A Comment on Zinya's Childrearing Post

I've picked up on something that's reinforces Zinya's argument about the political implications of child-raising techniques. In the red states I've lived in, many of the people I've met have a lot of contempt for self-discipline. The people I've met in Kentucky and North Carolina talk a lot about "work ethic," but they don't particularly respect the day-to-day slog of things. They really like extravagant emotional expression, big exercises in self-indulgence, and the sporadic risk-taking of heavy booze consumption, drugs, and dangerous recreations. Obviously, there are lots of exceptions, but I've been struck by the way that Southerners prefer the sporadic to the regular, emotional expression to emotional self-control, and violence of various kinds to working things out.

As Zinya shows, red-staters in general believe much more in spanking their kids than people in Connecticut. However, my experience is that Southerners also believe much more in indulging their kids than blue-staters. "Daddy's" spoiling their "little girls" is an especially prevalent image in Kentucky but I bet it's the same all over the South. It was hard for me to take my daughters into stores without somebody making a comment about spoiling my girls. I imagine the same indulgences apply to boys in ways that I'm not aware of. Expressions of family loyalty and love are also more prevalent and intense in the South than I remember in the North. In this sense, the emphasis on spanking in particularly and shaming in general would be evidence of wider swings of family emotional life than people might find in Connecticult, California, and urbanized areas in other blue states.

To the contrary, the urban professionals I've encountered in Philadelphia put an enormous emphasis on self-control and manners. Where Southerners cultivate a dramatic emotional expression, the professional blue-staters I know tend to view heightened emotional expression as bad manners, ignorant, or stupid. As a result, the range of polite expression tends to be much more narrow among blue state professionals than Southerners. The same is the case with the pockets of Northerners and Californians I know in Kentucky compared to the more local types. I think the greater emphasis on self-control among blue staters correlates with child-raising techniques that emphasize self-control. I know that my wife and I are cultivating internal self-control and self-discipline mechanisms in our daughters and that we both talk to them a lot about "how they think" in relation to their behavior rather than just their behavior.

How does this correlate with disciplinary strategies and attitudes toward punishment? In relation to Zinya's analysis, I would claim that blue-staters don't believe in spanking so much because they believe in cultivating internal self-discipline more than they believe in punishment. Conversely, red-staters (especially Southerners) believe in "external" punishments like spanking because such punishments are the primary means for controlling behavior. Not believing in self-discipline (at least to the extent of blue-staters), Southerners rely heavily on punishments like spanking as a way to keep children in line (when they're not indulging them). That's one of the underlying reasons why Southerners believe more in corporal punishment in schools and worry so much about "order" in schools in general. They don't have as much sense for self-discipline as those in blue-states. The preference for punishment over self-discipline also might be one of the reasons why Southerners believe more in imprisonment for crimes and war as an instrument of national policy.

What's my preference? I have to admit that I don't like either and tend to be as discomfited by too much in the ways of manners and self-control as I am by a lot of emotional extravagance. As a result, I break in both directions. As an academic, I exercise the self-discipline needed to define my job and and get my work done according to my own schedule rather than a given work schedule. However, the fact that I've married two women (one from North Carolina and another from Queens) who are more in the emotional extravagance mode means that the "Southern" mode has appeal as well. To the extent that my own child-rearing techniques reflect my views, I find that my second wife and I put a lot of emphasis on self-control in raising our daughters. In general, I think that some sort of balance is a good thing here.