Whether or not to spank is a huge debate among parents. But for one Indiana, dad, all of the arguments, advice, and extensive research about spanking doesn't mean a thing. Dwayne Stamper of Muncie, a father of five, went viral recently for offering "free ass whoopins" [sic] to parents of young kids.
Stamper posted a photo of himself on Facebook sitting behind a kissing booth-style "*ss whoopin'" stand with a wooden paddle.
"Parents, your kids need a whoopin? Summer can't end fast enough? Stop by, I'm set up!" he wrote. "No kids over 13 … They may whoop me."
Unsurprisingly, the photo went insanely viral. Currently, it has more than 180,000 shares and almost 10,000 likes. But just because it has a ton of shares doesn't mean the reaction to the photo has been a positive one. In fact, it's sparked a major fight among parents.
Some, of course, thought the stand was hilarious.
But it didn't take long for a heated debate to get rolling in the comments.
Stamper has told several media outlets that his spanking stand was inspired by an incident he witnessed and posted about in July.
Stamper saw a 5-year-old in a restaurant who wouldn't stop crying because he didn't get the gum he wanted. Stamper, being the kind of nosy parent we all hate, told the kid's family that they needed to "bust that ass" until the kid stopped crying.
"Parents if you let your child act this way, you're the problem with our snowflake society today!" he wrote in his post. "You don't have to beat your child but you do have to show them others in this world don't wanna hear their crybaby little ass!"
Can you imagine, as a grown adult, if you started crying and someone's response was to hit you until you stopped? We can all say whatever we want about how our parents used to hit us and we turned out "just fine," but I feel like it's hard to prove you're "just fine" when your response to a crying small child is to smack his "crybaby little ass."
Many people took issue with Stamper's back story for the spanking stand, mostly because you never know what a child or a family is going through.
More importantly, although spanking may be a personal choice, mounting scientific evidence shows that it's one we should reconsider. A 2016 meta-analysis of five decades of research on spanking by two experts at the University of Texas showed definitively that it does not have positive outcomes. According to the research, spanking is associated with higher levels of aggression and disobedience, as well as antisocial behavior and an increased risk of mental health issues.
Most importantly, researchers found that spanking and other types of physical abuse don't really differ in the way parents claim that they do. Elizabeth Gershoff, one of the researchers, said in a press release, "We as a society think of spanking and physical abuse as distinct behaviors. Yet our research shows that spanking is linked with the same negative child outcomes as abuse, just to a slightly lesser degree.”
Whether you think this dad's spanking booth is hilarious or heinous, it doesn't make people a "snowflake" to carefully consider the decisions they make as a parent.
