What Candace Cameron Bure And The Duggars Have In Common: They Don’t Spare The Rod

Candace Cameron Bure’s new Netflix series premieres tomorrow, just a few days after it was announced that the Duggars would be returning to TV for a full season of Jill & Jessa: Counting On. Fuller House and the Duggars’ new series will both be considered family-friendly programming, and it’s highly unlikely that either series will show parents taking part in the controversial act of corporal punishment. However, Candace Cameron Bure and the Duggars are spanking advocates.

Us Weekly recently reported that the Duggars’ new series will premiere March 15 on TLC. The Jill & Jessa: Counting On preview doesn’t feature Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar at all, but, as the Inquisitr previously reported, the controversial parents will likely appear on the show.

The announcement of the ultra-conservative, hyper-religious family’s return to TV is causing quite a stir over on the Freejinger website, a forum where critics of the Duggars discuss the family and their religious views. The topic of the Fuller House series came up in one thread, and a commenter pointed out that Candace Cameron Bure is a fan of the same book about corporal punishment that the Duggars have recommended: To Train Up a Child by Michael and Debi Pearl.

“I didn’t know Candace Cameron Bure recommended the Pearls. That makes me sick,” commenter HarryPotterFan wrote. “And gets to be on the ‘family friendly’ Full House reboot. Know what isn’t family friendly? Child abuse.”

Another Freejinger user with the screen name DuggarWatch used the Internet Archive to find the deleted 2004 blog post where Candace Cameron Bure recommended the Pearls’ book.

“The books that guideline raising our children are the Bible, Shepherding a Child’s Heart by Tedd Tripp and To Train Up a Child by Michael & Debi Pearl,” Bure wrote. “My parenting tip of the day is… consistency; it’s key.”

According to the New York Times, the deaths of multiple children have been linked to the advice in Michael and Debi Pearl’s To Train Up A Child. One of these children was whipped for hours with a piece of plumbing tube, which is Michael Pearl’s favorite “spanking instrument.” Another child died of hypothermia and malnutrition after being starved and forced to sleep outside in a barn. She was also regularly whipped with a piece of plumbing tube.

Michael Pearl has said that his methods of punishment are modeled on “the same principles the Amish use to train their stubborn mules.”

ChicagoNow reports that the Duggars once endorsed To Train Up A Child on their blog, but the post has been removed. Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar have never been shown spanking their children on TV, but, as Gawker reports, one of the Duggar children did tell police that the parents “have a rod.” Last year, In Touch Weekly obtained police reports documenting the incestuous sexual molestation that went on in the Duggar household a little over a decade ago. According to the police reports, an unnamed Duggar child revealed that Jim Bob and Michelle used a rod to spank all of their children.

While the Duggars have been careful to avoid talking about corporal punishment, Candace Cameron Bure has not. In a 2008 post on Christian Women Online, the mother of three wrote about how she uses spanking to discipline her children and how she views corporal punishment as a “loving” act.

“A spanking is NEVER done in anger or in rage. It is a loving correction done with explanation and prayer to simply teach a child right from wrong,” Candace wrote.

“The Bible fully supports ‘the rod of correction,’ but again, never in abuse, anger or for a parent’s selfish reasons to control his children.”

However, To Train Up a Child is more about control and less about love. Patheos shared the excerpt below that encourages parents to “defeat” their children by spanking them.

“If you have to sit on him to spank him then do not hesitate. And hold him there until he is surrendered. Prove that you are bigger, tougher, more patiently enduring and are unmoved by his wailing. Defeat him totally. Accept no conditions for surrender. No compromise. You are to rule over him as a benevolent sovereign. Your word is final.”

Unfortunately for the children of the Duggars, Candace Cameron Bure, and other parents who spank their kids, studies have shown that harsh corporal punishment like that advocated by the Pearls “may have detrimental effects on trajectories of brain development” in children. According to CNN, children who are spanked regularly actually have less gray matter in their brains, and they’re more likely to be aggressive and lack self control. Elizabeth Gershoff, an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said that she’s never done a study on spanking that’s found that the act produces positive results.

Are you surprised that Candace Cameron Bure is a fan of the Pearls’ controversial book?

[Photo by Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images]