When Christian Adults Joke About "Spanking" Small Children

It's Not Funny

When Christian adults talk about “spanking” children, it inevitably comes with humor. At this point, I’ve watched clips from countless sermons, read dozens of anecdotes, and engaged in many conversations online, and it never fails: adults like to laugh about children getting “spanked.”

I’ve come to believe that the laughter is not incidental. Whether it’s a marker of community-normalized cruelty, a trauma response, an unwillingness to return to our own vulnerable childhoods, a cover for the collective discomfort we all feel, or something else, the laughter forces us to ask: whatever one thinks about the ethics of “spanking,” why is a moment of painful punishment for a child . . . funny?

Humor is also a way Christians continue to minimize what is going on with the “right way” to spank. I’ve written before about the importance of considering what a “right way” kind of spanking is like for a small child, for siblings, for a parent, and for everyone down the road. We have good research that confirms that spanking is destructive and ineffective, we have courageous adults willing to identify the harmful fallout, we have solid alternatives, and yet many Christians continue to defend and hold onto this practice, often via collective humor.

I believe that one way to counteract this myth is to shatter the illusion and name what is actually going on. No more euphemisms. No more jokes. No more staying in churches where pastors laugh about this from the pulpit. We drag what is happening behind closed doors in many Christian families into the light.

This paddle looks like something a mother or grandmother made, given the handwriting and paint. I want to put this mother’s euphemistic language under the microscope as a case study of how we’ve come to the place where Christian adults casually normalize violence against children.

Let’s start with the anthropology in the recipe: a “naughty child” and a “steamed adult.” This is probably the most honest part of this whole horrible idea. An adult has deemed a child naughty, likely because of misbehavior (the “problem” remains undefined). This subtle dehumanization is dangerous. Rather than seeing undesirable behavior as something to be addressed through correction, growing a child’s skills, or problem-solving, adults perceive the child as being fundamentally flawed in some way. The solution parents are offered is to hit the misbehavior out of the naughty child. Day-in-day out practice reinforces this parental view of a child. Combined with ignorance regarding child development, neurodivergence, or disability, many parents who label their children “naughty,” “strong-willed,” “difficult,” or any number of monikers find themselves escalating their corporal punishment in order to achieve desired compliance.

The parent, however, gets more of a pass. They aren’t a “naughty parent” for being “steamed.” Parents are given the dignity of recognizing that overwhelming emotional responses sometimes guide behavior. “Steamed” identifies the frustration parents likely feel in a moment of conflict. Christian resources like to talk about “calm” spanking, but what they really mean is: a calm exterior. This recipe acknowledges the internal landscape of frustrated parents who reach for a paddle. They are mad, overwhelmed, and upset. Maybe they are triggered or feel disrespected or mad about “the problem.” The parents are given the opportunity to “cool off,” given a chance to reset and regulate. This offers a stark contrast to the typical expectations for children: insta-obedience and perfectly cheerful attitudes or instant regulation.

Unfortunately, what a parent “cooling off” often looks like in practice is an angry parent sending a child to their room to wait in fear for the inevitable punishment. Maybe the parent does cool off and regulate. Maybe not. In either case, they are still committed to “spanking.” I’m not sure if it’s better or worse to be a small child and have a raging parent spank you or a detached and calm one do it according to rules, but in either case, the child has been punished via isolation, punished via anticipated pain, and now punished via spanking.

Now let’s look at the semantics. The act of an adult using a tool to hit a child’s body is described in disturbing language: “frost a child’s bottom” with an “angelmaker” and “heaps of love.” It is worth noting that many adults who were spanked as children note confusing unwanted sexual arousal. For them, spanking was a form of CSA, or child sexual abuse. This makes sense, especially given the fact that when non-parent adults spank children, we perceive it as CSA.

Christians must reject this kind of sexually loaded language whenever we see it and properly name what is going on: an adult is using a tool to hit or beat a child on their buttocks or upper thighs in order to punish them and control their behavior. That is what is happening. A parent who chooses to do this must reckon with the reality of what they are doing.

“Angelmaker” is also dehumanizing language, painting children as either “naughty” or “angels.” Neither recognizes the humanity of children and defines them solely in terms of someone else’s perception of their behavior, messaging that comes with long term implications. “Heaps of love” is a kind of gaslighting that draws on the familiar Christian vocabulary that again and again tells people: actually, pain is love, and the people who hurt you do it because they love you. It is not difficult to see how this messaging grooms people for abuse. Adult children who were spanked as children attest to this, too, connecting dots between spanking-is-love and difficulty leaving relationships with intimate partner violence.

No doubt the idea here, much like the “calm spankings are good” train of thought, is that a parent’s intent is what determines the goodness of a spanking. If a parent tells themself their anger and frustration is really “heaps of love,” then that is what makes hitting their child with a wooden paddle ethical and good. Parents, let’s stop lying to ourselves. Intent does not mitigate impact. Furthermore, if a parent is upset enough to be “steamed,” it is just as likely that they are unleashing their fury on this “naughty child,” that it feels good to them to hit. This is something we don’t like to talk about, but the reality of child abuse and domestic violence requires us to be unflinchingly honest.

The “Scripture to taste” portion of this evil recipe is outrageous and should make Christians angry. This is a kind of taking the Lord’s name in vain, of using what we believe to be the Word of God to justify cruelty. This is the stuff of millstones, the stumbling blocks laid before generations of “little ones,” who now are left to untangle images of an angry, violent God who deals out suffering and pain and calls it “good” and “love.”

It’s revealing that the woman who made and painted this paddle didn’t bother including specific verses, because nowhere does the Bible justify beating small children in God’s name. Do not let yourselves be deceived: “the rod” Proverbs are not about spanking toddlers and preschoolers, and Hebrews 12 is not parenting advice.

And don’t be mistaken. This is not a one-off. There are whole cottage industries where Christians make implements and tools that they sell as “the rod” or with cutesy names and inscriptions like “the board of education” or Bible verses. They hang them up on walls or in doorways to remind children of what a parent could do to them. This wooden paddle, which, from the picture is rather thick, is not at all intended to be decorative. Even if it were, the messaging alone is destructive.

I am angry on behalf of the children who grew up in the home where a mother decided to create this paddle, angry on behalf of the countless children who still live under the threat and impact of domestic violence, angry on behalf of the generations of parents who have been deceived in this way, angry that, as a Christian, my community still defends and laughs at this.

Christians: we can be done with this.