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Lastly, we can see how spanking aids authoritarian goals because it’s been associated with lowered internal morals. In other words, spanking encourages kids to follow the rules immediately and without objecting outwardly, but discourages them from developing an internal compass of right and wrong. It sets kids up to dismiss their own sense of right and wrong in favor of listening to and obeying and outside authority, which is the ultimate goal of both authoritarian politics and high control religions.

Evidence has shown spanking to be connected to how we relate to success and failure even in adulthood. One study found that kids that were spanked in childhood, by adolescence showed an increased reaction in the brain when errors were made. The same study found that in these same adolescents who were spanked in childhood, their brains didn’t respond as strongly to success. This means that you’re more upset when you make an error, making it harder to deal with failure, or simply making a mistake — but when you do it correctly, you don’t get the same good feelings that others do.  We commonly see these outcomes in people with Complex PTSD, including chronic hopelessness (‘I’m always going to mess things up’), shame ('there’s something wrong with me,’) as well as difficulty appreciating when you are successful and life is going smoothly. The study seems to indicate that due to spanking, the brain becomes preoccupied on making mistakes at the expense of appreciating when things go well. It would make sense that this could create some patterns of thinking that focus on what goes wrong, but difficulty focusing on what goes well — setting people up for mental health challenges.

One study by researcher Jorge Cuartas and his co-authors found that spanking undermines feelings of safety, and promotes hypervigilance. They found that children who were spanked were more attuned to potential threats, and which even included neutral faces. In other words, these children were more likely to be constantly monitoring the facial expressions of others, feeling on edge, and easily thrown into dysregulation if someone else seemed unhappy — even if it was simply the absence of a happy facial expression. One of the authors of the study compared it to the impact of sexual abuse, showing a change in how the brain processes the world, undermining and eroding a sense of safety: ‘You see the same reactions in the brain…Those consequences potentially affect the brain in areas often engaged in emotional regulation and threat detection, so that children can respond quickly to threats in the environment.’

In 1989, the UN created a resolution about the rights of children, which included the statement that children should be free of ‘physical or mental violence, injury or abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation, including sexual abuse, while in the care of parent(s).’ Every participating country ratified the resolution except one: the United States of America. To date, corporal punishment (the use of physical force with the intention of causing a child to experience pain so as to correct their misbehavior) is still permissible for parents in every state in America.

Toddlers in these kinds of homes asked, Is it okay to be me? and religious authoritarian parenting methods answered these questions with a resounding no. They used shame and pain to systematically assure children that there was no room for divergence from their parents. On the surface, there was room for different preferences—a favorite color, a preferred ice cream flavor—but parents were trained in hawk-eyed vigilance against expressions of self that fell outside of the hierarchical, obedience-based family structure. Media, gender expressions, gender roles, bodily autonomy, attitudes towards authority and more were all heavily policed in these kinds of homes. The message that everyone from toddlers to adolescents received was: You’re allowed to be you, so long as your identity fits in the god-ordained hierarchy. 

In the mainstream field of psychology, experts understood that a young child’s opposition to their parents was simply a form of practicing autonomy and individuation....These experts knew that children, who held very little power in their lives, needed the experiences of expressing preferences, setting boundaries, and practicing making their own choices.  In contrast, religious authoritarian parenting books taught parents that this normal developmental process was evidence of a child's sinful nature and must be disciplined. In this framework, children were taught that when they diverged from their parents, that preference was sinful, evil, and selfish. Developing autonomy and individuality was a shameful practice, and this core message was reinforced through church services, Christian books, and Christian media at every turn. While non-authoritarian contemporaries perceived this period as simply a child finding a sense of self, [religious authoritarian parenting] authors like John MacArthur saw it as proof that ‘the human heart is programmed for sin and selfishness…every baby has the potential to become a monster.’