Richard Carroll on Nostr: Interesting article on the use of spanking; previous research likely exaggerated the ...
Interesting article on the use of spanking; previous research likely exaggerated the negative effects on children, and neglected positive effects - with, of course, some caveats. The NY Post has a summary of the study, but in scientific research it’s often worth looking at the original. The author’s conclusion:
Learning to cooperate with adults is one of the primary socio-emotional tasks of early childhood. Parents who fail to foster this cooperative/compliant disposition in the early years put their children at risk for serious dysfunction during the child’s adolescence and adulthood (Patterson & Fisher, 2002). Some children develop age-appropriate cooperation without being physically disciplined. Other children seem to benefit from the knowledge that defiance of parental directives (including the directive to abide milder forms of punishment) will elicit spanking. For some, the experience of age-delimited spanking in the context of a warm supportive parent-child relationship predicts positive outcomes.
Unfortunately, some well-intended researchers have emphasized methodologically weak/statistically-biased studies of physical discipline to convince parents that they should never spank. The current meta-analysis suggests that the harmful-effects of customary spanking have been exaggerated and the potential benefits of spanking for the most defiant children too quickly dismissed.
That said, there is still so much to be learned about the effects of spanking and alternatives in any particular situation. Because of this, we urge caution in the use of spanking, recommending that parents attempt to approximate, as much as possible, the conditions in which spanking was shown to be beneficial in clinical trials (i.e., two swats to the buttocks as a back-up when children aged 2–6 leave time-out prematurely). As demonstrated in these trials, parents who employed the judicious use of spanking as a back up to nonphysical punishments were often able to rapidly phase out the use of spanking. Rapid phase-out of spanking is a goal shared by all spanking researchers.
Learning to cooperate with adults is one of the primary socio-emotional tasks of early childhood. Parents who fail to foster this cooperative/compliant disposition in the early years put their children at risk for serious dysfunction during the child’s adolescence and adulthood (Patterson & Fisher, 2002). Some children develop age-appropriate cooperation without being physically disciplined. Other children seem to benefit from the knowledge that defiance of parental directives (including the directive to abide milder forms of punishment) will elicit spanking. For some, the experience of age-delimited spanking in the context of a warm supportive parent-child relationship predicts positive outcomes.
Unfortunately, some well-intended researchers have emphasized methodologically weak/statistically-biased studies of physical discipline to convince parents that they should never spank. The current meta-analysis suggests that the harmful-effects of customary spanking have been exaggerated and the potential benefits of spanking for the most defiant children too quickly dismissed.
That said, there is still so much to be learned about the effects of spanking and alternatives in any particular situation. Because of this, we urge caution in the use of spanking, recommending that parents attempt to approximate, as much as possible, the conditions in which spanking was shown to be beneficial in clinical trials (i.e., two swats to the buttocks as a back-up when children aged 2–6 leave time-out prematurely). As demonstrated in these trials, parents who employed the judicious use of spanking as a back up to nonphysical punishments were often able to rapidly phase out the use of spanking. Rapid phase-out of spanking is a goal shared by all spanking researchers.