The Data Does Not Say Spanking Is Bad (Why No One Will Tell You)

In this eye-opening discussion, Malcolm and Simone Collins delve into the controversial topic of corporal punishment and the latest research challenging the mainstream narrative. They examine a groundbreaking 2023 study that found previous research on spanking relied on unadjusted correlations, ignoring crucial factors such as child behavior and genetics. The couple argues that the evidence supporting the benefits of mild, immediate physical correction has been largely overlooked due to ideological biases and the categorization of spanking as a human rights abuse.

Malcolm and Simone also explore the potential psychological damage caused by alternative disciplinary methods, such as emotional punishment, and the evolutionary basis for physical communication with pre-verbal children. They emphasize the importance of cultural diversity in parenting practices and the dangers of imposing a one-size-fits-all approach. Throughout the discussion, the couple shares personal anecdotes and insights from their own parenting journey, advocating for a more nuanced and evidence-based approach to the spanking debate.

Malcolm Collins: , [00:00:00] A really big study came out in 2023 that basically went through all the old research and showed that, yes, I was right to think it was sus . Now, you would assume at the very least, they would be correcting for child behavior, right? In these giant samples. I hope so. Yes, basically, they didn't

And they just used a giant sample size to push under the table that they weren't correcting. If you can't understand why this would be so insane and why this would obviously show that spanking had all of these deleterious outcomes, consider our family. We do not do any form of corporal punishment with our daughter.

Because she just doesn't misbehave in the way our boys misbehave.

In these studies, she would be in the category of non spanking, and my sons would be in the category of spanking, and then they would be like, look, spanking is causing more bad behavior.

I was like, no, you [00:01:00] idiot! 2018, the A. P. A. Task Force on physical punishment of Children recommended an resolution opposing all physical punishment, although the task force cited it. Okay. Thank you. Five meta analyses, they relied almost entirely on Gorshov and Gorgon Kehler's 2016 evidence against physical punishment, which came exclusively from unadjusted correlations.

EXCLUSIVELY from unadjusted correlations The task force ignored two stronger meta analysis that went beyond correlations, these other meta analysis concluded that harmful effects of physical punishment were, quote unquote, trivial. However, the randomized trials find spanking has a slightly positive effect. .

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. As we are now widely publicly known as the Abusive parents for our bop strategy to parenting.

Bop It. Twist It. Soccer Boppers! Soccer Boppers! You can sock all day, and bop all night!

Malcolm Collins: Like

Simone Collins: soccer [00:02:00] boppers. Yes. It's more fun than

Malcolm Collins: a pillow fight. This actually brings me to one of the first things that I've really noticed in the few days, because I didn't really think anything about the bop when it happened, and in the few days, in the while, since the initial event, I have now been paying much more attention to how I physically interact with our kids, and it's now really apparent to me, like, how rough I am with them normally, when I'm, especially with the boys, that I

Simone Collins: But In a positive context, I would say like of all the physical interactions we have with our kids, the bopping is probably the lightest and gentlest.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, like I, that was the thing that sort of surprised me and made me realize why I didn't think anything of it, that I like regularly punch the kids while playing or throw them across the room and they just find it hilarious. That doesn't sound very good,

Simone Collins: but aren't we very rough and

Malcolm Collins: tumble kids?

I don't know what to tell you. Anybody who has worked with toddler boys knows that punching is like a cheat code with toddler boys. It's like one of their favorite games. And it doesn't [00:03:00] lead them to like playing rough with each other. I just want to be clear. We actually don't have that problem, but anyway,

Simone Collins: They don't.

They wrestle all the time,

Malcolm Collins: but they don't play rough. Before we go further. One of the things that I love is the piece was like, he hit him so hard with an open handed slap that I could hear it on the recording. And I'm like, do you know, like the sounds that hands make when they hit things? This is like clapping.

You can hear clapping on a recording, but you don't say he was repeatedly beating his own hand. It's just something that makes a sound whenever you do it, not, you don't need to hit something hard. Like that. Yeah, I'm sure

Simone Collins: her recorder probably also picked up the sound of your phone being placed on a table every time you put it down, but that didn't come up.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But so I what I wanted to do is this episode, cause I found it really interesting is in the last episode I was like, okay. I just look at the research as somebody who has a training in science and it looks us. And this is where we were when we actually did our research to decide how to parent, right?

I was like, the research [00:04:00] looks us. I think it sucks. Yeah. So I'm going to ignore it and look to other models to see if I can find a better way to do this. And we'll try different methods to see what works for our family. And what works for each kid? Um, it turns out that since I had that intuition, A really big study came out in 2023 that basically went through all the old research and showed that, yes, I was right to think it was sus and the conclusions were morally guided, and that if you did good research which they did, and they did like a meta study on the good research.

It seems that the majority of the evidence right now shows that spanking is slightly positive.

Simone Collins: And by that you mean immediate physical correction? Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: immediate, light, physical correction. Interaction. It doesn't need to be immediate in their studies. So they looked at both immediate and delayed, but I would imagine from other animal models, immediate is really where you're seeing the positive effect, which is why I [00:05:00] suspect they're only seeing a slight positive effect.

Just so you can know why we would think that when you are doing training in other mammals, delayed negative feedback is pretty much never works. So it'd be really weird if it worked in humans. It just

Simone Collins: intuitively, it would make sense that, If there's some kind of delayed repercussion for anything, actually, this showed up Spencer Greenberg a while ago, did some research on.

Whether or not gut response or intuition is a reliable thing if it's real, essentially. And what he found was that yes, intuition is real if or when it is related to activities in which you get, Repeated in high volume, regular and immediate response and feedback which goes to show that basically you can't train someone to instinctually change their behavior or responses if there is a lack of immediate feedback.

And that is why immediate feedback is important. So you can see cross disciplinary patterns or echoes here. It's

Malcolm Collins: really important because this means that. [00:06:00] Through immediate negative feedback through something like a bop, you can create moral intuition in an individual, i. e. they will develop an intuition that is immediate and instinct around the world.

Simone Collins: I shouldn't run into the street. I shouldn't hit my sister. I shouldn't, et cetera. Yeah, basically in the most important primary source of information, we have the Bop It commercial.

If you can't keep up, Twist It. You lose! Once

Simone Collins: If you're too slow, you lose. You

Malcolm Collins: lose! If you're too slow, it doesn't count. And also Richard Hanania did a tweet actually before this whole incident happened that I really agree with.

So he said one thing I find weird about the quote unquote spanking debate is that we assume if you hit kids, it should be on the behind. Why? Seems to introduce needless humiliation. There are a lot of other ways to hurt children that seem less problematic. Slapping, wrestling holds, etc. Oh,

Simone Collins: people have done long histories of the Of spanking and just how fetishized it [00:07:00] was and how much it's a

Malcolm Collins: no, I it is.

I think Downstream of fetish communities more than people realize because one of the earliest fetishes was what was called the british vice Which was based on the type of ritualized spanking they did at british boarding school with the paddle Yeah,

So it I don't think that the parents who spank realize they are doing something that is partially downstream of a very ancient fetish culture, but they are and it is a little weird but that's why it's weird.

Okay. So I'm not, I know some parents are like the face is a sacred area. I would never do that. I would only go for the butt. We choose to only go for the butt. Okay. Less pain to have the same interaction. To have the same effect of shocking and reorienting attention, but I need to get to the research here.

And Emil Kierkegaard famous for his very naughty opinions, which we do not endorse all his opinions, but he's not a bad like he is capable of stringing [00:08:00] together useful research, especially when it's in a field that everyone's afraid to talk about. I

Simone Collins: love his sub stack personally. And he's also just made some amazing reference guides, how to find.

The original full print of a peer reviewed journal article. I remember I was

Malcolm Collins: talking with someone online who's don't you know, this is bad. And I was like, Emil Kierkegaard actually did a great piece on this. And she goes, I can't read that. He's all right. He's officially banned. No he's dead.

He's definitely verboten. But he's. This is the way the urban monoculture works. That prevents you from listening to any information from somebody. Once they are put on the immune to the urban monoculture list.

And. Then you are no longer allowed to anyone who has interacted with that person.

So we are not claiming to have interacted with him. But I think he puts together the information here fairly well. So we're going to go into his piece. Okay. So he starts and I'll put on screen here, all the countries that have made even mild corporal punishment of children illegal.

Simone Collins: And this was news to me since the guardian article, I did not realize that corporal punishment was literally illegal in so many places.

That is what [00:09:00] you didn't realize

Malcolm Collins: it because it was an incredibly recent trend. Okay. With almost all of these happening after 2005 and most happening after 2014.

Simone Collins: Wow, so after we graduated from high school and most cases. Many cases.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. This was like a recent and actually crazy change.

And we'll talk about why it's crazy, but I want to read his piece here, right?

Okay. Why was it banned? I think there are two parts. First, the academics say it's bad and they point to correlations between the use of corporal punishment and aggression in humans. Second, it's easy to find horrific situations of parental abuse. As you can imagine, the evidence about causality is not strong.

How do the researchers know that corporal punishment caused the children's latter problems and not poorly behaving children causing their parents to punish them more? In general, they don't. They just assume this in line with their blank slate ideology.

We could, however, draw up a diagram to make things more clear. And this was something I had pointed [00:10:00] out. I was like, I bet they're approaching this with a blank slate mindset. That's how they're getting these giant sample sizes. Cause I went up to one thing I noticed on a lot of the research that people were citing to prove this banking was bad is they had absurd sample sizes, which typically means they're not doing filtering.

And if they're not, and this is Of all topics, you would need to filter this one the most in part due to this chart I'm going to put on the screen here. So to our podcast listeners, I'll basically explain. So you go from parental genetics, then through other parenting factors to child with poor behavior, which is influenced in part by the child genetics, which is influenced by the parent.

Genetics, but the parents genetics also influences bad life outcomes. But then you have the cross relationship with corporal punishment. Then you have poor adult behavior. And then all of that leads to bad life outcomes. And so the idea is, can you sort out which of these is influencing the parents genetics?

Bad behavior. Now, you would assume if you had trust in science, you're like, at the very [00:11:00] least, they would be correcting for child behavior, right? In these giant samples. I hope so. Yes, we're going to keep going. But basically, they didn't in the giant studies that everyone has been basing all of their research on.

They didn't. And they just used a giant sample size to push under the table that they weren't correcting. If you can't understand why this would be so insane and why this would obviously show that spanking had all of these deleterious outcomes, consider our family. We do not do any form of corporal punishment with our daughter.

Because she just doesn't misbehave in the way our boys misbehave.

Simone Collins: Yeah, she's very emotionally sensitive. And like any sort of, if we looked at her the wrong way, like disapprovingly, She'd start bawling. Yeah, like that's the thing is some kids, all they need is a frickin look.

Malcolm Collins: In these studies, she would be in the category of non spanking, and my sons would be in the category of spanking, and [00:12:00] then they would be like, look, spanking is causing more bad behavior.

I was like, no, you idiot! Obviously, if you don't sort by but we'll keep going here. I'm just skipping ahead a bit here, but how can we be sure? And here he's talking about the genetic effects, because obviously these are going to be huge as well. And most scientists don't like to admit that kids inherit behavior from their parents. But then he points out that there actually was an experiment that looked at this. So the study was called the effects of spanking on psychosocial outcomes, revisiting genetic and environmental co variation. this study was trying to find out how much of the negative effects that were being measured were genetic in nature. And it turns out that it is around 60%. So the majority of any effect that was being measured in previous studies was just. Are these the type of parents who obediently listen to quote unquote the science or are these the type of parents who say, or for whatever [00:13:00] reason, either because they don't aren't aware of the science or they are people like me who are just like really anti authoritarian and like that looks sus or is it, you know, and I'll put some stuff on the screen here.

It was the risk of depression was really heavily linked in this study as with delinquency and to a lesser extent alcohol.

So then he says later, are there some brave souls that went against the flow and looked at the causal evidence and maybe. Even evidence that spanking might actually be good. Yes. And this is the key, really big study. And it was actually a very well done study by Reitman, Ortez, Cox. And it was done in 2023.

And it's titled, Parental Punishment, Don't Throw the Baby Out with the Bathwater.. So to read some quotes from it over the past several decades, the use of punishment as a strategy to discipline children has fallen into disfavor in popular books among many parenting researchers, other well respected researchers point out [00:14:00] important instances where punishment can be beneficial if implemented appropriately together with positive reinforcement.

In this chapter, we summarize the research on punishment, ranging from parental use of time out. to clinical use of mild electric shocks to treat severe self destructive behaviors that are otherwise within to change. We find that the bifurcation of research into causally informative studies, clinical child cases, and correlational studies of more representative samples have prevented progress on how consistent mild punishment can enhance positive parenting techniques, such as, reasoning and negotiation, especially in children with oppositional defiance, which given my genetics, our boys are very likely to have and do.

Very likely. It's

Simone Collins: confirmed.

Malcolm Collins: We need better punishment research to help parents, because most of them will use some kind of punishment sometimes. And then he said, they begin by discussing the role of the American Psychological [00:15:00] Association advocacy behavior in 2018, the A. P. A. Task Force on physical punishment of Children recommended an A.

P. A. Resolution opposing all physical punishment, concluding that the quote research on physical punishment has met the requirements for causal conclusions. In quote Gershoff 2018, although the task force cited it. Okay. Thank you. Five meta analyses, they relied almost entirely on Gorshov and Gorgon Kehler's 2016 evidence against physical punishment, which came exclusively from unadjusted correlations.

EXCLUSIVELY from unadjusted correlations is what was used to ban this in all these countries. Those in the studies, or if they had just looked at our family, would have put Titan in the non correlations. Spanking category and Orson and Octavian in the spanking category.

Simone Collins: Mostly

Malcolm Collins: 55 percent cross section Gorshov and Gorgon Taylor.

The task force ignored two stronger meta analysis that went beyond correlations, either by [00:16:00] controlling statistically for pre existing differences, Ferguson 2013, or by comparing effect sizes of physical punishment with those of alternative disciplinary tactics, Lorenzi and Klune 2005. These other meta analysis concluded that harmful effects of physical punishment were, quote unquote, trivial.

So they had access to these, and they were bigger at the time. Ferguson, 2013, or limited to severe or predominant use of physical punishment, Lorenz and Kuhn, 2005. As we've said, in the large meta studies, in the field they were showing That spanking caused no negative effects or had positive effects.

No, I need to note here, the studies that came out and showed a slight positive effect. And the studies that showed a trivial effect did not control for in the moment, negative feedback versus delayed negative feedback, nor did they control for the genetic effect, which we [00:17:00] know is having a large 60% or so effect in the opposite direction. Which means that what they are actually showing it taken in light of all of the evidence we have here is a massive positive effect. From corporal punishment where it is needed.

Malcolm Collins: But again, this is, and I'm going to keep going with this, but this is something that people should have intuited, like just at a base level. One, I mentioned all human cultures co evolving this tradition of course, but then two, you've also just got to think about the L evolutionary context here. If you have a pre fully verbal human, in that age range where you can't. them that this might kill someone and therefore you shouldn't do it. You are going to partially physically communicate with them. That is one of the options with you. You have the option for verbal communication and you have the option for physical communication.

And you as an adult have the ability to physically communicate with a child in a way that gets their attention, but doesn't. Cause any long term damage or any real long term [00:18:00] pain, but still is an additional type of communication. You have access to it. Seems insane to me that we as Children wouldn't have evolved to pick up on that in a really intense way.

And the way we see in other animal models and that we as humans wouldn't have just been doing that all the time in our early environment, leading to evolutionary feedback for Children to have an evolved mechanism around learning from that. Like it's just Yeah. Absolutely insane that you wouldn't have that.

So in a way, I would argue that people who parent without spanking when a child leaves. Not every child needs some form of corporal punishment, but without any form of physical communication with the child. It is almost like deciding to parent to a child without talking to them for like certain formative years of their lives.

You can do it, like you can find ways around them and they'll learn to speak through other mechanisms, but like it is pointlessly tying your hands behind your back in a way that like would almost never happen in an evolutionary environment. So I just, that, that was the thing that [00:19:00] really got me because I was they're obviously doing harm in these countries but they're doing it because they first declared, as I said, first declared spanking a human rights abuse.

Then they decide how I'm going to research it. I'm going to determine stuff about it, blah, blah, blah. So this study, then amazingly, after this, they performed their own literature review that I'm going to put on the screen. screen here. What the results said. So in the weak designs cross section longitudinal, we see that the use of corporeal punishment, spanking, non physical punishment, e.

g. timeout, grounding, both associate with later worse child behavior. However, the randomized trials find the opposite results. Maybe even the spanking has a slightly positive effect. . But yeah, so what are your thoughts, Simone? And now that we actually had somebody who did like a huge amount of research on this and was like, yeah, you're right. They, like the research was brilliant. And I really need to point this out for people like when to say research is stuff or suss somebody's like all scientists agree [00:20:00] and they're talking about a psychological issue and they're not discussing any edge cases.

That means that there is some sort of, or there was for a long time, some sort of large motivation in that field to agree. Look with spanking. Where could that motivation be? Oh, spanking is categorized as a human rights abuse by numerous large urban monoculture organizations. Of course and I think that if you also want to talk about how psychologically damaging other parenting techniques are, that's another thing that's not really talked about here.

That's what I was

Simone Collins: going to say is the thing that we've been talking about offline that I think is really underrated and that I wish people were actually talking about was, and this is something you first articulated really well to me. When you are choosing discipline or not disciplined, like when a kid does something that is unacceptable or unsafe.

You are always going to be choosing between evils. There is no correct way. And it also depends on the situation and the child, and your current resources at the time are you in a quiet place where you can stop everything? Or are [00:21:00] you in the middle of moving in a vehicle or something like that?

And. If you choose not to bop a kid, you are then choosing to emotionally terrorize them or verbally castigate them or do absolutely nothing, which could cause more long term damage in the future or make them feel rejected by you by totally ignoring them. No matter what you are going to be doing something that isn't

Malcolm Collins: No, but it's important to understand how not great this is.

To a young child, historically, even fairly recently, because we were talking with a friend whose family had a history of having done this,

Children who overly misbehaved were often abandoned. Or sent to an orphanage, or Sent to an orphanage where they'd often die at a very young age. And so abandonment of a bad kids was something that was done historically and children, anyone who has children knows children have an evolved reaction to this.

When you emotionally escalate with a kid you are [00:22:00] essentially going Oh, I don't want to cause mild physical discomfort. So I'm going straight to. At an evolutionary level. I am convincing my kid. They're about to die. A slow and painful death. That is what emotionally triggered

Simone Collins: that feeling in them.

Let's trigger that

Malcolm Collins: feeling. It just shows where they develop these arbitrary rules, make no painful physical contact with a child. And as a result of this rule, they then justify behavior that most sane people would be like, that is a horrific Behavior to normalize.

Simone Collins: Yeah, it reminds me a lot of diet culture, actually, how, for a while carbs are bad.

And then, then for a while saturated fat was bad. And what did we do? We replaced that with trans fat, which is a lot worse for people in the end. And I feel like a lot of the punishments that, or lack thereof, of

Malcolm Collins: It's like in clueless when she's eating gummy bears and she goes they're like carb free or something.

They're fat free. They're fat [00:23:00] free. Yeah, no, but I

Simone Collins: really feel like the lack of punishment or the emotional terrorism that, that parents are putting on, we'll say non corporal punishment parents are putting on kids who otherwise would respond well to corporal punishment is the trans fat of discipline.

They think that they're doing the healthy thing. They think they're doing the right thing. So they're acting in good faith. They're just causing even more damage than they would be if they just lightly swatted at their kid and said, knock it off, you little s**t. And so we are hurting people and that's bad, but here's the other thing too.

It's, I can't even be mad. At the people who are, for example, shitting on us online, sending us hate mail in the end. I'm glad that they're doing it because it means that there's a very strong instinct to protect children from harm. And I love that. I feel the same way. I go mama bear. If I think that someone's hurting kids, I can't deal with it.

Like I will. I will, but, and they think we're hurting kids because the media is framing it like, again, you backhanded Torsten and he flew against a wall. They're not [00:24:00] being like, oh, he lightly swatted. It's, they're most of the

Malcolm Collins: articles that re quote, they do say that it's just not the way people are interpreting it.

Yeah. They're

Simone Collins: interpreting it in the least charitable way

Malcolm Collins: because they want to, they don't like our other ideas. They don't like what we're forcing them to recognize about themselves. They want you, but if you

Simone Collins: believe that You should be really angry at us. If you believe that we're actually abusing our children, I am glad that people hate us.

I

Malcolm Collins: think that you are misunderstanding their motivations because we've seen it in the other things they accuse us of. And I don't think anybody honestly. Oh yeah. Like the fact that we're like,

Simone Collins: people assume that we're Nazi, racist, eugenicist. Monsters to, yeah, I dunno. So I think

Malcolm Collins: what you're missing, Simone, is you're overly kind interpretation of people.

leads you to miss what's really motivating their action. They don't like the truth is that we're forcing them to confront, which that piece is really good with. It lays out the hard truth of what they're doing. The that they're victimizing developing countries, which are dealing with their [00:25:00] own problems by outsourcing our fertility problem to those countries by taking their residents, and they're like, I don't want to deal with this.

Or even with the slap where people would just get freaked out, right? Be like if you're calling people who practice corporal punishment, like inhuman monsters, keep in mind, by that 2011 study, 89 percent of black families in the United States practice corporal punishment. And then they're like, what, you can't, you how could she slap, how could she slap, yeah, we'll have that.

Yeah. You, what I liked about the responses we got to that statement was like, you can't say, ah, it was like pure progressive, like brain fire because They realized that I was right, that they had just said something racist, and they were on the racist side of this argument. I'm just

Simone Collins: trying to bright side this.

I'm just trying to say we can be united and caring about children.

Malcolm Collins: I don't think so. You don't think they care about

Simone Collins: kids?

Malcolm Collins: No, I think it's a bad instinct to focus on other people's kids. Because then you always lead to cultural imperialism. You're like, oh, cultural [00:26:00] imperialism. We need to use that more.

That's what I mean. It's what it is. It's how can they circumcise their kids? Don't they know that hurts their kids? And I'm like, no, it's their cultural practice. They get to choose it. They had it chosen for them. Who better to choose to circumcise their kids than somebody Who lived, you as an external person should have no right in this saying.

And then somebody's I was circumcised and I didn't like it. And I'm like then did you have kids yourself? And they're often like, no. And then I'm like, then why like clearly they're part of a living cultural tradition and you're part of a dead one and you're trying to enforce this dead cultural tradition on

Simone Collins: them.

Malcolm Collins: And this is why this idea that you have, or this intuition that you have, that you should have the right to deal with other cultures, kids, I just think is. Totally wrong headed. Cultures have the right to protect and deal with their own kids. And it's not even culturally wrong headed. It can be used to hijack people to do stupid things very easily.

This whole like starving kid in Africa thing that we had to deal with in the nineties, that was like every TV break for awhile and they're like, now give us your money

[00:27:00] Not from disease or war, but from hunger. You see, here in the middle of Africa, food is extremely scarce. Does it look like she's having any trouble finding food?

For just five dollars a month, you can sponsor a child. That's stupid

Malcolm Collins: I love

Simone Collins: that the running theme of this episode is nineties commercials. What's going on?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, when almost all the money was just going to these large bureaucracies that had found out how to brain hack people,

stupid. !

Yes, Soda Starburst! You guys! Soda Starburst is holding food from

Malcolm Collins: the large bureaucracies in ant faces that have found out how to brain hack people with other people's hurt kids. Even now when you're looking at something like what's going on in Gaza and stuff like that, it's just so easy to focus on kids that you have no cultural responsibility to.

And that by, and the moment you feel you do it it approves atrocities on your behalf because now you're like I said, because of the kids, now I can do whatever I want. And I just don't think that's a helpful instinct and it's one that can [00:28:00] be easily hijacked by nefarious forces.

But I will say for the beginning here, like we've gotten through like a whole week of how can she slap?

Simone Collins: It is

How can you slap? How can you slap? Are you mad or what bloody? How can she slap? How can she slap me? How

Malcolm Collins: absolutely wild. But the other thing I wanted to note here is. The science does eventually get this stuff right often. If you take long enough, somebody's oh, this is a fun area where I can overturn the field and do something that is controversial and interesting.

But also keep in mind that you didn't hear about this giant meta study that had carefully analyzed the field and found out that actually spanking seems to have positive effects and certainly doesn't have negative effects. You didn't know that the better conducted and larger study showed no negative effects.

And

Simone Collins: sadly, the person who's providing thoughtful and useful translation to the average lay [00:29:00] person. Emil Kierkegaard is someone that most people who've ever heard of him on Twitter, for example, are like, Oh no, he is a forbidden person. I'm never going to engage with anything he ever publishes, even though he constantly publishes super interesting stuff.

So yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah and this isn't to say that we agree with everything he publishes, but that doesn't mean anything is not worth intellectually engaging with.

Simone Collins: Yeah, just because someone says something that you disagree with in one realm doesn't mean that if they say the sky is blue, you're like definitely the sky's not blue.

And I should point out that the big study wasn't done by

Malcolm Collins: Emil.

Simone Collins: He just brought it to our attention. He was just going over the existing research. That's why I'm saying he's really good at it taking issues and saying here's what I'm seeing. Here's this study. And then, here's actually how it was conducted.

Like he typically goes into the mechanics of what's going on behind the research, which I'm really bad at doing.

Malcolm Collins: This particular study was really good because It was big and it showed how biased these institutions are. [00:30:00] And this is the way the urban monoculture acts is it is at its core imperious. It believes it has the right to all other cultures, to everyone's kid.

And it will use any means it can to exercise that even if anyone who was logically thinking would recognize, oh, you're hurting kids in banning this sort of, moderate behavior. As a final note here, I actually, love the idea that this has gone so viral because I hope that we get seen one day as like parenting influencers for parents who want to be like sane and cut through the BS and okay, these are people who really understand the science, who are very smart, who are very considerate, and they're going to provide me with this is what you actually need to worry about.

This is what you actually don't need to worry about. Yeah. No, there's just so much stuff. So many, like the whole freak out about breast milk, for example, it's like breast milk has some positive effects for early diseases. Specifically gut health in the early years, which can affect nutritional uptake and can have minor effects in a [00:31:00] few areas, but if it's massively inconveniencing you, it's not really worth it.

And the. Effects become marginal from what I've seen in the research that I actually find believable after a few months. And a lot of people are like, you can't say that. That's not what we're supposed to believe. And it's yeah, but it's what I'm seeing in the data. So we'll call it BOP style parenting.

I think that's what a lot of and I also love another really funny thing. It's a lot of these writers who are writing about us are younger than us. So they don't know Bop It. They don't know, I think that's an

Simone Collins: interesting thing that millennials get that no one else is getting because the term Bop during our generation was associated with playful, light, physical contact.

There were specifically two toys. One was called the Sock and Bopper. It was like a blow up. Punchy thing.

Soccer Boppers! Soccer Boppers! You can sock all day, and bop all night! Soccer Boppers! Soccer Boppers! More fun than a pillow fight! [00:32:00] Blow em up, put your hand inside, Get ready to have the time of your life! Soccer Boppers! Soccer Boppers! Sock em once, and bop em twice! Soccer Boppers! Soccer Boppers! Soccer Boppers!

More fun than a pillow fight! By Big Time Toys! Soccer Boppers!

Simone Collins: So basically, toy makers realized, Oh yeah, kids like to punch each other a lot. Like our boys do all the time when they're playing around and Oh, maybe we can lessen the impact. So we'll make a balloon that goes on your hand.

And then there was the Bobbit, which is just a toy that you smack around.

Hey! Wanna play Bop It? It commands you obey! Bop It. Twist It. Pass It. If you can't keep up, Twist It. You lose! Once you get your hands on Bop It, You're not gonna wanna stop it! Fast Talking Electronic Bop It. Batteries not included.

Simone Collins: I actually want to talk to the

Malcolm Collins: Talkin Boppers because this is not a toy that could go popular right now.

Simone Collins: Oh heavens no. To encourage children to punch each other? How could you? [00:33:00] But it

Malcolm Collins: shows how much things have changed.

That we used to understand that boys play and learn rough. Yeah. Like when a boy's being a, a Why do you

Simone Collins: think boys get in trouble so much more at school?

Malcolm Collins: That's the

Simone Collins: thing. Our society doesn't permit them to be themselves.

Malcolm Collins: Slugs and snails and puppy dog tails. Is what little boys are made of.

They're not made of the same things as little girls. And this is an interesting thing. I can already see the difference in, in emotional needs of my kids. With the male kids, and we'll probably do a full episode on this one day. The male kids really play fighting.

Like me getting on my knees or on the floor and play fighting them is probably the most fun they have in their lives.

And this seriously, I don't think anything, any activity I do with them is nearly as fun for them as play fighting with their dad. I love it. But the girls or the one girl who's really, able to engage right now,

Simone Collins: old enough for us to see a sample of,

Malcolm Collins: when we're play fighting, she'll sometimes engage, but mostly she's off doing her own thing.

But what she really loves is [00:34:00] just being held and hug. She is very needy in terms of hugs and stuff like that. And it's just a different way of engaging with the world. And I've noticed a lot of these people who are like, Oh, I would never do use any sort of corporeal punishment with my child.

I'm like. They either have one or fewer boys.

Simone Collins: Or yeah, if you have a girl, I would totally understand that intuition. Yeah, this is averages. There are some rough and tumble girls. There are some very sensitive boys. And so we're not saying that any of this is well, another thing that I

Malcolm Collins: found very interesting and I might just go to people going forwards that do this.

Cause one of our friends pointed out that like their sibling had said some mean stuff about us online over this. And they were like this person has two female kids and one of them is already on Xanax. And not, what was it? Not Xanax. It was Zoloft. One of them's already on Zoloft. And this is actually important to elevate.

Is that a lot of the people who criticize us and I actually would ask people going [00:35:00] forwards. If they're criticizing us for this, I'd say, okay, how many kids do you have? Or rather, how many boys do you have? Is the more important question. And then the second question I'd ask is, okay, how many of your kids have a mental health issue or taking medication for mental health issues?

And of course, then they're going to go, they're immediately going to be like, I can't tell you that. And I'm going to be like so that. An obvious sign that one of your kids definitely has a mental health issue. And you cannot tell me that your parenting style was superior to mine when it led to deleterious outcomes.

And then if not that, then I say, then how long a week do you actually spend with your kids? Because this is another thing she was noting. This person who was complaining about us, literally only spends weekends with their kids. And it's they have no idea how to parent really. And that's the problem.

A lot of quote unquote, parents don't have to actually parent. And so they come up with insane ideas about how parenting works. We don't have nannies around most of the time when our kids are with us, we don't have any sort of help like that. And so we have to actually parent and these people don't, they have somebody to [00:36:00] pin down every child in their house.

If all of them are. Playing bad at the same time. And so they never need to learn real parenting techniques.

Simone Collins: That or they treat parenting like helicopter parenting. And for sure, when any of our kids are with us one on one, I don't think we've. Ever been in a situation where we would need to bop one of our kids when it's us and one of the kids.

So like probably if we had only kids, this would never be a thing. It only really like kids only seem to our kids at least get really riled up and out of hand. When they're feeding off each other and things get chaotic. Which I like.

Malcolm Collins: I like that they're able to get chaotic and out of hand.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

But it sometimes means that they aren't hearing us when we say they need to simmer down. And, only physical questions. You did knock it off, you

Malcolm Collins: little s**t. I'm almost sad that I behaved so well in the moment that I was like, Torsten, daddy loves you. I immediately did all this stuff, kept him in the circle of love without making him feel expelled, but let him know he had crossed the boundary.

I [00:37:00] almost wish I just said, knock it off your little s**t.

Simone Collins: We don't do that though. Like we want our kids to not feel rejected. We don't do the whole emotional terrorism thing, which is. I think favorable, that's

Malcolm Collins: not too right. Yeah. I think, I hope that we can I would say all kids are different.

Learn yourself, we'll be parenting influencers as well, I suppose in terms of parenting methods, because I, I. I think that it is important to cut through the BS that is being put out there by ideologues as science, but doesn't actually have data behind it. I love you, Simone.

Simone Collins: I love you too, Malcolm.

Malcolm Collins: And I love our kids.

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