Most Parents Still Endorse Spanking as Acceptable Child Discipline
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Most Parents Still Endorse Spanking as Acceptable Child Discipline
Jim Windell
When I wrote a couple of books on parenting way back in the 1990s, I would go on radio and TV shows across the country. Inevitably, I would be asked about spanking. Once, when I was featured on the Phil Donahue Show, Phil asked me if I was spanked as a kid. When I said that I had been, he used that as an argument that since I had turned out alright that spanking was not detrimental to kids.
I tried to counter that with what I knew from the research on spanking and punishment back then. But I’m afraid neither Donahue nor his vast audience of millions were likely persuaded by my comments or the research. I was aware in the 1990s that still a majority of parents, even if they didn’t actually hit their kids as a form of discipline, still believed that it was a permissible discipline tool.
So, when I recently came across an article in The Conversation on spanking, I eagerly read it. What I read shocked me. How could it be that in the last three decades and hundreds, if not thousands, of parenting books later, that a majority of parents in the U.S. still believe that hitting kids is an acceptable form of parenting?
That’s what the author, Christina Erickson, an Associate Dean and professor of social work in the College of Nursing and Professional Disciplines, at the University of North Dakota, said in her article. She wrote: “People in the United States generally accept spanking as part of raising children: 56% of U.S. adults strongly agree or agree that it is sometimes necessary to discipline a child with a good, hard spanking.” Of course, to put this in perspective, when I was writing books for parents and conducting parenting programs for a juvenile court, 83% of adults agreed with that statement.
Even though, as Erickson notes, 68 countries around the world have banned the hitting of children in any form, the belief in spanking of children has endured in this country. She writes that each of the state in the U.S. has its own child abuse laws, and all states, tribes and territories aim to protect children from abuse. However, all state laws also allow parents to hit their children if it does not leave an injury or a mark. Furthermore, spanking in schools is still legal in 19 states.
Laws entitle parents to hit their children for the purpose of teaching a lesson or punishing them to improve behavior. Erickson, who wrote the book “Spanked: How Hitting Our Children is Harming Ourselves,” points out that children are the only individuals in our society who can be hit by another person and the law does not regard it as assault.
And she goes on to state that spanking’s impact on a child is unfortunately similar to abusive hitting. Spanking has been labeled as an “Aversive Childhoods Experience” or ACE. These are events that cause poor health outcomes over the span of one’s life.
Also, the practice of spanking also affects parents. Acceptance of the physical discipline of spanking puts parents at risk for the escalation of physical punishment that leads to abuse. Parents who spank their child have the potential to abuse them and get caught up in a legal and child protection system that aims to protect children from harm. Research, Erickson states, shows that spanking at a young age, such as a one-year-old, increases the chance of involvement by Child Protective Services by 33%.
Erickson, in her article, reviews what the research says about spanking. She says that spanking’s negative influence on children’s behavior has been documented for decades. Spanking seems to work in the moment when it comes to changing or stopping the immediate behavior, but the negative effects are hidden in the short term and occur later in the child’s life. Yet because the spanking seemed to work at the time, the parent doesn’t connect the continued bad behavior of the child to the spanking.
There is also an abundance of research showing that spanking causes increased negative behaviors in childhood. Spanking lowers executive functioning for kids, increases dating violence as teenagers, and even increases struggles with mental health and substance abuse in adulthood. Research also shows that spanking does not teach new or healthy behaviors, and is a stress-inducing event for the child as well as for the adult hitting them.
On the other hand, there are no studies that have shown positive long-term benefits from spanking. And because of the long-standing and expansive research findings showing a range of harm from spanking and the increased association with child abuse, the American Psychological Association recommends that parents should never spank their children.
To read the original article, find it with this link:
