Should you spank your children to discipline them or you should not spank them and use other methods to control their bad behavior? It's an age old question among parents, pediatricians and child care experts that still brings up an often heated controversy.
Some governments, in the United States and around the world either have banned or considering banning spanking and other types of physical or corporal punishment, even for parents disciplining their own children at home.
Such a legal ban has already been proposed in Massachusetts. New Zealand just finished conducting a nationwide mail-in poll on the question. The poll results will not be binding on the New Zealand legislature.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reports that as of March 2009, at least 24 governments have banned spanking, even by a child's parents. They include Sweden, Norway, Finland and Austria.
Although parents have used spanking or slapping for generations, recent psychological and scientific studies indicate there may be significant downsides for children who are regularly spanked.
A study released by the University of New Hampshire in September 2009 says spankings lowered children's IQ or intelligence quotient by several points. In a news release, lead study author Mark Straus is quoted as saying, "The more spanking, the slower the development of a child's mental ability."
Straus goes on to say, "But even small amounts of spanking made a difference." Straus' study tested about 1500 children over a 4 year period.
Research in the Journal Child Development indicates that how parents discipline their children can affect their behavior once they become teenagers. It found that children whose parents did not use physical discipline demonstrated less anti-social behavior as teenagers than those children whose parents used harsh or moderate forms of physical punishment. It evaluated 750 children between the ages of 5 and 16.
However, researcher who conducted that study, Jennifer Lansford of Duke University's Center for Child and Family Policy, admits that "more difficult children tend to elicit more punitive behavior in their parents."
But Lansford says even after trying to fact that out of the study, the trend was still seen: children getting physical discipline were more likely to show bad behavior as teenagers.
Lansford did report seeing a trend that spanking and other physical punishments happened less often as children got older, especially as they reached the upper elementary school grades. Researchers say that parents who continue to use spankings as children grow up appear to be the ones who are more likely to have problem teenagers.
Even Experts Disagree that Occasional Spanking is BadNot all child care and psychological experts agree that occasional spanking or slapping by parents is necessarily a bad thing. The subject of spanking was a topic in the July edition of the Psychological Bulletin published by the American Psychological Association.
In replies to commentary about recent spanking studies, researchers from the University of California at Berkeley and the Nebraska Medical Center say, "The evidence presented... does not justify a blanket injunction against mild to moderate disciplinary spanking,"
The writers went on to say, "a high association between corporal punishment and physical abuse is not evidence that mild or moderate corporal punishment increases the risk of abuse."
What do some parents say about the studies and moves to criminalize spanking among parents? Many don't like it. When a Massachusetts bill proposed banning spanking, a Boston newspaper reported some parents responding, "We don't spank her, but I think that ought to be a parent's choice." And the paper quoted one mother saying, "I don't want the government telling me how to raise my children."
Other parents point out, "My parents spanked me and I didn't turn out badly."
