Unsurprisingly, the photo went insanely viral. Currently, it has more than 180,000 shares and almost 10,000 likes. But just because it has a ton of shares doesn’t mean the reaction to the photo has been a positive one. In fact, it’s sparked a major fight among parents. “Parents if you let your child act this way, you’re the problem with our snowflake society today!” he wrote in his post. “You don’t have to beat your child but you do have to show them others in this world don’t wanna hear their crybaby little ass!” Can you imagine, as a grown adult, if you started crying and someone’s response was to hit you until you stopped? We can all say whatever we want about how our parents used to hit us and we turned out “just fine,” but I feel like it’s hard to prove you’re “just fine” when your response to a crying small child is to smack his “crybaby little ass.” Most importantly, researchers found that spanking and other types of physical abuse don’t really differ in the way parents claim that they do. Elizabeth Gershoff, one of the researchers, said in a press release, “We as a society think of spanking and physical abuse as distinct behaviors. Yet our research shows that spanking is linked with the same negative child outcomes as abuse, just to a slightly lesser degree.” Whether you think this dad’s spanking booth is hilarious or heinous, it doesn’t make people a “snowflake” to carefully consider the decisions they make as a parent.
