Never raise your hand to your children - it leaves your midsection unprotected.

Robert Orben (1927–2023) was an American comedy writer and aphorist known for one-line jokes and wry “rules” about everyday life, widely circulated in joke books and quotation collections. This quip belongs to that tradition: a mock piece of parental advice that pivots from the expected moral warning against hitting children to a self-interested, slapstick rationale. It reflects mid-to-late 20th-century stand-up and gag-writing sensibilities—brief, punchy, and built on misdirection—rather than a documented speech tied to a particular event. The line is typically encountered as a standalone aphorism attributed to Orben in compilations.

The humor comes from a sudden reversal of ethical framing. The opening—“Never raise your hand to your children”—sounds like a principled injunction against corporal punishment. The punchline undercuts that expectation by offering a selfish, physical-comedy reason: raising your arm exposes your “midsection” to a counterpunch. The joke satirizes moralizing advice by replacing compassion with self-preservation, while also implying that violence invites retaliation and escalation. As an aphorism, it uses misdirection to make a serious topic (parental violence) briefly visible, then deflects into absurdity—typical of Orben’s style of compressing social commentary into a single comic twist.