There have been many review
studies on the topic of spanking children spanning the last 40 years. Next up,
I will give you Dr. Gershoff’s, the leading researcher of the anti-spanking
opinion.
Most anti-spanking literature
involves editorials, reviews, and commentaries. Lyons, Anderson, and Larson
reviewed articles published between 1984 and 1993 that addressed corporal
punishment. 83% of those 132 articles
were editorials or commentaries without scientific data to support the conclusion. The remaining 17% of studies included severe
physical abuse used with spanking. Editorials
tend to be opinion-driven and not necessarily scientific.
Both Larzelere and Gershoff’s
conducted large review studies on the same subject. Both included 18 of the same studies. The Gershoff review included 70 studies the Larzelere
review did not. Dr. Gershoff used a less
restrictive definition of spanking, 65% included corporal punishment studies that
allowed punching, hitting with a belt, striking hard with an object, and
beatings. The majority of published research denouncing spanking suffers from the
design flaw that corporal punishment is addressed as one group, without differentiating
spanking and abuse. Please keep this fact in mind as you read below.
The literature review by Dr.
Elizabeth Gershoff (2002) consisted of 88 studies. She examined the relationship between
corporal punishment and compliance of the child, aggression, criminal and
antisocial behavior, quality of the parent child relationship, mental health,
and abuse. Spanking was associated with
immediate compliance, considered to be the only positive finding. Her analysis found detrimental effects in
children over 6 years of age when spanking was used more than three times per
week, though the definition of spanking was not clearly defined, which makes interpretation
difficult.
The consistent finding was
spanking frequency positively correlates to aggression and misconduct. It is very important to note the difference
between “correlation” and “causation.” Because
of its methods and by her own self-critique, Dr. Gershoff’s meta-analysis
cannot determine whether spanking causes increased misbehavior or whether
difficult child temperament causes parents to use discipline more
frequently.
“Spanking” was associated
with decreased internalization of morals, diminished quality of the
parent-child relationship, poorer child mental health, and anti-social behavior. Dr. Gershoff emphasizes her study could not
support the conclusion spanking causes damage, nonetheless, her study results are
consistently used to support spanking bans.
Dr. Murray Strauss is a
proponent of the idea children who are spanked are more likely to resolve
conflicts with violence as adults. His
studies are “cross-sectional” meaning survey-based. He collects information retrospectively and
relies on the memory of parents. His
studies support the assertion that spanking produces undesired life outcomes,
such as alcoholism, marital violence, depression, and suicidal ideation. Evaluation often focused on spanking
adolescents, instead of limiting spanking to young children, the only age group
pediatricians and psychologists support for an occasional spank.
Conclusions are therefore
derived from “physical punishment during the teen years,” with teenagers being
hit more than 30 times per year. Spanking
teenagers has never been a recommended intervention and is highly unlikely to
be effective. Evidence for Dr. Strauss’
conclusions disappears when effects of spanking are limited to children 2-8
years of age. Interestingly enough, some
cross-sectional studies linked childhood aggressiveness to maternal
permissiveness and negativity even more than abusive physical discipline
measures correlated, but that is a discussion for another time.
Reviewing the anti-spanking
literature revealed no randomized clinical trials exist proving spanking is
ineffective or harmful. Many challenges were
identified when drawing conclusions from Dr. Gershoff’s review study. Spanking is defined loosely, making the
definition subjective. The research tends to be correlational; therefore, cannot
support causation for spanking being beneficial or detrimental.
Important aspects of
parenting are unaccounted for such as nurturance, other discipline method use, parental
attitude, or the child’s misbehavior. No
other discipline methods were studied in conjunction with spanking. The final most concerning issue is that
frequent misbehavior and challenging child temperament can be predictive of
subsequent child behavior problems could lead to misinterpretation of the
results.
What all experts who research
corporal punishment can agree upon is the developmental outcome of
child-rearing is primarily determined by the overall quality of the
parent-child relationship. Immediate compliance
clearly follows spanking, age tends to moderate the outcome of spanking
(detrimental outcomes are more likely with children over 8) especially for
10-12 years of age, and frequent corporal punishment is associated with more
negative outcomes. Interestingly, Dr. Gershoff
agrees that harmful effects of punishment do not differ when spanking, verbal
punishment, loss of privileges, and grounding were compared.
I do hope this information is
helpful to you all!
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