Sep 21 2009
Better Science on Spanking
Is corporal punishment an effective way to discipline children? Or does it do more harm than good?
The best way to find out would be to conduct a long-term “spanking experiment.” Assign parents to one of two groups. Group A uses spanking as a form of discipline on their children, Group B does not. For 3, 5, 10 years collect data on which children are getting into more trouble, experiencing more emotional and educational difficulties, etc. Because this is “best way” science, it would be fully blinded. Those doing the measuring could not know what children where in which group.
That hypothetical research, and the strong data it generated, would go a long way to settling the issue once and for all. But the experiment would be complicated, time-consuming, expensive. Oh, and did I mention unethical?
So on to less-best methods. Fortunately, there is a whole bunch of weaker data about the effects of spanking on children. And more of it keeps coming in. More research equals better science.
The September/October 2009 issue of Child Development includes two studies by a team of researchers at 6 universities, including Harvard and Columbia.
Findings include the following-
They conclude that when parents use physical discipline through childhood, their children experience more behavior problems in adolescence.
Teens of parents who stop using physical discipline when their children are young are less likely to have these behavior problems.
Notice the important qualifying term in the title to the news release?
Parental physical discipline through childhood linked to behavior problems in teens
“Linked.” There is no proof, no absolute resolution implied. That’s good science writing.
The second study found that low-income parents who discipline young children with spanking have children with “more aggressive behaviors and less sophisticated cognitive development in the next two years.”
[C]hildren who were spanked more often at 1 behaved more aggressively when they were 2 and had lower scores on tests measuring thinking skills when they were 3.
The title to the news release for this study showed a higher degree of confidence in the causal relationship between variables:
In study of low-income toddlers, spanking found to have negative effects
Was it warranted? Maybe. The researchers certainly did attempt to control for such factors as bi-directional influences (the child’s personality and behavioral tendencies influencing the parent’s choice of methods of discipline.
The study also found that children who were more aggressive at age 2 and had lower cognitive development scores at ages 1 and 2 were not spanked more at ages 2 and 3. “So the mothers’ behaviors look more influential than the children’s,” said Berlin.
Another factor controlled out of the equation was verbal punishment, which frequently accompanies spanking. The researchers found that -
Unlike spanking, however, verbal punishment alone didn’t affect either children’s aggression or their cognitive development. But interestingly, when verbal punishment was accompanied by emotional support from moms, the children did better on the tests of cognitive ability.
While many people believe that the “badness” of spanking is a no-brainer, other people — people of other times and in other socioeconomic/cultural conditions –believe that spanking makes sense. Fortunately, with good science we can progress beyond what seems to make sense to what actually is the case.
[...] Mind you, there is some relatively good research out there on spanking that leads me to believe that there could be a causal link between spanking and intelligence. Could be. (See my recent post, Better Science on Spanking). [...]
Given that personality traits and IQ are largely genetic and, to some extent, heritable, my guess is that people with lower IQ’s, short fuses, and quick hands are likely to have offspring with similar personality traits, regardless of whether said offspring is spanked.