In this candid discussion, Malcolm and Simone Collins share their unconventional parenting approach, which includes a form of physical correction they call "bopping." Despite the controversy surrounding their methods, the couple argues that their approach is rooted in cultural practices and evolutionary psychology. They discuss the differences between abuse and discipline, the importance of setting boundaries, and why they believe their methods are ultimately in the best interest of their children.
Malcolm and Simone also delve into the challenges of parenting in the modern world, the limitations of existing research on corporal punishment, and the potential consequences of relying solely on emotional punishment. While they acknowledge that their approach may not be suitable for every child or family, they stand firm in their belief that parents should have the right to raise their children in accordance with their cultural values.'
[00:00:00] We can't do it, man! That's discipline!
We don't believe in rules like we gave them up when we started living like freaky beatniks. . Yeah, you've got to help us, Doc. We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas.
Most, perhaps all, the blame rests with the parents. Have you ever tried simply turning off the TV, sitting down with your children, and hitting them?
lost your god damn mind! I guess I just hate to see a child go unbeaten.
Malcolm Collins: now I need to talk for a few minutes about why I find the research so distrustworthy in this space.
One, you're proceeding into the research from a prior that this is a human rights abuse. Whenever anyone says every expert in a field agrees on something, I pretty much immediately dismiss it.
Because I'm like, that just doesn't happen in science when science is
Simone Collins: happening correctly. There is always nuance in finding what's happening
Malcolm Collins: correctly If you look [00:01:00] at what the research is saying, it's this has a massive IQ effect. This has a massive effect on aggression.
These people become antisocial and aren't able to They hate their parents, et cetera. If these things were true at the levels that they're saying these things are true. Every single long lived culture on Earth would not have convergently evolved this method of interacting with children during this developmental stage.
What is really negative and what we are against is. Is any form of punishment where the pain is the point of the punishment? what happens during a bop? It is a light slap on the child's nose or face that is meant to shock and redirect and refocus attention. The reason we do the face is because It requires much less pain to get the same reaction than doing something like slapping the wrist.
Don't really do this for four year olds and up with our kids two to four range, because with my [00:02:00] four year old, I can say this could kill you and he can begin to cognitively understand that.
Two to four, you don't really get that. And so when you need to denote, no, this is an extra level of don't do this when compared to other things I have told you not to do the only way to denote that other than physicality. Is by emotionally elevating the conversation. And I think that causes more emotional damage
if you read the article, it says exactly what happened in the context. He was about to push over a table I did the bop to reorient him because he knew he wasn't supposed to be doing that, but then I immediately tell him I love him. Now, this isn't something I can do if I'm punishing him through the emotional means. Exactly. If I had elevated the conversation emotionally, now I need to say daddy's mad at you, instead of saying, bop, you crossed a line, but daddy loves you,
and this is the problem, right? So the urban monoculture would say to us, what you're doing is culturally non normative, stop it.
And I'm like, I have seen the [00:03:00] results of your normative parenting style. These kids are Miserable, anxiety, depression, illiterate messes .
when you look at the ban the rate of corporal punishment in the United States. It pretty much directly correlates with the rise in depression among youth and the rise of anxiety among youth.
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Malcolm Collins: We no longer spank our children's butts because now we can spank their brains.
Would you like to know more?
Simone Collins: So how do we feel being the new public face of child abuse?
Malcolm Collins: Yes, we have gone viral yet again for punishing our child in front of a reporter in a way that she interpreted as a form of corporal [00:04:00] punishment and would technically be a form of corporal punishment. Now this gets really interesting because the internet went completely apoplectic when they heard that this happened.
They Could not believe that in the modern age, anyone would touch their child. They're like anyone who practices any form of corporal replenishment is basically an animal and inhuman. And I'm like, that is a little concerning of a thing to say, because, according to a 2011 study by Gorshoff 89 percent of black parents practice corporal punishment, and 80 percent of Hispanic parents practice corporal punishment and then they're like oh obviously I need to add some caveats to what I said there.
No, actually what happened, this is one of my favorite instances of media baiting. We're being attacked by all these progressives online. And one of them immediately shoots back this just proves my point. Blacks have more violent communities than whites. There's a lot of
Simone Collins: back, backpedaling in that.
Malcolm Collins: [00:05:00] One of the sharks got wounded during a freeding fencing, and then all the other sharks turned on it, because now there's shark blood in the water. Then it was whoa. Yeah. Whoa. But this is true. And it's something that. It's downstream of why we actually do this, because a lot of people are going to be like, haven't you seen the research on corporal punishment?
Why did you engage in corporal punishment knowing that so much of the research shows it's so negative?
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: The answer here is a few things. First, I do not believe the research is relevant to the type of corporal punishment that we are enacting with our kids. If you look at the research, it is predominantly looking at delayed, ritualized punishment where the purpose is to inducing pain in the child as a punishment for something negative that the [00:06:00] child had done.
Simone Collins: Yeah. I think when most at least when I think of corporal punishment, I think wait until your father comes home and you spanked or something. Or we
Malcolm Collins: know from animal. So anyone who's just any familiar with dog training, for example, or any form of mammal training delayed negative reinforcement doesn't work.
Like it just causes behavioral problems. This is something we see in any mammal that it's used in. So I shouldn't expect anything different in humans. Yeah, it would be inane. Inane. But then it has led to this problem in the field where there's these two starting assumptions. One is this has been studied for a long time and everyone agrees on it.
Now, this is a problem. Whenever you get a field and somebody said everyone agrees on it, no edge cases, because at that point you have created a dogma within a scientific field. Yeah. And worse, If you look at what's being put out there about who and UNICEF and stuff like that, they're like, this is a human rights [00:07:00] violation.
They view spanking as a human rights violation. And I will put up maps of countries on the screen where any form of spanking or anything like that for kids is considered illegal in these countries. They've been able to convince a number of countries to make this illegal. And I
Simone Collins: think there's also, this is one of those things like with pregnancy and alcohol.
But especially depending on, your genetic makeup or whatever in, in, in Europe, this is more normalized too. It's okay to have a small amount of alcohol while pregnant, but it seems very irresponsible from a research perspective to tell anyone that, because this is one of those issues of extreme moderation that, yes, only a Very small amount is okay.
And frankly, it's safer for people who may not be able to control themselves to just say, never do it. And so people say, just never do it. You're the worst person ever. If you ever have any drink, although now people are starting to loosen on that, even in the [00:08:00] United States. And I think it's very similar with things like corporal punishment, because while, if any study comes out saying that some level of physical intervention, that's not pleasant in immediate response to bad behavior.
Is okay, then you are going to get people who instead of lightly lightly tapping or the
Malcolm Collins: purpose and the mechanism by which the form of correction that we have works with our kids because what is really negative and what we are against is. Is any form of punishment where the pain is the point of the punishment?
And that the pain is seen as proportional. If you are more mad at the parent or the child extra broke a rule that deserves even more pain. Which is really different from what we're doing. We know it is.
Simone Collins: Frankly, we see the boys playing every single morning and the amount of pain they inflict on each other while laughing and smiling the entire time.
It pales in [00:09:00] comparison to essentially the taps or light slaps. That we can call a
Malcolm Collins: bop.
Actually on viewing this, I decided to ask our kid if he felt that it hurt him and here is his response
No. No. Yeah. Yeah. Wee!
It makes sense. When you can text you, Ally's what he feels during a bop Wiz what he feels during regular play with his brother. And I think a lot of people complaining about this are people who have never raised a child or at least never raised a group of boys.
Malcolm Collins: so what happens during a bop? And so I know I need to be clear, like the purpose of it. It is a light slap on the child's nose or face that is meant to shock and [00:10:00] redirect and refocus attention. To something more productive.
So to anyone who's actually been around toddlers, and I know a lot of people haven't, they have this phenomenon where they'll get locked in a mental loop that they can't easily escape. It could be like they're in this mindset where they're just really wanting to push boundaries and you say no, and that doesn't really register with them in the same way it normally would.
Or they're in a mindset where they really want something. And this creates this cognitive loop that can be very difficult for them to escape. And they need to be snapped out of it to refocus and reorient themselves, which is humorous. Even in the moment when a kid's in one of these cognitive loops, you are often leading to less pain within the next 20 minute period for that child by snapping them out of this cognitive loop.
So to be clear,
Simone Collins: we only get physical when we feel like they're, Their safety or someone else's safety is in
Malcolm Collins: danger. When one of these cognitive [00:11:00] loops is putting them in, or others in physical danger, but we'll get to the,
Simone Collins: I was just going to say, back to my point to close it up, tie a bow on it. It feels irresponsible.
And it would seem irresponsible to a peer reviewed journal to a researcher. To say this is okay when you know that someone's going to take that information and they're going to backhand their kid at full strength or they're going to start beating their kid or punching them in the face because they're like, no research supports it.
So I understand why there isn't research that says that this is okay. Because I too would worry about that. And we take abuse really seriously. So the fact that, Malcolm, Do this in front of a journalist and a bunch of people now think, they think, because they're not reading the article, they're not looking at the context, that you have backhanded your kid with the pictures wind up and they flew against the wall and cracked the wall and, it just, she's looking in horror.
Malcolm Collins: Hold on, we should clarify. Why the face? Because this is an interesting point. It's like somebody who's like, why don't you And other people in the comments were sharing this [00:12:00] style of punishment is actually very common. Like it is the ancestrally convergent evolutionary, if you're talking about cultural groups that have been successful, a lot of them do this.
So when they talk about like the way their grandparents would punish them it was a slap on the wrist, basically meant to like, Shock and reorient them and they would often say, I actually appreciated this to other forms of escalation. But when a child is in one of these loops and you need to denote that something is actually, because when you're talking between, we don't really do this for four year olds and up with our kids two to four range, there isn't a way to explain the seriousness of a situation or denote the, because with my four year old, I can say this could kill you and he can begin to cognitively understand that.
Two to four, you don't really get that. And so when you need to denote, no, this is an extra level of don't do this when compared to other things I have told you not to do the only way to denote that [00:13:00] other than physicality. Is by emotionally elevating the conversation. And I think that causes more emotional damage because then it's, daddy is mad at you.
You are being rejected. No, 100 percent
Simone Collins: when our kids, even by mistake. When our kids think that you are, like, actually mad at them or rejecting them in some way, the hysterionics are, like, through the
Malcolm Collins: roof. This is a level of punishment that is far above a bop. This emotional punishment. Which, and people can see, they're like, what do you mean?
If you read the article, it says exactly what happened in the context. He was about to push over a table full of food and drinks and utensils and all that. And he was trying to push it over. He was having fun. It almost felt it came inches from falling over, not inches, but very maybe less than like centimeters millimeters.
And I, Then immediately addressed it. I did the bop to reorient him because he knew he wasn't supposed to be doing that, but then I immediately tell him I love him. Now, this isn't [00:14:00] something I can do if I'm punishing him through the emotional means. Exactly. If I had elevated the conversation emotionally, now I need to say daddy's mad at you, daddy's something else, instead of saying, bop, you crossed a line, but daddy loves you, and then I explain in restaurants we need to be nice.
And so I am giving him the context. Don't push boundaries in this way within this environment. And I don't think that there is a kinder way that I could have elevated that. And I think that this is a really interesting thing that people miss. There was actually, because in Japan it's been made illegal to do this kind of corporal punishment now.
And there was a great recounting on Reddit of this that I wanted to read.
Simone Collins: Really?
Malcolm Collins: Which was I was an exchange student in Japan years ago, and a bunch of Americans and Japanese students were sitting around talking about our childhoods. All the Americans made jokes about the various implements our parents smacked or swiped or spanked us with.
See that doesn't,
Simone Collins: that sounds though delayed punishment. I'm just saying. It
Malcolm Collins: is delayed punishment, but hold on. And they were cracking up about [00:15:00] it while our Japanese friends were horrified. Japanese, our parents would never lay a finger on us like that, indignantly. Americans what did your parents do?
Japanese, mostly they told us they didn't love us, or that we didn't love them, or that we'd ruin their lives and brought shame on our families. Americans! I'd rather be slapped.
I think this is true. This is what you have to resort to when you remove this from the table, because in that 2 to 4 range, you can't really use the consequences of an action to to elevate it, you could really only elevate things emotionally, elevate the emotional stakes. And then you need to ask yourself realistically, do you think that's in the best interest of the child?
So if I go back to that 2011 study, something that, that you need to point out. is even when we talk about the other ethnic groups. Even if we're talking about whites and Asians, which I ignored because, people don't care about those numbers, but 79 percent of white parents practice some form of corporal punishment [00:16:00] and 73 percent of Asian parents, like the safe majority of Americans practice some form of this.
And you can be like if everybody knows this, because everyone is told when they're young, don't do this. Why even I, like I went into parenthood saying, I'm definitely never going to do that.
Simone Collins: Never.
Malcolm Collins: And some parents can get away with not doing it because they have one girl or two kids or something like that.
But most families when they get to four and above kids are like, I was wrong in thinking that it was realistic to raise kids without this. And I think that the reason is, and the thing you immediate really quickly if you engage in it, is all of these negative effects that researchers said it has, don't, I'm not noticing them they're like, oh, it makes the kids hate you, do you notice the kids they don't register it as like a they register it as boundary setting as you pointed out, it's like a Roomba, right?
Simone Collins: Yeah, my whole thing with kids and this is something that we've realized with play behavior. And I think a lot of people have this theory around play behavior that it is, it exists [00:17:00] to help kids learn how to set boundaries with themselves, with others. It shows you where the boundaries are. So when you get too rough, someone starts crying.
Okay. You've learned that you get in a fight, someone gets hurt, you understand where the boundaries are. So you know how to push your own boundaries and you know how to push other people's boundaries and you know when to go too far. And this first came up as a concept that I heard about discussed it.
When people were talking about why do younger generations now constantly appeal to authority whenever something goes wrong? It's because they were never let to play by themselves with other kids and work it out among themselves when they could, could not share a toy or whatever, when they got in a fight.
And so similarly, the way that we look at kids, especially when they're young, growing up, is that they're a lot like a Roomba. Like they're just flying blind bumping into a wall, you hit the wall and then you course correct and go in the right direction. And sometimes because the wall turns out to be a cliff or a stairway, we as parents try to create a fake wall.
And that is where bops show up. And if you don't do that as a [00:18:00] parent. Then in the future, let's say your little Roomba is in a new house and you're no longer there to catch it when it's about to roll off the staircase, they're going to get really hurt. They're going to get really screwed over.
Malcolm Collins: I think something that's really important with this analogy, like when we're talking about how our kids relate to their environments is. I don't think that a parent punishing their kid should ever be like an act of anger or an act of if you're ever doing that. And it's very clear from the article that I like, wasn't angry.
I was just setting a boundary. I do not get, and this is why I really don't want to go the emotional route with creating these boundaries is because the emotional route indicates to my kid that there is some disapproval of them pushing boundaries. Yeah. I want our kids to push boundaries. I liked that he was pushing boundaries.
I like you're like, you punish your kids when you do something that you like. I can tell him, look, I love that you're pushing boundaries. I love that you're [00:19:00] vivacious. But here is where you have hit, the Roomba has hit the wall. Yeah, it's like a
Simone Collins: safe word. It's like a safe word.
Malcolm Collins: And yes, and kids, you can tell very easily from my interaction with my kids, they understand this.
The punishment is not an act of rejection, it is an act of You've hit the wall here. You need to course correct. This isn't appropriate. Yeah, we were all happy. This was
Simone Collins: all okay. And now I actually mean it when I say no. Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: this is another thing to understand about the Pete. A really great thing to point out in the piece is this same child.
When we say we reserve this for only things that could hurt themselves and others at another point in the piece was running around with poo in his hands. He did not get bopped for that. In another part of the piece, he was running around the restaurant and he only got threat for a bop. When he ran towards the door, because on the other side of the door, there was a street with the table, he only got the bop because knocking over tables or learning that behavior in a house where you have infants can lead to somebody getting seriously injured or dying.[00:20:00]
And so somebody can say and I think that one of the reporters I was talking to today about this, she was really surprised, she was like see, you weren't like angry at him for doing this wrong thing for almost knocking over the table. And I was like, no, it's probably the first time he realized that he could knock over a table and he's like exploring his environment, huh?
What happens when I knock over tables? My dad said, no. But sometimes, he says, no, and I do it anyways. And there isn't some extreme repercussion to that. So let's try it, and somebody can be like never say no with your kid, unless you mean it. That's absurd. But there is
Simone Collins: a literal like movement among some parents to not use the word no, which I think also shows how far in the extreme, in the other direction we've gone.
Malcolm Collins: And I think that and I'll put the article about this on the screen that you're talking about because we have seen this we've entered an environment where what happened was, and I think accurately is research pointed out that delayed ritualized corporal punishment was had negative effects.
Researchers in the space began to categorize this as a human rights [00:21:00] abuse, so you really couldn't be on the other side of the issue anymore. And , it caused sort of a virtue spiral in the space, where now you have parents saying you should never say no to your kids. Because, When you take this angle of punishing my kids is bad, like any form of punishing my kids is, that puts them in a negative emotional state or that shocks them in the way that we do when we're punishing our kids and I don't know if I got to this, but the reason we do the face is because It requires much less pain to get the same reaction than doing something like slapping the wrist.
If you are slapping the wrist and I want the same level of attention refocusing as the face or the nose I actually need to hurt them to get their attention. And I don't want the pain to be the point of this action. It is the shock that is the point of this action, which helps reorient them, which the face does.
And if you look at animal training models, like dogs or something, you bought the dog on the nose. That is the consistent way of doing it. And animals, when we [00:22:00] first came to this model, one of the things we always note is we were on a safari and anyone who's ever been on a safari, you're sitting in a truck watching animals all day, like without music or anything like that, just getting to think and talk.
And as we were watching. Lions play with their cubs for a five hour period. And so we got to really study the play behavior. And we noticed this pattern where the baby cub would paw at the lion or do something, and the lion would growl or be a little angry. We're doing that when we're saying no, don't do that, right?
But the baby cub would keep doing it and then it would get to the point where the lion would just, swat the baby's cub face and the baby cub would look a little annoyed at a bit and then walk off. It understood this action as different from other types of punishment.
I should note here that 10 people have been like, well, the lion has its claws retracted and you clearly injured your kid because the reporter said she could hear it on the recording. And it's like, look, the reporter has to sell the piece. Okay.
She also mentioned that the kid was back [00:23:00] to laughing and watching his iPad within 30 seconds. And when I asked the kid the next day, does daddy ever hurt him or do Bob's hurt? He doesn't appear to think they do.
And even if you read the piece, honestly, it's pretty obvious the child was done injured.
Malcolm Collins: The reaction we've seen in our kids, like when reporters are over, one of the things they often comment on is how unusually well behaved our kids are.
And other people have commented on this as well. I genuinely think because I was not at well.
Simone Collins: Okay. Not well behaved. polite and kind. They say, please, thank you. It's nice to meet you. They're gregarious, but they're not. And sometimes I wish they would be, but I also don't want them to be from a raising humans, but from a mother, like not having to deal with things perspective.
They're not the kids who like line up behind their parents in airports and are quiet and compliant. And no, our kids are very rambunctious. But they're very polite, very caring,
Malcolm Collins: very polite and kind, like whatever it is, it seems to be working with within the boundaries we're setting for [00:24:00] them. And that is being a polite and kind and thoughtful person.
And then the danger with a system like this is you teach them that violence. Resolves conflict. And so what's really heartening to me is I see my kids when they quote unquote, bop each other, right? Because they're developing this behavior pattern and they're like, okay, this is how I tell someone that they've, crossed a boundary with me.
And what they do is they just tap the other person on the head like this. And so it's clear that in their mind, what is happening to them is not designed to be painful. It's about touching the other person on the head. And so clearly this is in their world perspective, how they're observing
Simone Collins: this,
Malcolm Collins: but now I need to talk for a few minutes about why I find the research so distrustworthy in this space.
One, you're proceeding into the research from a prior that this is a human rights abuse.
Like when they did that research on whether tortured with effective. Did anyone given that torture is categorized as the human rights abuse, By the dominant cultural group in our society. did [00:25:00] anyone really believe they were going to come back with an answer? This like yeah. Torture super effective.
Malcolm Collins: And with huge organizations just saying that it's been done, that the data is sealed, nobody. Talk about this issue anymore without really exploring where the edge cases are. There just isn't that much research into exploring the edge cases here.
Simone Collins: And again, it's so understandable because Abuse is a very serious issue. It is terrible.
Malcolm Collins: It is. It is. But then we have to come to this question where this just gets absolutely insane to me. If you look at what the research is saying, it's this has a massive IQ effect. This has a massive effect on aggression.
These people become antisocial and aren't able to They hate their parents, et cetera. They hate their parents. And then it's if these things were true at the levels that they're saying these things are true. Every single long lived culture on Earth would not have convergently evolved this method of interacting with children during this developmental [00:26:00] stage.
There is not a single, like when I look anthropologically at historic Chinese or Japanese or European or the large successful African groups none of them, have a ban on corporal punishment around kids. All of them engage in some form of corporal punishment around kids.
When I mentioned this, some people were like, well, you know, we used to do bloodletting, but we don't do bloodletting anymore. And I'm like, Okay. If every single human culture on earth had done bloodletting and we were the one culture. That didn't do bloodletting and we had only stopped it like 10 years ago. Yeah, I would probably look into that and be like, there is probably a reason that everyone was doing that. The level of arrogance that goes into this position is almost astonishing to believe that you are the one culture in human history, this nexus of human morality.
That has figured out something that everyone else got wrong to have no humility. When you realize how rare this position is, cross-culturally. Just astonishes [00:27:00] me, but I guess a lot of people, they just, this is a culture I grew up in. Therefore I am at a moral nexus in history and everything we believe now is correct.
And I will not be seen as having been abusive to my kids for not setting physical boundaries with them.
Malcolm Collins: This is why we have this huge problem in the United States where when families are coming into this country, it's like all the immigrant families do this. Immigrants are coming from a lot of different places. All the immigrants do this because everywhere else in the world used to do this before they started listening to these organizations that are like, oh, this is always negative.
Never do anything like this. And What that means is this is a very modern experiment. And throughout this video I'm going to be playing clips because it used to be even 10 years ago, our society broadly thought of the parents who didn't do any form of corporal punishment with their kids like corporal punishment as the selfish and abusive ones, the ones who did not care about the long term outcomes of their kids, whether you're talking about the Simpsons
I'm afraid young Ned is unusually aggressive, but I [00:28:00] can't seem to find a cause for it. ? We can't do it, man! That's discipline!
I'm beginning to see the problem. We don't believe in rules like we gave them up when we started living like freaky beatniks. . Yeah, you've got to help us, Doc. We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas.
Malcolm Collins: or South Park
Hello, I'm Dr. Richard Shea, here to tell you about my exciting new drug free treatment for children with attention deficit disorder. This treatment is fast and effective and doesn't use harmful drugs. Watch closely as I apply treatment to the first child.
Sit down and study! Sit down and study! Hey, stop crying and do your schoolwork! If you would like more information on my bold new treatments, please send away for this free brochure entitled You can [00:29:00] either calm down or I can pop you in the mouth again. Thank you.
Malcolm Collins: or Futurama
Most, perhaps all, the blame rests with the parents. And so, I ask you this one question. Have you ever tried simply turning off the TV, sitting down with your children, and hitting them?
Malcolm Collins: Or Boondocks.
lost your god damn mind! I guess I just hate to see a child go unbeaten. I'm not a spanker, okay? But if you can bring discipline back into our school, then I am behind you 100%.
I wish I had the guts you do, sister. And that's why we signed that petition in support of you. Paddling pig.
Malcolm Collins: And this is a very modern and even when that was happening, everyone was like, Hey, if we keep not enforcing boundaries on our kids, this is what basically all those shows predicted. We're going to have a society where kids. cannot deal with challenges anymore, that they have an extreme [00:30:00] amount of emotional fragility.
And this is what we've seen as a consequence of this. It very much reminds me of it's like an obvious thing if you think about it. Why would every culture on earth convergently evolve this? And people can be like that doesn't mean anything, just because you did something in the past, doesn't mean that, that it's still good to do now that we have additional research.
And it's ah, this isn't something like sunblock or something like that, where you get this delayed effect that would only happen to adults above a certain age. What is being predicted in the research is that these people are going to have significantly lower IQs and significantly higher amounts of antisocial behavior, and significantly not like their parents.
So if you had just one subgroup within a population that wasn't practicing this, presumably you're going to get higher cultural transfer within that subgroup, because they're going to have higher cultural fidelity because they're going to have a higher opinion of their parents. And you are going to have a better performing cultural subgroup.
So you would have just naturally in certain places in the world had subgroups [00:31:00] within a population or populations with different child rearing practices living next to a population. outcompeting them if these effects were true, which just means it's completely implausible that at least at whatever way this was normatively practiced in history, which I don't think was the extremely formalized thinking system adopted during the Victorian period that this actually had deleterious effects.
Yeah. And when you look at the ban the rate of corporal punishment in the United States. It pretty much directly correlates with the rise in depression among youth and the rise of anxiety among youth.
Simone Collins: Though it also correlates, possibly interesting with the rise of kids feeling like they're best friends with their parents.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. When you could say, why is this leading to this rise in depression and anxiety among kids? What would be the correlation here? And it's when you teach kids boundaries, you are teaching them specific things. They have to learn self restriction around and a varying degree of self restriction [00:32:00] around different things.
When a kid isn't regularly encountering social boundaries they do not strengthen the inhibitory pathways in their prefrontal cortex, which makes it very hard to shut down thoughts and wants. Like I have a want, but I'm not going to do that thing. That's actually like a muscle in your brain. It's a pathway in your brain that needs to be regularly exercised to properly work.
If you are not regularly exercising that pathway, you can't shut down intrusive thoughts. It leads to obviously lower rates of mental health. The
Simone Collins: funny thing, the ironic thing, and this is part of that larger microcosm of how the urban monoculture's key value proposition of removing in the moment pain is counter, counterproductive that parents who don't, who in the end, like parents, most parents say, I just want my child to be happy.
I just want my child to be happy. And so they do all these things to remove in the moment pain for their children. And then in the end, they get children who are a lot less happy. And if we did choose between our children, liking us [00:33:00] versus our children, being thriving, happy, productive people in a hot second, we'd choose for them to hate us if that's what it took.
Malcolm Collins: I, yeah, I think that this phenomenon is very analogous to the Hayes movement, which we're always ragging on the healthy and every size movement, which is promoting the idea. That is not unhealthy to be obese and obviously it's unhealthy to be obese, but telling somebody that in the moment causes emotional pain.
And therefore, by the urban culture standards you are, you're breaking a major tenet of theirs. And They have adopted this position of we'll say this and then you're like you should restrict food to some extent, especially if you have a problem there the same way that I don't think every child needs this, but I think some children do.
Some children dispositionally need this. And they're like starving yourself like anorexia. Is has all these negative effects. Look at this. And I'm like, I'm not talking about anorexia. I'm talking about mild boundaries, mild self restriction. And this is what it's become with spanking. You point out there's this [00:34:00] method of course, correction with boundaries that are enforced physically rather than emotionally that likely has healthier outcomes.
And they're like Another thing actually,
But, maybe, I'm just the kind of person who needs to have it all or nothing. That's right. Nah, all or nothing is easy, but learning to drink a little bit, responsibly, that's a discipline. Discipline, come from within.
Simone Collins: what's really funny to me is just for diets. Now we have Ozempic. Just take a medication. Don't be disciplined. Just take a medication. And similarly, there's the whole South Park joke about Ritalin.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Ritalin. It's don't discipline your kids.
Just give them amphetamines. That's definitely safer. And we normalized that as a society. Keep in mind at the same time as a society, we were normalizing. To not spank our children, to not engage in any form of corporal discipline. We began to instead, said we'll just give them amphetamines. And there was a great old daily show joke when the daily show was still like Fun and kind of base it at times. And Jon Stewart still says some really base stuff, when he [00:35:00] goes on other shows and he doesn't follow the script and he's yeah, I think this trans stuff with kids is going overboard.
And they're like, whoa, I can't remember. He said something like that. And everybody but so he said, We no longer spank our children's butts because now we can spank their brains. No,
Simone Collins: that's
Malcolm Collins: great. And I think that's so true. That's where we have had. There's there's other ways to solve this.
And it's clearly you don't think that if you have normalized giving kids amphetamines as a society,
Simone Collins: But that's our approach now, our approach to, to discipline and to, That's dietary, that's behavioral, is now just medicated.
Malcolm Collins: And this is the problem, right? So the urban monoculture would say to us, what you're doing is culturally non normative, stop it.
And I'm like, I have seen the results of your normative parenting style. These kids are Miserable, anxiety, depression, illiterate messes that are hurkle durkling under their covers because they're afraid to engage with the world. When the average [00:36:00] product of a culture, the dominant culture in a society is bad like it's not good for the kids.
It is, to me, a sign. Of parental neglect and that you do not truly love your kids and that you are not willing to go against the social grain for what you think is in their best interest. And I think that the cultures that don't do it won't exist anyway. The society's kind of clearing itself out.
Simone Collins: And
Malcolm Collins: then a lot of people can say, why would the urban monoculture evolve this very bizarre practice? Because as we pointed out, like almost nobody actually does this once they have kids. Like some families stick to this when they're very low on the number of kids they have. But
Simone Collins: Lower or they just, some people have very compliant children,
Malcolm Collins: True.
But the and we take a very unique child rearing approach where we go is. Zones of influence. Like if you, we had the Jordan Peterson will raise Sims where we talked about this bopping practice before. If you watch that episode but some parenting styles like his are about imposing a dominant figures domain over an entire household or environment and the kids [00:37:00] just must obey that we don't take that approach and we see everyone as an independent sort of sphere of will.
And that Bopping only happens when the kids put themselves in danger. It is not me enforcing my will on them. It is a sign that they have just crossed a certain boundary, and that is leading to consequences from the individuals in their environment. And so that is, really important to me.
But why did the urban monoculture evolve this? Because it can seem very odd, but it makes perfect sense. If the urban monoculture doesn't have any selective pressures around raising its own kids because it doesn't raise its own kids. It's a very low fertility group. It doesn't need to
Simone Collins: evolutionarily
Malcolm Collins: care about the negative psychological effects of the parenting techniques that is champion.
However, if it's primary. Source of recruits is people who are raised in often more healthy cultural groups it needs a tool in all cults do this to convince Individuals that their [00:38:00] parents abuse them if you go to a Scientology session, that's one of the First things they'll try to convince you of is that your parents abused you.
They're looking for this original, like how did the original thetans get in you? And it needs to do that because they cannot distance you from your birth cultural group without severing ties with your parents of their outside of the urban monoculture. And so it uses this recontextualization of a normal part of child rearing that basically all cultures everywhere on earth do almost directly in line with how distant they are from the urban monoculture, um, is this evil abusive practice.
It's just a really great tool for it. So of course it hammers at home and it's in line with this core value proposition. Anything that is emotionally negative or emotionally trying is a sin when they saw that we had enacted a negative emotional state on our Children. They were like, you have committed a sin by our cultural framework.
How dare you do that? But from our cultural framework, this is just absurd because we're like, but [00:39:00] it's obviously in their long term best interest. And this is where it gets to this thing. We're like, yeah. Why is it that everybody, even from our own culture, understood that the parents who weren't doing this historically were the selfish ones?
The classic story of how did Ned Flanders become like Ned Flanders? It started with parents who were beatniks and who were like, We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas.
We don't believe in rules like we gave them up when we started living like freaky beatniks. . Yeah, you've got to help us, Doc. We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas. There is an experimental therapy that might help Ned contain his anger.
It was known as the University of Minnesota Spank a logical Protocol.
Malcolm Collins: And it's true.
You see these in these episodes and we've recognized that how do you create like polite, disciplined people. Now in the episode, he was spanked too much. And obviously eventually in the episode, it leads to a mental breakdown from him. But it admits in the episode. Yeah, this does lead to polite, disciplined people.
He is one of the most morally upstanding people [00:40:00] and one of the most pro social people in the entire Simpsons universe. Um, and I also think it's really funny that we have this horrified progressive reporter. And I can only imagine like most black families reading this and they're like, Oh, this is just like white people problems.
You've got that classic scene from boondogs where, you need the the wise black man to come in and show the white mom who has the undisciplined child how you're supposed to What bizarre white people things to think that you should never ever practice corporal punishment of any sort when your kid is putting himself or others at risk.
I want candy! Dammit, I hate you. You're ruining my life! Please Herbert, remember our agreement. Bitch, candy! I want candy! When he gets like this, I just don't know how to make him this! These people, you must have lost your god damn mind! I guess I just hate [00:41:00] to
Malcolm Collins: So there's that. But then the other thing I wanted to elevate here is what this creates, because when you as a parent become afraid of setting a physical boundaries. Like you cannot escalate to this highest level of like actually you cannot do certain things in this environment. Then you stop bringing your kids with you.
So people are like, why did your kids have iPads at the restaurants? Because you can't have a bunch of kids at a restaurant without iPads. It just doesn't work at this age range. Anyone can tell you that. And then they're like you shouldn't take them to the restaurant. Like, why take them to an environment where you might need to punish them, where you need to lean on technology that can sometimes have deleterious effects.
And it's that's the core problem. The solution when you follow all of these parenting guidelines is just don't have your kids shadow you all day, but that obviously creates bigger effects in terms of preventing the kids from being in an enriched environment and learning in the way that kids traditionally learned.
Simone Collins: Yeah. And by the way, we should do a whole separate video on iPads and [00:42:00] screen time. I am constantly. Blown away by the things that our kids are learning because we let them have some screen time like this, that last night, Octavian was talking to me about hydraulics and I'm like, what? You are four years old.
Malcolm Collins: Factory videos. So that's your new thing. It's all
Simone Collins: about factories. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Kids change to like the type of content they're consuming for something that is relative for their age and if you can get them into right Like good loops
Simone Collins: outside
Malcolm Collins: of what we call, um, yeah, like a form of young person, but we call it that not because it's of children because it's that for children.
It is simple, repeated. Anyone who has a kid who's a lot on YouTube for a little bit will know that they have found that kid watching videos of a car being dipped in paint and then dipped in another paint. Like it's clearly. Hijack some part of their brain that adults don't have.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: And it's a very dangerous for kids if you just [00:43:00] let them on these systems unrestricted.
Simone Collins: Yeah. So I think screens can be very dangerous and they can be mindless, but they can also be amazing and empowering. So we're not totally against screens, but also like people need to get off parents on restaurants. Do you want the kids screaming in there? Like most parents who give their kids screens at restaurants, Almost never have their kids on screens at home, but it's a, you know what?
Like you get to choose. It's a, and this is one thing I
Malcolm Collins: love about the boondog scenes when the kids being really disruptive and he finally gets punished and you can see everyone who was watching in horror before is now like really pleased at the turn of the events. And I think that this is true.
Like you have these pearl clutchers on Twitter who are freaking out about this, but most people are like, yeah, sometimes kids need to get bopped, when they're, I wish as Richard and Ania said, he's yeah, sometimes the kids need to give up. This is a thing. Not every kid does, but some kids definitely do.
And we take no
Simone Collins: pleasure in this, but hold on. I hadn't
Malcolm Collins: gotten to the full end of what I was saying here. So you end with this environment where you can't set this higher level restriction. The problem [00:44:00] is that most environments where our kids would play require them learning these extreme levels of restrictions, our kids outside encountering a bat that we ended up finding out had rabies. Allowing our kids to play outside is exposing them to insta deaths risks within a rural environment. Letting our kids play in the woods where there are snakes and there are potentially rabid bats and there are streams that they could fall in.
When you get five kids wandering around out there, there is a way I can protect them and fit with all these progressive cultural norms. It's to prevent them from playing in those environments. And that. I think as much larger deleterious consequences, the people who fight for these sort of restrictions on any form of corporal punishment what they are imagining in their head is the alternative to that is that they just sit down and have a logical conversation with a two year old where that two year old understands.
Don't touch bats because they might have this interesting thing. We
Simone Collins: do that when Torsten took, like his poop [00:45:00] out and all the time we sit down and we have a conversation about it and there's a lot of repetition and there's a lot of, why do you think this is bad? And what is it bad? And can you say it back to me?
Isn't the same thing, I'm saying that often when we have to resort to bopping, it's because we are not in an environment where that's possible. Was Malcolm in a position where he could take tourists into a quiet area where he wasn't overstimulated and have their kids
Malcolm Collins: wouldn't be charging for the bat.
Exactly. They, and I actually didn't need to bop any of them in that instance. I just said, if you move closer to the bat, I'm going to bop you. The restaurant. Yeah.
Simone Collins: What no ability to have a quiet reason conversation with Torsten in the restaurant.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, with multiple kids at the table in the restaurant.
There was just no ability to have that conversation. And so they're imagining the alternative is. This quiet reason conversation when that isn't the actual alternative that they're choosing between the real alternative to not bopping Is depending on the kid [00:46:00] some kids just don't need this at all as we've said is Either you get emotionally elevated with the kids, which I think is infinitely worse like you emotionally reject the kid or you show some level of emotional distress and I never want my kids to think that the correct reaction to somebody doing something bad around you is emotional distress.
Because then they get in these cycles of emotional distress. Like we're seeing with all these progressives today, if you see, if you read the article, there was no level of heightened emotions. This wasn't me getting mad or losing my cool or anything like that. I never want one of my kids to see me act like that.
That is incredibly important for me.
Simone Collins: Yeah, emotional regulation is so much more important to us.
Malcolm Collins: And this is the thing where progressives are like, Oh you get these negative outcomes from this style of parenting. The other alternative is to just not let them interact with potentially dangerous environments or environments where you can't take them aside by themselves with a large group of siblings.
And that forces them into highly restricted, unenriched environments, [00:47:00] which is going to have. Massive deleterious effects. And this is a really interesting thing. When you look at this child research, there is just not a lot of great research around how do I create, these dynamic, energetic, Leaders that are filled with vitality, that meet the exact, that are opposite of what society wants today, that are polite, that are, it looks around things like, what was the measure that they kept using?
It was like self satisfaction or something
Simone Collins: like that?
Malcolm Collins: Self esteem, which then in later studies, like this is the main thing that these studies sort for is self esteem, which we have found has no correlation with anything meaningful in adulthood in terms of outcomes or anything like that. Just a lot of child psychology is basically junk, and if people are like, no, a psychologist wouldn't lie about this stuff, it's been shown in the gender sciences that over 50 percent of scientists are willing to Not publish or occlude data if they think it could reinforce the idea that [00:48:00] men and women have different psychological profiles.
Now, do you not think that they're going to do the theme around this other field of people like you couldn't get these big data sizes is you can manipulate data pools to say, basically, whatever
Simone Collins: it was something like corporal punishment. It's so easy. To pull data that in, in the end is real abuse and in the end is really bad stuff.
So I think this is uniquely difficult to research because. How do you control? First off, you can't even ethically do this as a researcher because you can't ethically be like you hit your kid, but at this level, and also it's impossible at this level of strength, because what if someone is just, everything they touch is a little too rough, I don't know.
So this can't, I don't even know if it was if ethics boards would permit research on this if they
Malcolm Collins: well and that's the other problem is that you have a lot of genetic effects so they're often not doing controlled studies when you're doing this area ie Oh, parents who are more likely to practice some form of corporal punishment.
Also their kids are more [00:49:00] likely to be violent of course, like the heritable trait of course, especially if the adult is practicing it because they lack self control rather than because they have self control. And that is a huge, and I just can't go back to this point enough.
A huge fear I have is that my kids will learn that the way you react to somebody doing something you don't like is emotionally heightening the situation.
Is an emotional plea. That is from my family's perspective so much worse because you begin to actually feel that as a kid. Like you then enter this higher emotional state.
And it causes these really negative downstream reactions. And I suspect that when we took them out of daycare, this is why all that behavior stopped. Why all of the tantrum stuff, why everything stopped, which you'll see in an episode that unfortunately I haven't released yet, but we had a bunch of graphs on this and it was really interesting for us.
When they were, just in our environments. The other thing that I wanted to note here, Is the cultural differences within America, like that, that a lot of cultural groups practice this [00:50:00] just not the urban monoculture. I point out that American Asians practice this at really high levels.
American Hispanics practice this at really high levels. American blacks practice this at really high levels, but also different American white groups. So if anyone has read Avalon Seed and by the way, I'm sorry, Albion Seed, if you are a fan of the channel and you haven't read this book, it's probably the book I would most recommend after our books.
It's a great book about the four founding cultural groups in the United States. And I think it can help a lot of Americans who might not realize that they actually do have a cultural ancestry and where they got their ideas because you'll read the book and you'll immediately be like, Oh, my family was this group.
I'm this team.
Simone Collins: You're in Ravenclaw or in Hufflepuff or in
Malcolm Collins: Yeah you can ask, where are you going to get a bizarre culture that would not allow the punishment of children? Because it's weird. From most cultural perspectives, the idea that you wouldn't set boundaries around children, and one of the things I love, and I hear some people argue, they're like I wouldn't treat an employee this way.
And [00:51:00] it's you wouldn't sit in employee and time out either. The way children's brains process, the world is different from the way the adult brains process the world. And you as an adult are biologically designed to interact with them differently than the way you interact with adults and you have different impulses in the way that you're interacting with them, often that were selected for by your cultural group.
This is one of those things that just baffles me. When I talk to people who are otherwise like totally logical sane people who believe the research on this. And I'm like, wait, you, you understand that like every cultural group that we are aware of, almost every cultural group in human history practices that form of corporal punishment. And you think that this is causing massive IQ effects, massive effects on, , bonding with parents, massive effects on, , aggression and that none of this would have been selected out for, in our species. That like the way that everyone is interacting with kids, if it was causing these massive negative effects. That it wouldn't be selected out [00:52:00] in our species.
Worse than that. It's like, how do they think that in an ancestral context? People communicated with pre-verbal children or like children who were just coming into verbiage, but didn't understand concepts like death. Like, obviously, this is a way that we evolve to interact with our children. It's it's one of these, like, just so obvious things.
It's baffling when it's like puberty blockers or something we'd like for a while, this. The quote, unquote science was like puberty, blockers have no long lasting effects. And it's like, well, no, obviously they do. How could anybody think that? , how could anybody think that the way that you communicate with kids. When they're not fully verbal and understanding concepts like death. Is physically. Like that, that wouldn't be the natural evolved way to interact with it.
It is just bizarre and outlandish. Actually one of our, , Watchers was talking in the discord and she was like, you know, when I was young, I was [00:53:00] very severely abused. So I was against any form of corporal punishment. But then I started to have a lot of kids and I eventually reached a point where I was like, oh, obviously I need this. And I got to it too late. She saw a huge improvement in behavior. And that's the other thing was this where, you know, the scientists can say whatever they want. But there is a reason why the vast majority of Americans end up converging on this same behavioral practice, because it's an evolved instinct in us and our children.
And it works. It works so obviously and loudly that when they're like, no, the data said it doesn't work. They immediately discredit themselves. I mean, there are ways that they could argue against this if they said something because, you know, if you read the research, it's like the never. Never works. And it's like, well, now you've just immediately discredited her yourself because it obviously works.
And everyone who does it knows it obviously works. So if one of the things you're saying, if [00:54:00] you're like, oh, it has this long-term consequence. Like, okay. It may work for like five years, but then it has this massive negative IQ effect. Okay, fine. I'd be like, worried about it then, but that's not what they say. They say it doesn't work at all. And it obviously works and this is why everyone ends up throwing out the science.
The moment they have a ton of kids.
Malcolm Collins: So anyway, everyone knows that the, we have this theory or a lot of people know that the urban monoculture actually evolved out of a split within the Quaker movement. And we have a lot of receipts for this, but I think that this is a further example of this, of the cultural groups that I'm aware of in the world, like in terms of historic cultural groups.
Pretty much the only one I can think of that cheats children is sacred, like as higher order morally than adults is Quakers. It would be seen as really weird in any other culture to be that freaked out about this. But if you're thinking like Quakers of course it makes sense. You might as well be slapping a Buddha statue.
If you're the sacred
Simone Collins: cows of, yeah, at least at that time, especially
Malcolm Collins: weird practice within the Quaker cultural group of [00:55:00] having children morally lecture adults. And we point out that you actually see this within the urban monoculture, which is one reason why we think the Greta Thornburg thing is bizarre.
Having a child morally lecture adults from most cultural frameworks is just an insane thing to do. It's it's a child. Obviously, they have less moral knowledge than adults. They have less self control than adults. The adults should not be viewing them as like they're tethered to like supernatural ideology or like a higher order of truth.
But then secondly, if you look at the cultural group that we come from, which is the Calvinist iteration of the back country people. So we have elements of our culture from the Calvinist cultural group, but also a lot of elements from the portion of the Calvinist that went to live in the back cultural group.
group, back country and part of that environment. We talk a lot more about this in the Pregnancy and Decaptioning Religion if you're interested in this. But that's a little, that's a group that grew, that evolved terms like little shits. Which I grew up hearing all the time. Oh, it's a term of endearment towards children, but it gives the, perspective of the child status within the community.
And the [00:56:00] way that this cultural group would raise children is the children would follow the parents everywhere they went. Within Quakers, the children were basically like kept isolated, alone given a fairly strict rule set, but not really punished that severely. Within the backcountry thing, they just follow the parents around with whatever they're doing and get bopped.
Like this, you can read, like when you're reading about these backcountry people, they bop their kids all the time, like this is very clearly the traditional way that this culture would enforce a value system. You weren't trying to hit the kid, hurt the kid, but you were trying to shock and reorient the behavior.
The Calvinist cultural group, which my Family also does to some extent had different they were extremely strict. And they would also try to enforce value systems through emotionally shocking the kids.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Having them stare into open graves, contemplate like
Malcolm Collins: this will happen to you one day.
Think on that young man when you are deciding like your moral actions. Yeah. See, that's the
Simone Collins: emotional type that we're not so [00:57:00] keen on.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah no, it's not really the emotional type. I think that our family culture has a strong amount of recognize your mortality. You're having a lot more
Simone Collins: cheerful about it though.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I also, I need to show my son like violent videos so that he understands the consequence. Like the oldest, when they moved to the category of now they can understand that they could die. He now is like, Oh, I'll turn into a meatball or he'll go, Oh, Torsten will turn into a meatball.
If he goes to the road.
Simone Collins: No, he says you're going to die toasty. You're going to die. That's what inspired. Are you going to die? France. Yeah. He had this
Malcolm Collins: great moment where we told him, you need to put on this life jacket or you're going to die. And so he understood that and he put on the life jacket and then we tried to get Torsten to do it.
And Torsten was like, no, I'm not going to put on the life jacket. And Octavian turns to Torsten You're gonna die, Torsten.
Simone Collins: You're gonna die, Toasty.
Malcolm Collins: I love
Simone Collins: Octavian. But that's also a
Malcolm Collins: very backcountry way to talk and everything like that, which is to say that you're not, always fronting with heavy words and everything like that.
Um, culturally, even within our country, there just isn't a [00:58:00] respect for cultural diversity anymore. At all, that this culture might have a different way of relating to children and a way that I am continuing to adopt because I believe it genuinely like when I look at the breadth of evidence, people can wave these studies in my face as much as they want.
But I'm like, but I also see what would happen to researchers if studies that didn't show this got published. And it's so easy to bias the stats when studying this particular field, as Simone has pointed out. So I just, Don't engage with these. And if people are like he doesn't love his kid, like This was a kid who was born early and I for months every day would go to the hospital And spend all day holding him against my chest because when I went over the research It looked like that had the best outcome for this kid, you know the idea that This
Simone Collins: kid is not afraid of you.
He Loves you. He runs up to you all the time. He wants to spend time with you. He's the one who snuggles with you all the time. Yeah, this is not, and this is what would make it extra heartbreaking and probably hurtful to him. If our form of [00:59:00] punishment was getting mad, it would break his heart.
And every time, like there was, even with his younger sister the other day, you moved her from climbing up the stairs. To at the base of our kitchen because you didn't want her to be afraid and then went upstairs to get something that you needed. And she thought for a second that she was being rejected by you.
And she was devastated. Like our children definitely take the concept or the prospect of rejection. So much more emotionally seriously than any form of physical correction we've ever used on them
Malcolm Collins: and that's because of how we use emotions in our household and how we have chosen to use this form of punishment Because they understand that the highest form of emotional punishment is like you've really disappointed me that is above.
I don't jump straight to that I don't jump straight to losing my cool or losing emotional composure They have, I think, a much stronger emotional connection to me. Then they would have, I chose one of these alternative systems for [01:00:00] delineating the highest category of you have or you are doing something that's dangerous or that you shouldn't be doing.
And you are not listening to me, and this is actually I actually think it's where a lot of physical abuse and relationships comes from. Is our relationship does not contain any physical abuse in part. And we did a video on this, like maybe men should hit their wives or something like that in part, because I am able to logically communicate with you and we are able to come to mutually beneficial outcomes where we're like, okay, we have this difference.
But we
Simone Collins: both care about the same outcome. So it's never a place where we're ever going to be at odds. Truly. The only place where we may be temporarily at odds is in knowledge. So we just have to resolve that. So
Malcolm Collins: we just have to decide who has access to more knowledge. Whereas I think where a lot of physical abuse in relationships often starts is one person is.
Just not able to communicate the severity of something they believe to another person. One instance I'm [01:01:00] aware of this is the wife who wasn't managing the finances or anything like that would just had gone out and gotten an expensive purse and they were already broken in a ton of debt and she had done this recently and he had told her not to.
I should say I'm not. Saying that abuse is justified in that instance, but I am saying that this is logically what leads many people down this pathway is I can't communicate with this person in any other way. The problem with young children is that there is an age range. Where you need to communicate a high level of threat from the environment and you need to choose the least painful option for communicating that.
And I believe the least painful option is a bop, and I should note that I actually think the kids are pre programmed for this because we bop our kids very lightly but they take it. Much more seriously than I would anticipate they would given that it doesn't actually cause any emote like physical pain.
And it's very clear to them that they don't internalize it as causing much physical pain. And I think it's because they're [01:02:00] pre programmed to be like. Oh, whoa, something has happened that puts them into this sort of mental restart mode. And I would say to an adult if somebody lightly bopped you on the face like that, would the pain be what shocked you?
Or would it be the invasion of the personal space of your face? It's the invasion of the personal space. That is the purpose of the bop. And the reason, another reason why we choose the face and I think why in nature, the face evolved to be the location that this works for is that it's the most accessible spot if you're trying to make sure the negative Feedback is immediate, which in all animal models, it's somebody who's like, why are you looking at animal models?
Like your kids aren't animals. I'm like, we use animal models because they correlate with human patterns. Okay. If something is common across social mammal groups, it's likely going to be a common behavior in our. Early ancestors, right? And we are likely going to have some pre evolved components there still operational.
[01:03:00] And yeah I actually find it's interesting that this bop thing was something that I grew up thinking was normal. This was something that my cultural group was like, oh, of course you do it this way. But different cultural groups punish in different ways. And if you look at the way corporeal punishment is administered in the South Park episode, it's administered in a way that is similar to this.
And when I look at Matt Stone and Trey Parker, they seem one of them is Jewish, but the other one comes from a cultural group that's very similar to my own. So I imagine that in terms of value sets, in terms of how they relate to kids. So I assume that they saw, this is how corporeal punishment was practiced within their community.
Which I suspect is much more likely to, at a lower pain threshold, be more effective. That's why we choose to face, because it's the lowest pain threshold area. But do you have any final thoughts on this?
Simone Collins: Corporeal makes it sound ethereal. Funny. Um, I would just say that eight passengers needs to ride as a check.
You're welcome.
Malcolm Collins: No, but look, that's clearly an instance where like it's gone overboard and it's [01:04:00] having a negative. No, seriously.
Simone Collins: And yeah, where for us, I want to emphasize. That when we say we are against delayed punishment we really mean it even if we like the time it would take to go and get a spoon to hit someone with is too much time.
And a lot of the punishment that you saw, even before the passengers had the fallout of the post channel closing and the tape. Bing to chairs and all the really terrifying stuff. There was still delayed punishment that was insane. Oh, you're not going to have your bed for a month or your bedroom or whatever, things would be permanently taken away.
And you
Malcolm Collins: should note that we don't do like punishments. Other people think was normal. We've never put our kids in timeout. For instance,
Simone Collins: we've never done it.
Malcolm Collins: We never socially isolate. We never are like, say, Oh, you don't get your dinner now or anything like that. With this fairly mild form of punishment, we've been able to cover pretty much all of our punishment bases without needing to go to delayed punishment, which I don't think is affected timeout stuff like that.
Simone Collins: Yeah. And this is precluding the frontline of defense, which [01:05:00] is always just talking with our kids.
And this is what they harass people to seriously consider. If they have a strong, emotional reaction to this, why is lightly slapping a kid in the face? Abuse to you, but timeout is not, why is timeout a lower order punishment? And you can be like, well, because it doesn't involve physical contact. But why did that make it a lower order? If the child finds time out to be more concerning or more emotionally elevating? Why is that? It is just a societal thing, which you have accepted is true without analyzing. That's the truth of it. That's why you find one to be crossing a boundary and the other to not be crossing a boundary because you haven't thought through what was the likely real punishments in our evolutionary context, in the way we likely evolve to learn information within this age range.
Simone Collins: It's obviously
Malcolm Collins: not realistic in a high fertility environment when you're in a dangerous [01:06:00] context.
Simone Collins: The funny thing though is like back to the lion example on Safari. Because people on Twitter, for example when they bring that up, they're like, they're lions don't have words.
They can't use words. No, they totally. Would growl and more than they do have
Malcolm Collins: words. The little woman knew it was stepping over a line, but it was testing. Where are the boundaries? This is the point of play behavior. And this is also a problem for kids. As Simone has pointed out, because now we don't let kids test each other's boundaries.
One kid gets mad, the other kid, I'm not doing this anymore. We mostly let our kids work this out by themselves. Yeah. They're like,
Simone Collins: so and so is not sharing or so and so hit me. And we're like working out. Because they
Malcolm Collins: need to learn, yeah, boundaries and social norms. One thing we often
Simone Collins: ask, actually for example if they're playing on their couch fort, which we make for them, and then, oh, Toasty hit me on the couch fort, and I'm like, okay, so do you want to stop and no more couch fort, or do you want to get over it and work it out, and they're like, oh, I want to work it out.
It's really. Kids also, I think, want to work it out. They want to play. They want to push those [01:07:00] boundaries and they're going to whine and cry about it. Another thing we've noticed about the way that kids react is cause if they're playing in a room and we don't have, we're not physically there, they're on camera and on mic and we are watching them still and the amount of performative crying or whimpering or complaining or tattling that goes on is when parents are around or when adult authorities are around is insanely high compared to when they're just amongst themselves.
And they absolutely police each other when they think that they're not being observed.
Malcolm Collins: Here when we're talking about this cultural subset, another thing that's really important within our cultural background is that And I mentioned this before, but I want to elevate it and put a song here because it's, or the portion, let's see what I can get away with, but I wouldn't recommend people listen to this song He's Mine, it's a country song
He had them by the collar, said he caught them shootin beer bottles down in a holler. And I said, is that right? He said, they won't speak when spoken to. So which one here belongs to you?
And I looked him in the [01:08:00] eyes. He's mine, that one. And if you knew me then, There'd be no question in your mind. Even though he's mine.
Malcolm Collins: And it is about this way of relating to kids, which is to say, our child breaking a rule gives me pride, it gives me pride that they're the type of people who test boundaries.
That doesn't mean I'm not going to set those boundaries and enforce those boundaries. In one part of the song, that the kids were drinking and shooting something out by a holler, which is like a pit. And the neighbors brought them over and they're like which one of these boys is yours?
And he's taking pride. He's mine. He, Now, what's not said in the song, but it's very obviously true because I grew up in these types of families. That kid is still punished at the end of the night. The dad can be proud at his kid for being the rebellious sort of a person, but you still get punished when you get caught.
And that, that goes forwards into parenting as well. And I think that, to me, this is really emotionally healthy for somebody growing up, [01:09:00] is separating the idea from the reality. Of repercussions for crossing certain boundaries and pride in my kids for being willful and energetic. And I think that a BOP system allows me to separate these two things very effectively.
But I think the real tragedy of all this the real tragedy of all this Oh the research says this is they've gone so far in the other direction that now we have a generation where. Kids are, we can't let our kids play outside. We can't let our kids explore the woods. We can't, all of the things that kids used to do are now just genuinely not safe to allow kids to do.
I think if you are attempting with a large group of kids to practice this style of parenting and like when large, five, six kids. of this young age range. And to me, that is heartbreaking. Because I think that those things outweigh any of the negatives that may be incurred from this [01:10:00] sort of punishment.
And a lot of people are like do you really want like the pronatalist movement associated with this? And I'm like, yes, I couldn't want it associated with anything more. The urban monoculture, imperiously attempting to take our children away from us, from breaking a cultural norm that almost no ethnic minority group has within this country.
So they're basically saying, We plan eventually everyone to be like us. When I tell somebody from this, this very small group of wealthy white people who live in cities, mostly who have this extremist view around punishment and kids, most people in Africa do this.
They're secretly thinking, yeah they won't for long. One day they'll all think like us in our culture because it has this manifest destiny component to it. It is the descendant of the old European imperialist mindset. And it's such a good framing where when they're like, everyone who practices this is a monster.
And then I'm like most black Americans practices like the [01:11:00] overwhelming majority. You're aware of that. And then they have to walk that back because they haven't. They haven't, like there isn't, there's this cognitive dissonance in we want cultural diversity, but we don't actually want cultural diversity and we want everyone to behave exactly like us and they pretend or live in this world where those two things are possible in the same world when they're just not cultural diversity means okay with child rearing practices that are different from your own, which is what we fight for.
While we don't approve of stuff like spanking, I fight for a world where that is okay. Because the person who is in a best position to judge whether spanking their child is an okay way to relate to that child is somebody who was spanked themselves as a kid.
Simone Collins: Yeah, but I think, here's, I guess here's one more thing that's on my mind is a lot of people on Twitter who are horrified by the fact that we practice this themselves were spanked.
[01:12:00] Some were probably just we're going to say beaten, like actually hurt, but then I think some were probably bopped and then they entered a culture in which a therapist or a friend or just contextualization and seeing other people talk about these things made them retroactively see it as.
Malcolm Collins: And that's how the urban monoculture got them. It got them hooked on them. It separated them from the people who loved and cared about them most. Because that's a hard thing to do. How do you separate someone from their family? Like most people should realize these are the people who love and care about me most in the world.
Like most parents, there's some bad parents out there. I understand this, but generally, like often, unless you're dealing with like genuinely narcissistic or sociopathic parents, That is a true statement. And so you need to, and I think tragically convince people that their parents, and this is one of the things I said, one of the true tragedies is one of the ways that the urban monoculture enforces this culturally normative stance the most is through divorce law.
Because if you side with the urban monoculture on anything, you can utilize that to take parents from the other parent in a [01:13:00] divorce proceeding.
Simone Collins: Like
Malcolm Collins: if one parent spanks and the other one the non spanking parents. Can utilize that to get the kid and often if the non parent wasn't even non spanking before that now They can become non spanking and use that to get the kid.
I mean you see this with gender transition stuff You see this with all sorts of stuff where the urban monoculture You just side with it and you get auto custody. Which is horrifying and I think that people from the urban monoculture, they so dehumanize other cultural groups, they are genuinely incapable of realizing that when other people are doing this very few people want to hurt their kids hurting their kids.
They are doing this because they believe it's in the long term best interest of their kid. And often We have some reason that the urban monoculture is just dismissing out of hand. It's the studies don't say so. The studies have been wrong about a lot of things recently. Okay. And I can understand when I look at the nature of this field, how the studies could have come to be wrong on this issue.
So I dismissed them. And it's because the anthropological evidence for me. [01:14:00] Seems to suggest that it does work and the evidence within my own household Like I have seen how my kids have reacted to this what has Happened since because we didn't engage all our kids with this with the first kid.
We're of this mindset We're never gonna do this. We're never gonna do this, you know by the time we're kids three We're like whatever. And so i've seen other kids grow up with this and without this and just the level of Like awesomeness of them to each other into outsiders has increased dramatically.
So I also think it's really messed up to equate something like this with actual abuse.
Simone Collins: And that's the other thing is just the extent to which the controversy that has arisen because of this article trivializes real and actual abuse. It makes me worried and sad because that is such a big issue.
And to equate them. And it's hard because it's one of those things where it's hard to know where the line is, but we know people and care deeply about people who have been.
Malcolm Collins: A [01:15:00] lot, for example, has talked about this a lot publicly. And I think she went through it actually in abusive childhood. Yeah.
And it's
Simone Collins: heartbreaking and I think that's
Malcolm Collins: heartbreaking and I would not wish that on anyone. And it is absolutely mess up that people equate. A light bop on the nose to like reorient to kids direction like just to restart their system. That doesn't hurt them. It's clear in the article.
He was back to laughing and doing what he was doing before within 30 seconds of the event. It's very clear. This was not painful to him. It was like somebody being taped to a chair and beaten. That is absolutely insane. And that a person. Online is you just never hit a kid. And I'm like, that is your cultural perspective.
And I don't think the cross cultural evidence supports your position. If especially
Simone Collins: when abuse and neglect is sometimes as defined, at least by the department of health and human services in the U S is sometimes a failure to act in an effort to protect a child. Sometimes you have to
Malcolm Collins: perspective and not employing this practice is a form of abuse.
Or whatever's effective,
Simone Collins: we're [01:16:00] not saying you always have to, to bop or just saying if you fail to do what's effective in protecting your kid, that also is abuse. Some kids only respond to this in certain situations, other kids.
Malcolm Collins: And I'd ask people what they need to change their mind on this particular issue.
Cause you know, we always talk about how like shock homes. Yeah, cause we changed
Simone Collins: our minds. We both came into becoming parents saying zero tolerance, never know nothing ever like this. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I don't even know. So there's the
amy Chua this whole tiger mom thing, which was a big thing when I was growing up. And people who don't know what happened, she did the type of punishment that I would say falls well into the abuse category.
But she did practice corporeal punishment with very aggressive, high expectations for her kids. And everyone told her, In the public media and everything like that because she had two kids that they were going to hate her and they were going to be failures like this wasn't going to work.
Simone Collins: Yeah, which we see it right now.
A lot of people are saying exactly the same thing. Your kids are going to hate you. Your kids are going to fight back. Your kids are going to whatever.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. What [01:17:00] happened with her two kids when we remember we talked about shot calling like this is why Laszlo Polgar matters. Shot calling is not anecdotal evidence.
predicting that an unusual way of doing things will lead to an extremely unusual result. Two kids both being successful and having a good relationship with their parent. Predicting that is incredibly unlikely statistically speaking. So it's not anecdotal. So now we know what happened to her two kids.
They grew up to become a Yale lawyer and a Harvard lawyer, and they're on good terms with their mom. They're like, I, and some of the things I wouldn't do with my own kids and stuff like that. And I have some reservations about this, but broadly they're on good terms with their mom. Like almost nobody says everything about my parents and my childhood.
I love even ones who were in like the most hippie ish style.
And some people have been like, yeah, but she later said she regretted her parenting style and I'm like, well, whether she regretted it or not really has nothing to do with the outcome. The point is, is that she did do it. The kid that did end up successful and the kids did not end up estranged from her.
So if you're [01:18:00] saying Eve, you do this, your kids will not be successful and will not end up. Liking you as an adult.
, at least in the one shot calling case that we had exposure to was in my childhood. That is provably wrong.
Malcolm Collins: So I, I think that Even going much further than us. When I'm looking at the evidence I have that doesn't come through these extreme filters seems to support that no, you're not destroying your kids' life by raising them in a culturally unique way.
And I think that I wouldn't do it that way, but I think that there is, um. Potentially positive outcomes for even much more than what we as a family are willing to do. And I think it'd be really cool if I could know that there was some unbiased research in this. And something that's interesting to ask yourself is, would you change your mind?
We are going to have five or six kids, at least, right? If all of these kids end up successful, And we do this whole weird thing that we did, okay? Is that gonna be enough evidence for you to change your [01:19:00] mind about us being right about these things? Or is it just, no, because the studies? In that case, I think you're really just obeying a priest caste and not paying attention to the disincentives within the academic bureaucracy.
We're also not saying
Simone Collins: this is right about, this is right for everyone. But yeah, no, I think
Malcolm Collins: different cultural groups actually, I think, have, I wouldn't
Simone Collins: encourage every parent. In fact, I can think of many parents who I would definitely not encourage to do this.
Malcolm Collins: Especially if a parent doesn't have emotional control.
I think that this leads to very negative results. If you are ever punishing your children with anger, you have failed as a parent. But there are also some parents
Simone Collins: that we know that are just, they're emotionally composed very different where they could in a, Sober minded way do this, but it just wouldn't hit right with the kids for word choice, but it just wouldn't, it would come across as like, why did you do that?
Because there are some parents who are, I'm thinking about some very [01:20:00] emotionally sensitive and attuned people. Who themselves would find this very, like too distressing. We already find it distressing, but they would find it very distressing to implement and their kids would not, they would not see it the way our kids do.
Our kids are very rough.
Malcolm Collins: Violation of the relationship they have with their parents. Yeah.
Simone Collins: And that they need that delicate talking. They need their kid, their parent to just talk to five. Sorry, count to five and just the thought of their parent potentially at the end of five being slightly disappointed in them is such an emotional and distressing thing that they immediately halt at four, but so they shouldn't have them.
They should not bop because bop would be, just counting is enough to distress these children. So there's some delicate children for whom I would totally not recommend this. Our kids are not those kids.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And our kids and Simone. You've been around our kids. I think most people who know us know that we are very considered parents in how we do things.
Our kids do not register this as like adversarial or mean. There are kids who
Simone Collins: would, there are kids who would, and [01:21:00] this is not right. There are kids
Malcolm Collins: who would. And in that instance, they might need a different strategy, but for our kids it's more just like a fact of life. When I do certain things that could be dangerous.
Like I've just noted like the room, but Oh, here's the wall. I need to turn around.
Simone Collins: Yeah, it's like bumper cars. Here's bump. They bump right off. It's almost like they literally like a Bop is almost like the Bop is here. Our kids just go right into it. And then they go off. That's it. It's almost like they, they bring it on.
I'm not saying that they ask for it. But
Malcolm Collins: it is actually very interesting how they emotionally relate to it and how little it is seen as something like spanking or something like that, where there's this fear going into it, which I think is often worse than the spanking or something. It's probably
Simone Collins: part of the psychological torture.
Yeah, I had
Malcolm Collins: some nannies and stuff from different cultures that would do things like spank me when I was a kid, or do different forms like ear bopping or something like that, different forms of punishment. And in spanking, you get the emotional roll up to it that's so worrying. Literally, when I think about all the types of punishments I got when I was a kid.[01:22:00]
Of all of them, the least painful is bopping. Bopping is so much less painful than a parent telling you they're disappointed in you, or they're angry with you. It's so much less painful than a spanking and all the lead up to it. It's so much less annoying and anger inducing than a timeout. It is of, I could choose among all the punishments in the world that I could get as like a, okay, you crossed a line here.
It is the one that I, as a kid, would choose. And not everyone would do this, but I think it's pretty clear from our kids that they're the same way. And I really like how it's a way to signal that they've gone too far without putting any Emotional wall between us without the first thing I'm saying when I bought my kid is I love you But this is not the way we act in this environment.
Simone Collins: Yeah I love you malcolm. I
Malcolm Collins: love you too. And I'm glad that we're able to stand up for this and fight for Differing cultural practices.
Simone Collins: Leave no child unbopped. Bop all the children. Bop all the children. We literally just said not that, of course. But yeah. I don't like being [01:23:00] the advocate for this.
I wish this weren't a hill that we were apparently dying on right now. Yeah, we do
Malcolm Collins: not advocate for general corporeal punishment. We do not advocate for spanking. We do not advocate for spanking. for any of that stuff, but we do advocate for bopping. I, I do advocate for some forms of physical contact in terms of I know, I just wish it didn't have to be
Simone Collins: Us advocating.
Malcolm Collins: But it does because if we're going to, if we are going to be fighting the urban monoculture's imperiousness in terms of how people raise their kids No
Simone Collins: one else is going to stand up for this aside from Richard Hanania, who's the only other person who has balls in this along with some of our listeners.
You know who you are. So yeah
Malcolm Collins: the number of death threats we get or, Oh, I'm going to go up and kill those people and take their kids. And the most
Simone Collins: specific threats this time around.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Like you, you better be watching the news. I'm going to get those Collins's
Simone Collins: in, in, in Valley Forge.
We're going to come watch the news. Interesting.
Malcolm Collins: I wonder how the, the [01:24:00] shovel people are trying to attack
Simone Collins: us with is going to hold up against the AR
Malcolm Collins: 15. Wait, no, but here's what I'm thinking when I hear something like that. I'm like, oh, this is the consequence of not bopping a kid.
You never learn
Simone Collins: personal boundaries. Your first thought is Oh, this person who just gave us a death threat didn't get beaten enough as a kid. I don't know. No, I
Malcolm Collins: do not think that their parents raised them well or that they understand what good parenting is because they appear to lack emotional control or the ability to soberly analyze the situation.
Simone Collins: No. The progressives will just be like, no, he was beaten as a kid because all the research shows that when you were beaten as a kid, You're violent. I'm just saying. But anyway. Let's go get our kids. I love you and you are amazing. Let's go find our
Malcolm Collins: children. Oh, and one thing I'd say, if people are like, how do you choose when you accept the science and when you're really skeptical of the science, whenever anyone says every expert in a field agrees on something, I pretty much immediately dismiss it.
Because I'm like, that just doesn't happen in science when science is
Simone Collins: happening correctly. There is always nuance in finding what's happening
Malcolm Collins: correctly. [01:25:00] If something is a, everyone agrees on this, like climate change or something like that, I'm all of a sudden okay, press F to doubt. That's major sus.
Because it's just, you don't get that.
Simone Collins: And
Malcolm Collins: I will say that at the end of this, it's all about moderation. Because it's really bad if, because you equated lightly tapping a child's face was beating them, that your child ends up, emotionally fragile, depressed, and then ends up committing suicide or something.
Okay. Let's go get the kids. Okay. These things have consequences. This isn't a happening in a vacuum. I love you Simone. I love you too.
Most, perhaps all, the blame rests with the parents. That's right, you! And I ask you this one question. Have you ever tried simply turning off the TV, sitting down with your children, and hitting them?
Simone Collins: I wrote about this and it's number two on their site all [01:26:00] day. Oh my God. But anyway, what is really flattering is that. As someone who, before meeting you, minored in photography in school and everything, right? Never expected my photos to be in the Daily Mail, in the Guardian, I'm like a top billing photographer, you guys.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Anyway, get started. This is gonna be at the end, obviously. Oh
Simone Collins: I wasn't counting that for
Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah.
Okay. Hold on. I've gotta think about how I start this, 'cause I wanna start it with one where this Sure.
Oh, I can,
Simone Collins: I'll throw out a pitch.
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