By now we have all experienced “modern” parenting in some way, shape or form. Either in the form of parents bribing their children to behave or by having an open-ended conversation with them about what is troubling them. Now, this new manner of child rearing is blasphemous to most men and women raised in a stricter parental environment, and there are questions being raised about the repercussions this “modern” style will have on our society in the future.

There is a monumental difference between disciplining one’s child and abusing one’s child. If a parent has a bad day at work and decides to strike their child for no reason whatsoever, that is abuse. If a parent strikes their child as punishment for disrespectful actions or speech and hopes to dissuade further acts, then that is discipline. This mindset seems to have fallen out of favor as time goes by, and there are obvious consequences for this change in the parental norm.

We’ve all seen the photoshopped images making the rounds of the internet claiming that with more spankings there would be less teenage delinquency. Is this true, or is this a simple assumption? When there were obvious punishments to be found at home, weren’t boys and girls more likely to act in a respectful manner outside of the house? Wasn’t it accepted as gospel truth that, if you acted out of turn and were caught for it, there would be consequences for your actions? When did this practice become unfashionable?

To set the record straight: Any man or woman who abuses or brutalizes their child does not deserve said child and should be punished accordingly. But, if a parent seeks to keep their child from acting like a spoiled brat by giving them a strike to their backside, this is not abuse and they should not be punished for it.

If parents were expected to discipline their children, as they were in the past, chances are we would see less young adults acting in foolish and self destructive ways. With stricter parenting we would see more children taking their studies and academics seriously, and we would be free of seeing young men and women disrespecting their parents in public.

A rhetorical question for the men and women of the previous generation: What would your parents do to you if you mouthed off to them in public, or in private for that matter? Chances are pretty high that they wouldn’t give you a “stern talking to,” and the odds of them trying to negotiate with you or placate you are slim to none.

Answer: You would get smacked you in the face, and you would have deserved it. And you would learn from it because you would associate such physical punishment with the disrespect you dolled out. But now-a-days this would get a parent arrested, because it is so much better for parents to placate and bribe their children rather than teaching them a lesson. Traditional parenting has, sadly, fallen out of style and we, as society, are going to be stuck with the resulting offspring of “modern” parenting.