“Bachelor”’s Madison Prewett and Husband Spark Backlash After Saying It’ll Be ‘Hilarious’ to Spank Their Baby Daughter Hosanna

Madison Prewett and her husband Grant Troutt are sparking backlash after making some controversial comments about spanking their daughter.

The couple, who welcomed their baby daughter Hosanna this past January, recently spoke on their podcast Stay True about whether they’d spank their daughter when she is older. The two said they’d both be open to using spanking as a form of discipline and said that their beliefs were supported by the Bible.

Troutt went on to say that it would be “hilarious” when they started using spanking as a way of punishing their daughter.

“The Lord’s discipline is always off the heels of disobedience or sin,” he said during the podcast episode. “So think about it, when you have a child, you don’t just discipline them for being good and obeying you, right?”

“Like, if Hosanna obeys us, we’re not like, ‘Come here girl, come here. Alright, pull ’em down, get that, you know, Mama, get here,’ ” continued Troutt. “Which will be hilarious, by the way, when we start spanking Hosanna. Which we will, on the record, because the Bible clearly says, ‘Folly is bound up in a child, but discipline drives it far away.'”

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Prewett, who was the runner-up on season 24 of The Bachelor, agreed with her husband and also cited the Bible.

“It also specifically says discipline with a rod…Well, some people could say, ‘You discipline them with time-outs.’ Hold on, it says with a rod,” Prewett said.

Reps for Troutt and Prewett didn’t immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.

According to a 2019 statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics, corporal punishment should not be used as a method to discipline children.

The follow-up advisory — published 20 years after its “Guidance for Effective Discipline” said parents should “be encouraged” not to use spanking for punishments — doctors noted that “there appears to be a strong association between spanking children and subsequent adverse outcomes.”

The Academy’s guidelines now strongly oppose using spanking as a method of discipline by listing the consequences of doing so, broken down by age group. For example, children younger than 18 months old have a higher risk of physical injury, while it can lead to mental-health issues down the road.

The statement also says that the act of spanking in itself can lead to an aggressive, conflict-ridden relationship between a parent and a child of any age. The AAP states that spanking can also lead to outcomes that are similar to those seen in individuals who have been physically abused as children.

In the comments of Prewett and Troutt’s podcast episode on YouTube, many people criticized the couple for their view on corporal punishment.

“There is nothing godly about laughing at the thought of harming a child. If your interpretation of faith leads you to justify violence against an infant—especially as entertainment—you are not practicing Christianity, you are distorting it into cruelty,” one person wrote.

“Children are not your property. They are not born broken,” they continued. “They are not here to bear the weight of your unresolved trauma disguised as ‘discipline.’ What you’re describing is not parenting, it’s abuse. And no scripture condones the smug enjoyment of it.”

Another specifically called out the fact that the couple laughed about spanking their baby.

“Laughing about spanking a child is just disgusting. Shame on you! Were you spanked as a child?” the viewer wrote.

In a press release about the AAP’s policy statement from 2019, Dr. Robert D. Sege elaborated on why parents shouldn’t use corporal punishment on their kids.

“The purpose of discipline is to teach children good behavior and support normal child development,” Dr. Robert D. Sege wrote in a press release about the policy statement which Sege, a pediatrician, helped author. “Effective discipline does so without the use of corporal punishment or verbal shaming.”

Sege continued in the release, “Children who experience repeated use of corporal punishment tend to develop more aggressive behaviors, increased aggression in school, and an increased risk of mental health disorders and cognitive problems. In cases where warm parenting practices occurred alongside corporal punishment, the link between harsh discipline and adolescent conduct disorder and depression remained.”

At the time, the AAP also provided alternative suggestions for disciplining both younger and older children.

“The best way to improve behavior is to give children a lot of attention when they are doing something you like and remove your attention when they are doing something you do not like,” the group advised.

Read the original article on People