[nostrademons]

To be fair, society was significantly more aggressive than it is now:

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/01/30/5-facts-abou...

Violent crime rates both in America and within the developed world at large are way down. This is usually overlooked because we've now become hypersensitized to remaining acts of violence - a "mass shooter" that kills nobody but themselves is now all over the Internet in real time, while when I was a kid in the 80s, everyday violence within large swathes of American society would just be a "just another homicide in a blighted urban area, don't go there". But by the statistics, America today is a lot safer than 30 years ago.

Now, I have no idea whether this is because of spanking or not, and drawing a causal connection is much harder in the face of all the conflating changes within society since then. But it's factually incorrect to say that "society wasn't significantly more aggressive than it is now", because it was.

[rayiner]

> Violent crime rates both in America and within the developed world at large are way down.

Except they're still higher than they were in 1960 (and kids raised in the 1930s and 1940s certainly got spanked).

[karmajunkie]

Citation needed.

[nostrademons]

He's correct on a factual level:

https://www.brennancenter.org/blog/americas-faulty-perceptio...

There's a wider context, though, where violent crime during 1940-1960 was abnormally low compared to the earlier part of the century (which had violent crime rates similar to today), and then it shot up in the 1970s. And the 1900s in general has been quite low to historical homicide rates in colonial times.

http://sites.nationalacademies.org/cs/groups/dbassesite/docu...

All of this fits my point that you can't really draw conclusions one way or another from the crime rate.

[airstrike]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead-crime_hypothesis

From the Wiki

> Proponents of the lead-crime hypothesis argue that the removal of lead additives from motor fuel, and the consequent decline in children's lead exposure, explains the fall in crime rates in the United States beginning in the 1990s. This hypothesis also offers an explanation of the rise in crime in the preceding decades as the result of increased lead exposure throughout the mid-20th century.

[nostrademons]

There's also:

The Abortion hypothesis: kids who would've otherwise turned out to be violent criminals were aborted:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalized_abortion_and_crime_e...

The Broken Windows hypothesis, that cracking down on minor petty crime reduces major violent crime:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory

The Economic Development hypothesis, that tough times create crime:

https://www.citylab.com/life/2013/09/puzzling-relationship-b...

And probably a bunch that I haven't heard of.

Really, I doubt we'll ever figure out what causes an increase or decrease in the crime rate, because there's likely more than one cause. Because of that, I don't think it's good evidence on either side for a debate on spanking. (Which, BTW, has just validated the point everyone's been making that any collaboratively-built parenting encyclopedia is likely to generate more heat than light.)

[mrfusion]

I wonder if there’s an Xbox / Netflix / AC hypothesis? Why go out and get in trouble when there’s so much entertainment readily available.

[nostrademons]

Yup:

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2011/05/24/study-video-games-act...