To Spank or not to Spank - Page 2

Some articles from a search on google scholar. In a nutshell, the research on corporal punishment suggests it's better not to do it.

I'm still not sure why parents want to hit their children when they don't have to. If you can't control your child, read some books or ask for advice.

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Corporal Punishment in Adolescence and Physical Assaults on Spouses in Later Life: What Accounts for the Link? (in Corporal Punishment and Child Sexual Abuse)

Murray A. Straus; Carrie L. Yodanis

Journal of Marriage and the Family, Vol. 58, No. 4. (Nov., 1996), pp. 825-841.

Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=002...3E2.0.CO%3B2-2

Abstract: There is considerable evidence that corporal punishment is associated with the subsequent aggression of children, and there is recent evidence that later in life this aggression includes physical assaults on spouses. Yet there has been no direct test of either modeling of cultural norms or other processes that could account for the link between corporal punishment and partner violence. Using data on 4,401 couples who participated in the National Family Violence Survey, this article reports such a test. The theoretical model specified three processes: social learning, depression, and truncated development of nonviolent conflict-resolution skills. Logistic regression was used to estimate separate models for men and women. The findings are consistent with the theoretical model. Because corporal punishment of adolescents occurs in over half of U.S. families, the findings suggest that elimination of this practice can reduce some of the psychological and social processes that increase the likelihood of future marital violence and perhaps other violence as well.

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On Discipline (in Commentaries)

Joan McCord

Psychological Inquiry, Vol. 8, No. 3. (1997), pp. 215-217.

Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=104...3E2.0.CO%3B2-J

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Discipline and Deviance: Physical Punishment of Children and Violence and Other Crime in Adulthood (in Presidential Address: Punishment and Violence)

Murray A. Straus

Social Problems, Vol. 38, No. 2. (May, 1991), pp. 133-154.

Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=003...3E2.0.CO%3B2-4

Abstract: This paper presents a theoretical model of the antecedents and consequences of the use of physical punishment by parents and teachers and preliminary tests of that theory using data from a variety of sources, most notably the 3,300 children and 6,000 couples in the National Family Violence Survey. Over 90 percent of American parents use physical punishment to correct misbehavior. The findings support the theory that although physical punishment may produce conformity in the immediate situation, in the longer run it tends to increase the probability of deviance, including delinquency in adolescence and violent crime inside and outside the family as an adult. However, since the findings are based on cross sectional studies, experimental studies are needed to test the causal nature of the relationships. If the results of such experiments support the theory, important implications emerge for both individual parents and national policy. For individual parents, the theory suggests that parents who use no physical punishment will, on the average, have better behaved children. At the national policy level, the theory suggests that one of the steps needed to achieve a society with a minimum of crime and violence is for parents to avoid all use of physical punishment.

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Corporal Punishment as a Stressor among Youth (in Conflict and Distress)

Heather A. Turner; David Finkelhor

Journal of Marriage and the Family, Vol. 58, No. 1. (Feb., 1996), pp. 155-166.

Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=002...2.0.CO%3B2-%23

Abstract: This article addresses the impact of corporal punishment by parents on the psychological well-being of youth. The present research used the National Youth Victimization Prevention Study (NYVPS), a nationally representative sample of 1,042 boys and 958 girls, ages 10-16. Based on a stress-process framework, we examine: (a) the effects of frequency of corporal punishment experienced by youth ages 10-16 on psychological distress and clinically relevant depression and (b) the moderating influence of parental support on the associations between corporal punishment and psychological outcomes. Controlling for sociodemographic factors and physical abuse, our findings indicate a positive association between the frequency of corporal punishment and both psychological distress and depression. Although distress is greatest at higher frequencies of punishment, the association is also present at low and moderate levels of corporal punishment. An interaction between corporal punishment and parental support was also evident, showing that the impact of frequent punishment relative to no corporal punishment was greater in the context of high parental support.

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Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review
Publisher: Springer Netherlands
ISSN: 1096-4037 (Paper) 1573-2827 (Online)
DOI: 10.1023/A:1021891529770
Issue: Volume 2, Number 2
Date: June 1999
Pages: 55 - 70
Corporal Punishment by American Parents: National Data on Prevalence, Chronicity, Severity, and Duration, in Relation to Child and Family Characteristics

Murray A. Straus Contact Information and Julie H. Stewart

Abstract We present data on corporal punishment (CP) by a nationally representative sample of 991 American parents interviewed in 1995. Six types of CP were examined: slaps on the hand or leg, spanking on the buttocks, pinching, shaking, hitting on the buttocks with a belt or paddle, and slapping in the face. The overall prevalence rate (the percentage of parents using any of these types of CP during the previous year) was 35% for infants and reached a peak of 94% at ages 3 and 4. Despite rapid decline after age 5, just over half of American parents hit children at age 12, a third at age 14, and 13% at age 17. Analysis of chronicity found that parents who hit teenage children did so an average of about six times during the year. Severity, as measured by hitting the child with a belt or paddle, was greatest for children age 512 (28% of such children). CP was more prevalent among African American and low socioeconomic status parents, in the South, for boys, and by mothers. The pervasiveness of CP reported in this article, and the harmful side effects of CP shown by recent longitudinal research, indicates a need for psychology and sociology textbooks to reverse the current tendency to almost ignore CP and instead treat it as a major aspect of the socialization experience of American children; and for developmental psychologists to be cognizant of the likelihood that parents are using CP far more often than even advocates of CP recommend, and to inform parents about the risks involved.

Punishment - physical - corporal - spanking - parent - age - infant - gender - SES - ethnic - region

Don't agree entirely. They also have to understand what is and what is not an acceptable reaction to something. Often tantrums are for no good reason, not even fatigue. We will sometime give a timeout if the tantrum is ridiculous. My daughter will be taught to understand that screaming and kicking and flipping out is not acceptable just because the answer is "no" to something.

Choices are good, but they don't always work. We use choices like that as well, but sometimes a spank is the only way. When your child scream "no" at you a few times over and refuses to sit on time out, then what are you going to do...give him a choice? Don't give me the "children will be depressed" bullshit. Spanking, done correctly and without anger, will not cause that. Period.

Yes it does. I teach a learning and memory class, and one time a few years ago we read this article along with the commentaries on it. Here's a summary.
They find that spanking does "work:" It is associated with compliance on the part of the child. But I think the most interesting other finding is that it is negatively associated with internalization - in other words, kids don't learn from being spanked.

The other issue is that spanking doesn't have much effect one way or the other, long-term. Sure, it has some negative effects, but not very big correlations. That's also consistent with most of the other findings in this area - small differences in parenting techniques don't have much influence on how kids turn out.

I also thought it was interesting that the biggest correlation they found was between spanking and abuse. In other words, the parents who spank were also the ones who were actually abusive. I'm sure all the parents who spank will say they aren't abusive, but the correlation is there.

we spank, but only use it as the last resort and of several different punishments. we have a 4 and 2 year old. haven't spanked the 2 year old. they need to be able to communicate and fully understand what you are saying. we use nose in the corner, time out, witholding things like tv, computer, dvd, candy, desserts etc. the BIG thing is the two parents work together as a team, follow through is key. look at the 911 nanny she has good insights.
we don't spank the 2 year old, limited things for her. nose in the corner time out etc. now the older one, we spank but VERY infrequently. what ever you do it's more important that both parents agree and not fight each other. i once used tobassco sauce on my son when he had "filth mouth" worked great i only had to do that 2 times and then show the bottle to him and he'd calm right down. now my new wife thinks that was cruel--. but says her mom used soap--now she says after many years at least the tobassco is a food the key is for it to work and you shouldn't have to use it but a few times over the years.. the idea is to choose something you only have to do rarely. and use many other techniques ratcheting things up a bit. things work for my 2 y/o but not my 4 y/o each is different. my 4 y/o is very stubborn and head strong and needs a much firmer hand, my 2 y/o works with nose inthe corner and time out.

the idea is stop the bad behaviour, for our 4 year old a "good star chart" that she made up worked for misbehaving in church, it works ...so far. and she wants those stars. she gets stars when she is avoids bad behavior but also gets them for positive things like compassion, helping others and thoughtfulness. we also praise 5:1 meaning for everthing we say she is doing wrong we also during the day tell her at least 5 things she is doing well. the least little things need praise too. don't lose opportunies to praise good behavior....but we also don't feel our children do no wrong like some other permissive parents we know.

children need guidance, learn to say no, and don't give in to everything, pick your battles.

Thank you.

A little bit of depression is good. Anger and aggression are good too, within limits. The mistake of the quoted reports is that they think a prozac-stabilized life is the ideal behavior. It's not. The huge amount of people on anti-depressants these days is a worrying figure: might it be possible to reduce by making kids learn to control all of their emotions, instead of just a saccharine subset of them?

When your child runs out into the street, are you going to stop and give them choices? There are times when you need immediate, unquestioning obedience from a child. Spanking can help you achieve that. As others have said, children and situations are different, and spanking is but one tool. Would you try to fix an entire car with only a 13mm box end wrench? Is the 13mm box end wrench really good at what it does in the right context? You bet. Consistency, proper limits, and discipling out of love are all much more important than spanking.

Acceptable reactions to things are mostly learned in older ages (like 7-13) - I was thinking of younger kids. In my experience, kids who are hushed up have more temper tantrums than kids who are allowed to vent.

This all presupposes consistant limits, though. Parents who have inconsistant rules will end up with kids who tantrum way too much, just because it is unnerving for the kids to have changing rules.

If you let the kid throw a tantrum and don't reward them by fulfilling whatever want they had, they'll learn that it does nothing for them.

You know, a kid that's younger than 18 months or so doesn't even recognize himself in a mirror. That's a small test, but full-grown chimps and bonobos do recognize themselves in a mirror. Kids are sub-human, and may not always act rationally if the stimulus is not convincing enough. Or, when being ignored might just scream progressively louder.

The continual failure of your anti-spanking argument is that you are treating a very complex thing -- the behavior of a child -- as an isolated lab experiment. There is too much variance in children and also in the methods applied for discipline to allow any broad study to provide pertinent data for an isolated case (i.e. your child). I don't think anyone here is suggesting that spanking should be the only method used to discipline a child, but without it you are depriving the child of the most basic behavioral experience: failure equals pain. Non corporeal forms of "pain" may suffice for certain children, but not for all.

As an aside, there are interesting side-hypotheses to this debate. Such as, which character traits lead to successful application of spanking in childhood? I'd argue that people who are very defiant, self-confident, and predisposed to fight (rather than "flight") might only respond to corporal punishment, and probably have the gall later in life not to have been affected much by it. That would be the "alpha" characteristic from the context of "alpha-male." A lot of people wonder why some boys, particularly those on sports teams or with certain organizations seem to enjoy both sides of hazing. Well, that's your pool of people who in youth could probably be positively affected by spanking.

Unless you want to be able to predict when it's safe to be in public. I'd rather not have to get my 4 year-old's permission.

That makes me explain an argument I had previously considered making which is, if the kid doesn't have the capacity for self- control, why physically injure him for something he might not even understand he's doing, or is incapable of preventing himself from doing?

Because even pavlov's dog understands basic, behavioral stimuli.

Spline, put away the armchair psychology.

It's exhausting and you have no credibility to be making those arguments.

If you find research to support that, great.

Edit: Ah, jeez. Sorry I was in a really bad mood. No girlfriend for spanking related activities Kidding, I'm not a fan of that type.

Damn...
I thought this was about "Should I spank the twin sister of my girlfriend?" thread!

I sure am.

Re-post that in this thread and it will, for all intents and purposes, explode.

In adolecents that is true, BUT when it comes to kids under say 4-5, it may be good, their reasoning skills may not be as developed -- they dont understand the physical damage that getting hit by a car can do; but spanking can give some association; they kid may think "last time I went into the street, I got spanked, I dont want that again!" Spanking is a teaching tool more than a punishment tool.

Well hubba-hubba!

Giggiddy Goo!
</quagmire>

you act like there's some sort of switch that kicks in and takes over for making decisions, and discounts anything that happened in early childhood. sure, the specifics of childhood are exactly carried onwards (unless especially traumatic or repetitive), but in broad strokes, good children, by-and-large, become good people who want to do good things (or at least what they have learned to be good, which is a completely different thread altogether). it's a "social language" you learn, just like small children who take language immersion classes during their formative language building years are EONS ahead of others in terms of multi-lingualism and other multi-faceted thinking skills. they don't know why they are more adept at such things, they just ARE, and the same holds true for social interaction. there are stories of the random samplings, though, of people coming out of terrible circumstances to become ideal citizens, and ideal families creating horrible adults later in life. but we usually catch these stories in the media -- becoming a world or industry leader, or, by contrast, a serial killer -- so we see one instance, and think it's more widespread than it actually is.

my only personal experience to all this is that my dad spanked me... i never knew such pain, and he only ever used his hand, but i was terrified of it. i turned out okay, yet when i recently saw a woman whacking the hell out of her son's behind the other day at the mall for some transgression, it just seemed brutal and unnecessary from the other side of the looking glass.

I have an interesting take on the subject. Recently, our culture has made physical confrontation the most taboo interaction between people.

While fighting and physical violence is generally not desireable, it seems to have been overly demonized. People no longer even entertain the possibility that it might be the lesser of two evils.

For instance, physical bullying is considered the epitomy of evil. Yet verbal and coercive bullying is almost encouraged.

This phenomenon is also observable in our attitude toward the spanking of children. This is unfortunate because verbally and physically enforced punishment are equally traumatizing to a child. Physical abuse is normally accompanied by emotional/verbal abuse, and that, in my opinion, is what ends up leading to serious problems later in life.

A child can emotionally recover from clear-cut and consistently applied corporal punishment. Inconsistent verbal intimidation / behavior modification can take decades to come back from.

I'm not backing one over the other. Rather, I'm pointing out that we've overly demonized physical confrontation when compared to verbal confrontation. Both can be traumatizing and both can be affective in raising a child.

physical punishment is, hands-down, disgusting. To resort to corporal punishment is the mark of a failed parent.

This may make some of you angry - that's fine.

Further, the use of *any* object (hair brush, belt, etc) when punishing a child is considered --child abuse-- & I wouldn't hesitate to call Child Protective Services on anyone I saw doing this.

I can assure parents, as a parent, that if you "need" to spank your child, you simply aren't educated enough on how to be a parent..and how to be a good person in general. There are many, many ways of negotiating and there is a wealth of information "out there" which can help any parent raise a child minus the violence.

My god - if you were out in the world and your wife/husband did something you didn't like, would you paddle them until they relented to your point of view? Of course not - and, technically, if you did...and it was non-consensual...you would go to jail on domestic abuse chareges. So, may I ask, where the hell did people get the idea it's OK to committ violence against a defenseless child?

And family life has nothing to do with it?

I really don't think it does as much as people bill it as having.

That is correct. Spanking however, is not a punishment, but an educational tool.


Do you also call highway patrol everytime you see someone speeding?
Again, we're not talking about punishment... rather education.


And you know this how? Do you have any data to support that?


Who/ what is your god?

Did you have an abusive father or something? You seem to be stuck on violence, child abuse, domestic abuse, and all of that other shit.
Violence, punishment, abuse has nothing to do with spaking (beating a child is something very different) a child. Education does.

skatman, the research does not support what you posted. The use of corporal punishment is negatively associated with internalization (i.e., education) and positively associated with physical abuse. That's not true for every single parent and every single child, 100% of the time (what is?), but those are the associations that the research on spanking shows.

"The research" of course refering to a select batch of studies from a particular culture/mindset/time-in-history. There is certainly not a scientific consensus on this topic.

You can discount any science with that kind of comment, but the fact is, a great deal of research does exist on this topic. And it's not "research" in quotes. It's research: It's what we've found to be true, in comparison to people just making stuff up. At the very least, one should provide a specific criticism of why this research could be wrong or misleading, rather than just this kind of vague "no research is ever valid" comment.

You are "educating" your child by inflicting pain. Doesn't that sound sinister to you?

Easy there, science isn't being discounted. Rather, it's being asserted that there isn't scientific consensus on the subject of corporal punishment.

When analyzing the results of a behavioral modification technique, defining "net good" is difficult. This is why there isn't a consensus. It isn't like we're talking about an empirical measurement here.

The comment that it's from "a particular culture/mindset/time-in-history" sounded to me like you were discounting science. But in my judgment there is a scientific consensus about it. The only debate about it is whether it is genuinely harmful or just not helpful. You can look at some of the comments from many of the experts in that area in the APA link I provided above.


I don't know what you mean here. If we're not talking empirical measurement, what is it exactly? The studies reviewed in that paper I linked aren't philosophical pieces. It's a meta-analysis of empirical studies. Sure, things like compiance and internalization and aggressiveness are difficult to measure, but just about everything is difficult to measure. That doesn't make it any less empirical.

Take a step back and look at what you're trying to prove. The achievement of "net good" when choosing how to raise a child.

For people less absolutely fixated on physical aggression, scientific studies focus on completely different measures for determining if a particular behavior modification technique is "good".

It is easy to get lost in one's culture and not even realize one's own bias. Empirical measures aren't what is being argued here. Its the relative relevance of said measures that are in question.

Hey, no problem. But I try not to make conclusions on things I don't know much about. I try to frame it as a hypothesis, which may get lost in the manifesto-like nature of typical message board discussion. Part of the reason in may seem exhausting is because I spend too much time trying to cover my tracks. (Or at least I hope I do.)

Very interesting topic and some very good posts
indeed.

I've got an 8 year old.

Statistics (sorry i don't have them available in English)
regarding this subject tell me, that almost every
one who spanks his/her child, has been spanked
in his/her own childhood previously. Think about that.

As someone else mentioned above, parents are in
charge of their children and not vice versa. Spanking
the children is always a sign of losing self control.
Think about yourself first, who is in charge, YOU.

The bottom line is:
Do not spank, find other ways to communicate.
Communication is good, Spanking is not a part
of that what i call successful Communication
and partnership.

my 2 cents

You realize that you just openly admitted to child abuse . . .

Congratulations.


So?


Of course that is not universally (or even predominently) true.


Of course spanking isn't the only "tool" in (healthy) parental "tool box".


It certainly can be.


If parents are "in charge" and children are not. How is there a "partnership"?

Parents and their children are not "partners" in the child rearing.

You realize that you just openly admitted to having a broken sarcasm detector . . .

I don't see any contradiction so far.


Child rearing? Anyway, actually i consider parents and their children
as "partners" in the sense that parents and their children have an
informal, say, (hidden) family contract, to achieve a common goal.
Common Goals are in the first place: values regarding social behaviour
(which is a matter to be hammered out later).
While growing up children are coming closer and closer
to the goals parents have proposed firstly. Parents are responsible
for the Goals, but parents and their children try to achieve the
goals as "partners".
I know i've put it pretty simple, maybe you've got the pic.

cheers