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Childhood spanking is not as detrimental as we thought, according to new study
The debate might have finally been settled on whether you should spank your kids, with a new piece of research suggestion it’s not quite the self-confidence wrecking abuse that many of us believe.
Raising children has never been easy, and while the latest research has provided parents with more information than ever, sometimes that’s not as helpful as you think. Just recently, we learned how fussy eating is down to genetics and not disobedience.
The spanking your kids debate has raged for decades
It used to be a very common practice to bend your kids over in public and give them a generous spanking for their attitude, disobedience, or just about any other reason parents could think of. That trend has somewhat dissipated in recent years as attitudes surrounding parenting evolve.
Nonetheless, parenting is still a heavily debated subject despite gentle parenting becoming increasingly popular in America.
At the start of the month, Marriage & Family Review published a study that called into question the belief that spanking leaves an unfixable mark on your child. It seems that’s not quite the case.
Oklahoma State University’s Robert E. Larzelere set out to learn more about the effect of spanking after previous studies failed to account for factors like existing behavioral issues in kids.
Using data from existing studies that tracked kids over several years, the team accounted for behavior prior to spanking to better understand its effect. They paid special attention to four key areas: externalizing problems, described as aggression, internalizing problems like anxiety, cognitive performance, and social competence.
The results were surprising
After careful analysis, Robert Larzelere and his team said that spanking accounted for just 1% of the child’s outcomes. This seemingly suggests that the effect of spanking is not as severe as we thought, though there is a clear line.
Although it is clear that spanking is correlated with adverse outcomes such as delinquency, does it cause those outcomes (like smoking) or not (like hospitalization, which is also associated with worse outcomes compared to those never hospitalized)? he questioned, Answer so far: Spanking does not cause harmful outcomes unless it is used too often or too severely or out of meanness rather than out of concern for the childs welfare.
The study also noted how effective spanking is as a parenting technique, after all, if it doesn’t actually work then it’s pointless. Spanking was most effective for kids aged 2 to 6, showing a slight reduction in poor behavior, and less effective as kids reached ages 8 to 11. Spanking those age groups was also associated with a greater chance of negative outcomes.
Although different things work for different children (or for the same child at different times), spanking can be an effective disciplinary tool under some circumstances, Larzelere told PsyPost. The most effective way to use spanking is two open-handed swats to the bottom of 2- to 6-year-olds when they refuse to cooperate with milder disciplinary responses, such as time-out.
