Discipline in the Book of Proverbs

Abstract

"It does not take much reading in the area of childrearing to realize that the current debate on disciplining children is a hotbed of contention.1 In fact, on a current website the debate is largely divided between fundamentalists and evangelicals (those who believe in "inerrancy") on the one side and the rest of the scholarly world on the other.2 There has always been a wide variety of childrearing advice given to American parents, much of which has been contradictory.3 In his bestselling book on childrearing from the 1920s, John B. Watson, the founder of behaviorism, warned parents against displaying love toward their children.4 By 1948, a more balanced approach between loving and disciplining a child was promoted by Benjamin Spock in his classic book, Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, though very little is said about spanking"