Chapter 8: Spare the Rod
from People's Chosen God by Chad Hayes
Probably more than any other individual, Dr. James Dobson shaped the landscape of parenting for Christian families in the United States from the 1970s to the early 2000s. His first book, Dare to Discipline, was published in 1970 and sold 3.5 million copies. He would go on to write more than 50 other books, which were widely read not only by evangelical families, but also by Catholics and other conservative Americans. His daily radio show reached 220 million listeners in the U.S. and abroad, and while he is no longer affiliated with Focus on the Family, he’s still going strong—I know because my mom still listens to him.
Dobson’s wildly popular book The Strong-Willed Child, which has sold millions of copies, opens with a scene in which his family’s “stubborn twelve-pound dachshund” named Siggie refuses to go to bed. Apparently the two had “been engaged in a power struggle for the past twelve years.” Dobson’s strong-willed dog has decided to remain “seated comfortably on the furry lid of the toilet seat.” Dobson had “seen this defiant mood before, and knew there was only one way to deal with it.” He goes to his closet to retrieve “a small belt” to help him “reason” with the dog.
Dobson returns with the belt and gives Siggie “a firm swat across the rear end.” When Siggie “tried to bite the belt,” he hit the dog again, initiating “the most vicious fight ever staged between man and beast,” but finally Dobson was able to wrangle the dog to bed. It seems Siggie learned his lesson because the next night, “he accepted my command without debate or complaint, and simply trotted toward the family room in perfect submission.”And that is the goal not just for pets, but for children: immediate, unquestioning submission.
In an earlier chapter, I wrote about the story of how God had promised an aging, childless Abraham that his descendants would outnumber the stars. After quite a bit of drama, his 90-year-old wife Sarah finally gave birth to a son named Isaac. This child was crucial to carrying on Abraham’s line and creating “a great nation.” In Genesis 22, God tells Abraham, with a seemingly unnecessary level of specificity, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.” The reader has the advantage of having been told that God is testing Abraham, but Abraham lacked that assurance. Nevertheless, in the very next verse, and without any hint of hesitation, Abraham wakes up early the next morning, chops some firewood, and heads off with Isaac and two servants.
When they arrive at the mountain, Abraham tells the servants to stay with the donkey, and Isaac carries the wood as Abraham leads him to the place of the sacrifice. As they are walking, Isaac says to his father, “The fire and wood are here…but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” Abraham assures him that God will provide a lamb. When they arrive, “Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took his knife to slay his son.”
As a child, I wondered how far God let him get before intervening. But at some point between reaching for his knife and slaying his son, Abraham is interrupted by “the angel of the Lord,” who tells him, “Do not lay a hand on the boy…Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.” Abraham looks up and sees a ram, whose horns have been caught in the brush, and he sacrifices the ram instead of Isaac.
This story was taught to me as a young child. My Sunday School class had coloring pages with Isaac tied up on the altar. I wondered how God, who was unquestionably good, could ask Abraham to do something so traumatizing to him and his son, even if it was only a test. I wondered why an all-knowing God needed so much assurance that Abraham would obey him no matter what. And I wondered if my own father would be willing to sacrifice me, if God told him to. I never asked him because I was afraid of the answer.
To be clear, my dad had nothing to do with this (aside from being part of a religion that taught this story to children). He has never been abusive, and I don’t think he would have said yes, although I do think it would have been difficult for him to answer that question, assuring me that he would never hurt me, while also maintaining the party line that God is good and we should follow all of his commands.
The message I was to take from the story was not that God might tell my dad to kill me, but that I was to be instantly, unquestioningly obedient to God, no matter the cost. Abraham had been told to sacrifice not only a child that he loved, but his entire legacy—which for Abraham, turned out to be quite a big deal. And he obeyed right away, without any pushback.
In the evangelical world, the relationship between a parent (especially a father) and a child is likened to that of God and his followers. There is a positive aspect to that; fathers can be loving and offer protection and provision. At times, the word abba, loosely translated as “daddy,” is used to convey the loving aspect of this relationship. Jesus points to the way that fathers provide for their children as a way to show that God will provide for his followers to an even greater degree.
But there’s a very clear authoritarian side to the relationship as well, as we see clearly in the story of Abraham and Isaac. Unlike their stance on abortion, evangelicals can very easily find support in the Bible for this authoritarian model of parenting. “Honor your father and mother” is the fifth of the Ten Commandments (the Exodus 20 version, at least), and the first commandment that God gives about interpersonal relationships. It even comes with a promise that those who do so will “live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.” This commandment is quoted numerous times throughout the Bible, by Jesus and others. It’s quoted in Ephesians 6, as support for telling children to “obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.” Later in this chapter, incidentally, slaves are told to obey their masters “just as you would obey Christ.”
As Dobson writes in The Strong-Willed Child, “A child learns to yield to the authority of God by first learning to submit…to the leadership of his parents.” Roy Lessin, another Christian author, writes that obedience is to be complete, prompt, and unquestioning so that children’s “hearts will be prepared to obey the Lord in more important areas when they are older.” They “should learn that their parents mean what they say and that they expect obedience the first time they speak” (emphasis original). And because parents are acting in the role of God, “obedience means a right response not only to a parent’s word, but to God’s Word as well.”
Parents are training their children to eventually submit to and obey the God of the universe, so it’s very important to ensure that they learn to obey completely, promptly, and unquestioningly from an early age. “Start children off in the way they should go,” parents are promised in Proverbs 22:6, “and even when they are old they will not turn from it.” (I can think of at least a couple counterexamples.)
Because the focus of parenting is on submission and obedience, a strong emphasis is placed on discipline. The book of Proverbs has a lot to say about discipline. “Discipline your children,” parents are told, “and they will give you peace; they will bring you the delights you desire.” (Proverbs 29:17) It’s worth noting here that the benefit of this discipline accrues to the parents, not the child. The word “discipline” could be interpreted broadly as including any method of shaping behavior, but it is almost exclusively used in reference to punishment. And a common punishment recommended by Dobson and other Christian parenting “experts” for decades has been spanking.
There are a few Bible passages that are commonly used to justify spanking. The most familiar is probably Proverbs 13:24: “Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.” Some have attempted to smooth this over by suggesting that the word “rod” refers to a shepherd’s staff, used to gently guide their sheep, but they have difficulty explaining Proverbs 23:13: “Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you strike him with a rod, he will not die.” It seems clear to me that a literal reading of these passages condones beating a child with a stick, hard enough that there’s at least some concern about death.
Roy Lessin wrote a book in 1979 called Spanking: Why, When, How? in which he…well…explains why, when, and how he believes parents should spank their children. Lessin’s popularity didn’t come close to rivaling Dobson’s, but the book caught my eye at the used bookstore because the title on the spine reads simply, “SPANKING.” His view, he would have his readers believe, is firmly based on Biblical teachings. Lessin explains that the word translated “strike” in the verse above means “to hit with a rod, to give a spanking.” He advises parents to use “a flexible branch or twig or stick” (emphasis original). He explains that “God has instructed parents to spank with a stick because in His wisdom He knows this is the most effective way to provide the loving correction children need.”
Also, apparently in his wisdom, the Lord “has given parents the perfect area on which to administer a spanking—the child’s bottom.” Lessin writes that “it is a safe place because it is well-cushioned, yet it is a highly sensitive area.” In his view, the “proper position” for a spanking is to have a child bend at the waist over a chair or bed—a position that “reflects an attitude of willingness to receive correction.” The spanking should be “hard enough and long enough to bring a repentant cry, a cry that says, ‘I’m sorry.’” For Lessin, it’s acceptable for a spanking to leave marks, because “these marks are temporary…It is better for children to carry a few temporary marks on the outside than to carry within them areas of disobedience and wrong attitudes.” He notes that children differ widely in how frequently they need to be spanked, but that, “at times a child may need to be spanked several times in a day.”
Dobson similarly advises that spankings “should be administered with a neutral object; that is, with a small switch or belt,” and tells parents that “mild spankings can begin between fifteen and eighteen months of age.” A spanking should hurt, he writes, “or else it will have no influence…However, a small amount of pain for a young child goes a long way; it is certainly not necessary to lash or ‘whip’ him. Two or three stinging strokes on the legs or bottom with a switch are usually sufficient to emphasize the point, ‘You must obey me.’”
After allowing the child to cry for “a reasonably short amount of time,” parents are advised to hold the child and reassure them of their love. This “period of reconciliation,” Lessin writes, “provides a special time of love and intimacy…between a parent and a child.” And as any trauma survivor knows, it’s also a key part of the cycle of abuse.
Consistent with their tradition of taking the Bible exactly as literally as they want to, both men conveniently ignore Deuteronomy 21:18-21, in which God commands parents of a “stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother,” to bring him to the elders so that “all the men of his town” can “stone him to death.” And it isn’t just the Old Testament. Paul affirms in Romans 1:29-32 “God’s righteous decree” that children who disobey their parents “deserve death.” To be clear, I’m not advocating stoning rebellious children to death; I’m just shining a light on the fact that they only take the Bible literally when it suits them.
While many of his secular contemporary parenting experts, if they recommended spanking at all, advise that it be used only when nothing else has worked, Lessin presents spanking not only as permissible, but necessary. It is, after all, divinely inspired: “Spanking is God’s idea. He is the one that has commanded parents to spank their children as an expression of love. Spanking is not optional.” For those that struggle to see hitting a child as “an expression of love,” he offers this bit of wisdom: “Another hindrance to discipline comes from a misunderstanding of the meaning of love. Some parents will say, ‘I love my children too much to spank them.’ On the surface this may sound good, but it falls far short of the kind of love God wants parents to show their children.” The kind of love, apparently, that involves physical violence.
Dobson similarly views spanking as a necessary tool for parents. He criticizes his peers that “recommend corporal punishment…only when all else has failed,” saying that he “couldn’t disagree more.” Spanking, in his view, should be used “in response to willful defiance, whenever it occurs. Period!” Referring to children in the 9 to 12-year-old age range, he writes that “some strong-willed children absolutely demand to be spanked,” and recommends that when they do, “their wishes should be granted.”
But remember, it isn’t just obedience that is the goal. Lessin writes that the two “specific areas that need correction within a child are the areas of willful disobedience and wrong attitudes.” God does not require “only prompt and complete obedience but joyful obedience that comes from the heart.” He quotes Psalm 100:2, which says, “Serve the Lord with gladness,” clarifying, “This is not a fake or ‘put-on’ outward appearance that a child assumes. Neither is it a happiness based on favorable circumstances, good feelings or getting one’s way…True happiness is the result of a heart choice that delights to obey.” Children should feel free to “express themselves” to their parents, but only so long as they “speak in a pleasant tone of voice, showing the respect and contentment that comes from a right attitude. Because right attitudes are issues of the will and not the emotions, a child can choose to be happy and content.”
Lessin writes that he and his wife were “blessed with a healthy, content baby daughter.” One day his wife went to put her down for her nap, when “suddenly, she let out the most obvious protesting cry which said, ‘I don’t want to go to bed.’” This behavior continued for several days before the couple decided to spank this apparently not-yet-verbal child whenever she would cry at nap time. “In less than a week, her attitude changed, and she went to bed with an agreeable disposition.”
He also tells the story of his son, who had developed a routine of waking up from naps with “a cranky disposition.” He was able to correct this “wrong attitude” by telling his child, “I know you just got up from a nap and you are still a little sleepy, but I don’t want you to be fussy or cranky during this wake-up time.” He found that it “took only a few spankings to see his entire disposition change…He actually learned to choose to be happy.”
This section, which teaches children not to trust their emotions, felt strangely similar to my abusive marriage, in which I was told by my narcissistic ex-wife that “happiness is a choice.” After 13 years of marriage, I had silenced my feelings for so long that when a friend or therapist asked me how something made me feel, I truly had no idea how to answer. This toxic rhetoric sets people up to endure abuse for years, often without even realizing it, while presenting an image to the world around them that everything is perfect. Happiness is not a choice, but abusive people don’t actually care about other people’s happiness; they’re perfectly content with the appearance of it.
Dobson, too, advises using spankings to control a child’s attitude. He writes that “most of the favorable attitudes that should be taught are actually extrapolations of the Judeo-Christian ethic, including honesty, respect, kindness, love, human dignity, obedience, responsibility, reverence, etc.” (No, James, you don’t get to just claim all those. Also, several of them aren’t attitudes.) For parents of 4 to 8-year-olds, he provides a handy attitude chart. It’s a grid with 6 rows, labelled “My Attitude…” and then “Toward Mother,” “Toward Dad,” “Toward Sister,” “Toward Friends,” “Toward Work,” and “At Bedtime.” It has five columns, labelled across the top, “1 Excellent,” “2 Good,” “3 Okay,” “4 Bad,” and “5 Terrible.” The parent is to rank these attitudes each day and add up the points. With a score of 6-9 points, “The family will do something fun together.” With 10-18, “Nothing happens, good or bad.” 19-20, “I have to stay in my room for one hour.” 21-22, “I get one swat with belt.” And for those days with 23 or more points, “I get two swats with belt.” It reminds me of a t-shirt I saw that had a picture of a skull and crossbones, and under it the text, “The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves.” Except the shirt was obviously ironic.
Dobson does acknowledge that many of his peers, mostly child psychologists or pediatricians that aren’t writing specifically for a religious audience, are critical of spanking. In response, he writes, “Nonsense! If your child has ever bumped his arm against a hot stove, you can bet he’ll never deliberately do that again.” He goes on to compare spanking to falling out of a high chair, getting a finger smashed in a door, or getting bit by a dog, apparently missing the seemingly obvious difference that these aren’t examples of pain being inflicted by an adult that a child should trust to keep them safe. And that a parent would (hopefully) never smash a child’s finger in the door because they didn’t seem happy enough when taking out the garbage.
Dobson bemoans that many developments in the field of psychology “blatantly contradict the Judeo-Christian ethic,” writing that “traditions which have been honored for several thousand years are suddenly vilified.” And yet never once in The Strong-Willed Child does he advocate for the biblical, but now vilified, practice of stoning rebellious children to death. Perhaps it’s in the updated version, but somehow I doubt it. It seems more likely that he started with a conclusion, and then built a biblical framework to support it, literally interpreting the pieces that fit, and casting aside those that don’t.
Lessin, for his part, suggests that at least a portion of the opposition to spanking is “Satanic.”
Spanking is not the only form of corporal punishment that Dobson recommends. In the context of dealing with a second grader that won’t go take a bath, he tells parents that “minor pain can provide excellent motivation for the child, when appropriate” and that they should have “some means of making the child want to cooperate, other than simply obeying because he was told to do so. For those who can think of no such device, I will suggest one,” he writes, “There is a muscle, lying snugly against the base of the neck. Anatomy books list it as the trapezius muscle, and when firmly squeezed, it sends little messengers to the brain saying, ‘This hurts; avoid recurrence at all costs.’ The pain is only temporary; it can cause no damage.” Well, no damage to the child at least. He cautions that he doesn’t “recommend that mothers weighing less than ninety pounds try to squeeze the shoulders of their big teen-agers. There are definite risks involved in that procedure.” We wouldn’t want the parent getting hurt, would we?
But this isn’t the only caution provided for parents with regard to corporal punishment. Every time I’ve read an author recommend spanking, they have included a warning about child abuse. Dobson writes that there is no other subject that causes him more stress “than the phenomenon of child abuse which is so prevalent in America today.” Children, he says, are “vulnerable little creatures who need buckets of love and tenderness every day of their lives.” And those that have been abused “suffer physically and emotionally…Many of them are too young to develop defense mechanisms or even call for help….The last thing on earth that I want to do is to provide a rationalization and justification for such parental oppression.” He cautions parents against spanking out of anger, as this can get out of control. Which is absolutely correct, and a great reason to avoid the spectrum of violence altogether.
Lessin echoes Dobson’s warnings about avoiding child abuse, but adds another of his own: “In rejecting even the thought of child abuse, parents must be careful not to reject God’s way of providing loving correction through spanking…The failure to provide loving correction through spanking is also a form of child abuse.” So if a parent doesn’t discipline a child exactly the way that Lessin recommends, it’s abuse. That checks out with the back cover of his book, where the reader is encouraged to read the book and “give yourself the chance to hear God’s viewpoint about the matter.” The audacity of white evangelical men writing books proclaiming to be God’s revealed truth will never stop amazing me.
Both authors emphasize the importance of spanking privately, in a dressing room or your car if out in public. They say that this is to protect the child (that the parent is hitting) emotionally. But it also has the convenient effect of warding off reports of abuse to authorities.
As a pediatrician, I’ve advised a lot of parents about how to handle behavioral problems in children, and I’m familiar with the recommendations of professional societies that represent pediatricians, psychiatrists, and child psychologists. There is not a single one that condones spanking. In 2018, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a policy statement that strongly recommends against any form of corporal punishment because, while it may be effective in achieving compliance in the short term, it is not an effective long-term discipline strategy, and it causes significant harm. The American Psychological Association has published a resolution to the same effect. Children whose parents use corporal punishment are more likely to be aggressive and are at increased risk for mental health disorders. Additionally, spanking exists on a spectrum of physical violence, and parents sometimes cause more harm than intended, especially when angry or impaired by substances.
When my first child was born, more than 35 years after the publication of Dare to Discipline, my ex-wife and I attended a parenting class called “Growing Kids God’s Way” at the non-denominational megachurch we attended. The class was led by Gary and Ann Marie Ezzo, who published the popular Baby Wise and Toddler Wise book series and were members of our church. (I just remembered that I swam in their pool at a friend’s birthday party. Beautiful place they had.)
The parenting strategy they promote focuses heavily on control, forcing infants into strict feeding and sleep schedules that, as a pediatrician, I think are harmful for a variety of reasons that are outside the scope of this chapter. I’ll note only that leaving a baby crying in the crib for an extended period of time is justified by likening the situation to Jesus’s crucifixion: “Praise God that the Father did not intervene when His Son cried out on the cross.”
Their teachings on discipline focus heavily on parental control. From the time that babies start eating solid food, they are taught to sit in the highchair with their hands folded to keep them out of their food and avoid making a mess. They advocate for corporal punishment in the form of squeezing or swatting a child’s hand from a relatively early age. They distinguish “swatting” from “spanking,” which is to be done with a flexible object like a plastic ruler, and not until around 18 months. And they promoted a practice called blanket training.
Blanket training, popularized by the Duggar family of television, incest, and child pornography fame, involves placing a baby on a blanket and teaching them to stay there—by hitting them with a ruler or similar object if any body part crosses the edge of the blanket. Some parents even go so far as to place a baby’s favorite toys just off of the blanket to entice them to reach past the edge in order to provide more opportunities for correction. This is done for two reasons: to teach babies absolute obedience, and—once the training is complete—to allow parents to take a break or get things done around the house. You might think a playpen would accomplish that second objective, but we wouldn’t be preparing them to immediately and unquestioningly obey God then, would we?
Focus on the Family, now under the direction of Jim Daly, has softened their approach to spanking over the years, but they still present it as an option. Rather than being the primary strategy to address “willful defiance,” they now advise families that “if your family chooses to discipline through spanking, it needs to be the most infrequently used tool in a comprehensive discipline toolkit.” They advise against it for “highly emotional, volatile and reactive” parents, and write that it should never be “the ‘go-to’ discipline,” “done out of anger,” “used during the height of emotion,” or “with a closed fist or a strike to the face or genitals.” That last one was suspiciously specific.
Aside from appeals to the Bible, those who defend corporal punishment have little support other than the argument that they were spanked as children and turned out just fine. I’d argue that they didn’t; while they may be otherwise good people, they are people that think parents hitting their kids is ok. Like other forms of abuse, including the toxic theology of white evangelicalism, beliefs about corporal punishment are transmitted generationally.
Over the past 20 years, rates of corporal punishment in the United States have been declining. As our society has evolved to view corporal punishment less favorably—a process that has been the result of secular forces rather than religious ones—evangelical views on spanking based on the immutable, timeless Word of God have evolved as well, just more slowly and not to the same degree. I am not aware of any current non-religious groups that recommend spanking. The reason why evangelical Christians have supported spanking historically and currently, to a lesser degree, lies in their theology—one that demands immediate, unquestioning obedience to God, even to the point of being willing to sacrifice one’s own child.
Spanking a child is not an expression of love. Spanking is an expression of violence. I would argue that most of the disciplinary techniques recommended by these authors qualify as abuse. And while there is disagreement about where exactly on the spectrum of violence child abuse starts, it is best to avoid it altogether. There are more effective parenting strategies, and it is heartbreaking to me that children live in fear of being intentionally hurt by a person who is supposed to love and protect them. But, as they do with other types of abuse, evangelical teachings create parents that abuse their children. Parents who have an innate instinct to protect their children are told by men like Dobson, claiming to speak for God, that violence towards their children is not only condoned, but commanded. Many parents have said to their children before spanking them, “This hurts me more than it hurts you,” and I wish more of them would recognize this as their conscience, telling them not to hit their children.
The goal of this discipline, not just the corporal punishment they use to achieve it, is also harmful. Children cannot learn to choose to be happy. They can learn to suppress their emotions and put on a front that is acceptable to those around them. This model of parenting bears a strong resemblance to that of narcissistic parents who view their children as extensions of themselves and try to force them into a particular box. But things that get forced into boxes end up crushed. Forcing children into submission stifles creativity and limits exploration. Teaching kids never to question authority sets them up for abuse later in life. Strictly controlling children teaches them to be controlled. Punishing them for not appearing happy enough teaches them that their emotions don’t matter.
The Bible hasn’t changed. Deuteronomy still says that rebellious children should be stoned to death. Proverbs still recommends beating children with a rod. Romans still says children who don’t obey their parents “deserve death.” Once again, we see that evangelical teachings, which were and are presented as absolute truths firmly founded on a clear and literal interpretation of the Bible, have changed over time as society evolves and what was taught before becomes culturally unacceptable. Deuteronomy and Romans get ignored. Proverbs gets reinterpreted. The beliefs precede and determine the justifications used for them.
Readers may get the impression that I disagree with everything James Dobson wrote. That’s understandable but not completely accurate. In fact, I’m going to allow him to close this chapter with one of the rare cases in which we agree, an excerpt from The Strong-Willed Child where he is talking about a young girl whose parents had recently read Dare to Discipline and started spanking her:
The little girl was just bright enough to figure out where they had picked up that new idea. When the mother awoke the next morning, she found her copy of Dare to Discipline floating in the toilet! That darling little girl had done her best to send my writings to the sewer, where they belonged. I suppose that is the strongest editorial comment I’ve received on any of my literature!
This incident with the toddler was not an isolated case. Another child selected my book from an entire shelf of possibilities and threw it in the fireplace. I could easily become paranoid about these hostilities. Dr. Benjamin Spock is loved by millions of children who have grown up under his influence, but I am apparently resented by an entire generation of kids who would like to catch me in a blind alley on some cloudy night.
[Turn the page to Chapter 9: Making Abortion The Thing]
[Link to go back to the beginning and start with Chapter 1: Original Sin]
Thanks for reading! If you value my work, you can support it in several ways:
Following me on twitter: @schadhayes
Subscribing to this newsletter if you haven’t already
Sharing my work on social media or IRL friends and family
Financially supporting my work via a paid substack subscription, Patreon, or a one-time donation.
I never could stand Dobson. I can only imagine the intestinal fortitude it took to write this, Chad, as I feel almost physically sick from reading it. Poor kids.