember when my parents decided that the paddle was no longer needed and it was put into the woodstove in a celebratory fashion. All this probably makes my parents sound like monsters. They weren’t. They were just doing what they thought was right, because they were concerned for our eternal souls (in my dad’s case, absolutely petrified we might go to hell if we weren’t raised right). But yes, the trauma, confusion, emotional disconnection, everything. Yes, I can relate to that, most definitely.
I’m not the only one, but I don’t enjoy it at all. Every time I read about another person or talk to another person who has experienced it, I wish it had never happened to them. And since I have no control over it, I wish it wouldn’t happen to anyone else. Because for the victim, for the child, it is a real horror: when he feels touched in intimate places, and his loved ones tell him that it is a punishment. When, even worse, he feels unwanted sexual arousal – then he will not admit it for any treasures. Because how? After all, such a child does not even understand what he is experiencing. It’s different for a teenager – he/she already knows, understands what is happening to his body – but everyone around says that such touching is normal. They are silent about the sexual aspects. How does such a young person feel? This pain cannot be put into words.
I wrote the book “Eleventh. Do not touch”, it was published in my country – Poland. My goal was the same as yours – to protect other children from this horror. You wrote it all exactly how I feel and I’m so damn sorry you experienced it.
I am wondering if there is any evidence of sexual stimulation for the one administering the spanking. Most of the spanking done in my Christian school when I was there was administered by a man later convicted and imprisoned as a pedophile.
Hi Anna! One evidence for this is that CSAM (child sexual abuse materials) often depict violent acts against children such as spanking. I came across a news article about a school administrator/pastor in Canada who possessed such materials and who was actively disciplining children.
I believe that this is one element of child abuse that really needs to be addressed and brought to light.
Blessings,
Rebekah
Yes Anna – I know there are pedophiles who are turned on by spanking kids. At my Christian elementary school, they did paddle and whip kids, but they had a rule that the child’s underwear could not be pulled down or taken off. So our Principal made us take off all our clothes except underwear to whip us with a strap. Sure enough, years later several former students filed a complaint that he took off their underwear and whipped them naked. A few of the girls also accused him of whipping their bare genitals. He was found guilty and sentenced to prison. There is no doubt in my mind that he looked for reasons to spank kids and to take spanking as far as it could go. So horrifying; I’m sure there were other victims who were too scared of him to speak up.
The comment left by Donald says essentially what I would like to say as far as what loving discipline (including physcial punishment) should look like. I will not get into the “spank/don’t spank” debate, but suggest seeing Tedd Tripp’s “Shepherding a Child’s Heart” and Paul David Tripp’s book “Parenting” for more in-depth study on this.
As far as my own comments on this article, I am a bit disappointed in Kingdom Outpost. This was my first exposure to this media outlet and the first blog post I read, and I was disappointed. Not because of the story shared, but because the whole basis for this man’s claims and doctrines on discipline have come from human experience/emotion and not the Word of God. Nowhere in his article does the author site Scripture for his claims on discipline. If Kingdom Outpost is seeking to be Biblical and bring the Kingdom, it will not happen through humanistic claims, but solely on the truth of the Word of God. We can share our human experiences and learn from them, yes, but there are people who will read this post, get caught up in the emotion of it, and build their theology on a human experience, rather than Scripture. God’s love and mercy is equally married to His justice and truth. Hebrews chapter 12 speaks multiple times about how the children of God are “chastened”. Verse 6, “For whom the Lord loveth he chastens…” Does this means He does not love them? Of course not! A theology that severs God’s justice from His mercy, or His truth from His love, is not a safe theology. Dear friends, regardless of what I or the author of this article believes or tells you of ourselves, GET INTO THE WORD OF GOD!
Kingdom Outpost, we need the truth of God’s word to bring the Kingdom, not fallen man’s personal notions.
Dear sister,
Thank you for your comment. This post was a follow-up testimony from previous articles about sexual immorality and lust, a battle against which churches have failed in so many ways to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered.
https://kingdomoutpost.org/lust-love-and-the-doctrine-of-the-two-kingdoms/
https://kingdomoutpost.org/sexual-abuse-jesus-kingdom-interview-with-hope-ann-dueck/
It is simple: Child Sexual Abuse Materials (child pornography as it is commonly called) are an affront to God and yet is increasingly prevalent in this day and age. Many of these materials do not contain acts that we think of as sexual, but that depict children being beaten and bruised especially in private areas (https://www.justice.gov/usao-ak/pr/anchorage-man-sentenced-possession-child-pornography) .
“When contacted by law enforcement, he was in possession of dozens of images and videos showing the sexual exploitation of minors, including videos that showed toddler-aged children being abused. The defendant also possessed a collection of non-pornographic images of children being spanked, some of whom had been abused to the point that their buttocks were bruised and injured” (see article above).
We believe that in keeping with the warnings against sexual immorality, uncleanness, and perversion taught throughout the Scripture, Christians today should be warned about how specific discipline practices are pornographic in nature, affecting both the conscience of the developing child and also gratifying sinful lusts on the part of adults. “Christian discipline” as currently taught allows for many loopholes for sexual abuse.
The Biblical teachings behind this is clear:
1) Causing a child to be tempted and stumble will incur the wrath of God.
“If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. (Matthew 18:6)
2) Taking advantage of another person for one’s sexual gratification will incur the punishment of the Lord.
It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control your own body[a] in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the pagans, who do not know God; and that in this matter no one should wrong or take advantage of a brother or sister. The Lord will punish all those who commit such sins, as we told you and warned you before. (1 Thessalonians 4:6)
3) The training and admonition of the Lord (Ephesians 6:4) will never reflect sexual immorality and content such as depicted in pornography.
Did you know that “spare the rod and spoil the child” is not from Scripture but from a 17th century poem about a man and woman committing an affair and engaging in perverse acts? (https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4937/pg4937-images.html)
In 1 Corinthians 5:1, Paul admonishes the Corinthians church for allowing “sexual immorality as is not even named among the Gentiles”. It is my hope that the church recognizes that we have enabled abusers to commit acts of sexual immorality and perversion in the name of “godly discipline”, to gratify sinful passions and not in according to Christ-like training and discipleship. There are historical studies on the discipline described in Scripture, such as the “rod for the back of fools” (Proverbs 26:3), that refer to judicial flogging and does not prescribe how Christian parents should practice godly discipline. It is quite clear that you should not be disciplining children with 39 lashes (Deuteronomy 25:3) or beating them on the back with rods (Proverbs 26:3).
I hope this Scriptural clarification helps.
– Rebekah, Editor
Thank you for the follow-up and I understand the context better now. Though I do believe that physical discipline is Biblical and can be administered in such a way as to not elicit sexuality or abuse.
As one last comment, I would like to respond to this: “Did you know that ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’ is not from Scripture but from a 17th century poem about a man and woman committing an affair and engaging in perverse acts?”
While that exact phrase may not be Scripture, it is a Scriptural concept. Proverbs 13:24 says “He who withholds his rod hates his son,
But he who loves him disciplines him diligently.” (And God would not condone abuse, so I do not believe this to refer to beatings.) Thank you for calling out abuse, which is always always wrong!, I just don’t want to see people making a “fall in the other ditch” doctrine when Scripture has solid teaching on this topic. So again, get in the Word ya’ll and let’s redeem parenting and child training/discipline through following the Lord, instead of the world or our own fallen nature.
My spankings certainly did have sexual overtones. My parents used a belt starting at about age 3, and then upgraded to a leather whip a couple of years later. We were always whipped naked if we were home. And my dad was not careful about avoiding my vulva – I still have marks there years later. Luckily the spanking stopped after we got to the teenage years, but my emotional wounds have not healed. If you must spank, only do it for major disobedience. Let them leave at least their underpants on. Use your hand, and only spank on their bottoms.
I could have been the author in this post as well. My step father believed in spanking me. He did not spank his biological child. My mother didn’t intervene. It was bad. Early on a rod was used and a belt or hand, but always bare bottom even as an adolescent (ie teen). When I learned that the body can respond this way it opened up a whole new layer of trauma to address. From this experience I have ctpsd from the trauma including the religious trauma. I do not believe in spanking or hitting at all. I’m sorry for anyone who has experienced the same.