We had a thread about spanking a while ago (which as I recall, degenerated into a flaming thread, I hope posters would be more responsible on this one). Well, another study on spanking has just been released.
Spanking detrimental to children, study says - CNN.com
This study is really in line with several other studies released in the past years (text in blue is from the study, in black, my comments).
Think a little spanking won't do much harm to kids? New research says the effects can be long-lasting.
New study of more than 2,500 toddlers from low-income families found that spanking may have detrimental effects on behavior and mental development.
Berlin and colleagues found that children who were spanked as 1-year-olds tended to behave more aggressively at age 2, and did not perform as well as other children on a test measuring thinking skills at age 3. The study is published in the journal Child Development.
The new study focused on children from low-income families because prior research suggested that spanking is more common among them, Berlin said.
Her study found that about one-third of the 1-year-olds, and about half of the 2- and 3-year-olds, had been spanked in the previous week, according to mothers' self-reporting to the researchers.
That is a high proportion of spanking indeed. No wonder we have such a problem with violence today. Evidently in the families where spanking does goes on, it seems to be routine, quite frequent.
Previous research had also found that parents who spank are more likely to be younger, less educated, single, and/or depressed and stressed, Berlin's study said.
Makes sense. Depressed or stressed out parents are more likely to take out their frustration on their kids (who obviously cannot fight back).
Spanking is most commonly used among parents who were spanked themselves, who live in the South, and/or who identify themselves as conservative Christians.
Moderator Edit: Removed Religious & Political Trolling that didn't pertain to the published article.
These parents also tend to believe in the effectiveness of spanking or believe the child is at fault in a given situation, the study said.
But of course it is never the parents' fault. It does not even occur to these parents that they may be taking out their frustrations with the world (their boss, their spouse etc.)on their children.
Verbal punishment did not appear to have the same detrimental effects as spanking in this study, Berlin said.
Susan Newman, social psychologist and author of "Little Things Long Remembered: Making Your Children Feel Special Every Day," said parents should discourage bad behaviors by taking away privileges such as dessert, or setting an earlier bedtime.
"If the mother sees this fussiness as willful misbehavior and begins verbally punishing or spanking, rather than empathizing with the child, the child's behavior deteriorates into more tantrums and other frustrating behavior," said another clinical psychologist, Laura Markham (not involved in the study).
Newman also noted that children are too young to understand when parenting behavior is wrong, even at the level of abuse. Physical violence gets passed down in families because the only parenting skills people know are the behaviors that they saw at home, she said.
Just the opinion I have held all along, spanking is really a kind of physical abuse. And abuse, whether physical or sexual, does tend to get passed down from generation to generation.
In the spanking study, some mothers said they were receiving parenting services in which they were counseled not to spank their children.
"This is definitively the direction in which services are going and in which, in general, American culture is going," Berlin said.
Moderator Edit: Removed Religious & Political Trolling that didn't pertain to the published article.
Spanking detrimental to children, study says - CNN.com
This study is really in line with several other studies released in the past years (text in blue is from the study, in black, my comments).
Think a little spanking won't do much harm to kids? New research says the effects can be long-lasting.
New study of more than 2,500 toddlers from low-income families found that spanking may have detrimental effects on behavior and mental development.
Berlin and colleagues found that children who were spanked as 1-year-olds tended to behave more aggressively at age 2, and did not perform as well as other children on a test measuring thinking skills at age 3. The study is published in the journal Child Development.
The new study focused on children from low-income families because prior research suggested that spanking is more common among them, Berlin said.
Her study found that about one-third of the 1-year-olds, and about half of the 2- and 3-year-olds, had been spanked in the previous week, according to mothers' self-reporting to the researchers.
That is a high proportion of spanking indeed. No wonder we have such a problem with violence today. Evidently in the families where spanking does goes on, it seems to be routine, quite frequent.
Previous research had also found that parents who spank are more likely to be younger, less educated, single, and/or depressed and stressed, Berlin's study said.
Makes sense. Depressed or stressed out parents are more likely to take out their frustration on their kids (who obviously cannot fight back).
Spanking is most commonly used among parents who were spanked themselves, who live in the South, and/or who identify themselves as conservative Christians.
Moderator Edit: Removed Religious & Political Trolling that didn't pertain to the published article.
These parents also tend to believe in the effectiveness of spanking or believe the child is at fault in a given situation, the study said.
But of course it is never the parents' fault. It does not even occur to these parents that they may be taking out their frustrations with the world (their boss, their spouse etc.)on their children.
Verbal punishment did not appear to have the same detrimental effects as spanking in this study, Berlin said.
Susan Newman, social psychologist and author of "Little Things Long Remembered: Making Your Children Feel Special Every Day," said parents should discourage bad behaviors by taking away privileges such as dessert, or setting an earlier bedtime.
"If the mother sees this fussiness as willful misbehavior and begins verbally punishing or spanking, rather than empathizing with the child, the child's behavior deteriorates into more tantrums and other frustrating behavior," said another clinical psychologist, Laura Markham (not involved in the study).
Newman also noted that children are too young to understand when parenting behavior is wrong, even at the level of abuse. Physical violence gets passed down in families because the only parenting skills people know are the behaviors that they saw at home, she said.
Just the opinion I have held all along, spanking is really a kind of physical abuse. And abuse, whether physical or sexual, does tend to get passed down from generation to generation.
In the spanking study, some mothers said they were receiving parenting services in which they were counseled not to spank their children.
"This is definitively the direction in which services are going and in which, in general, American culture is going," Berlin said.
Moderator Edit: Removed Religious & Political Trolling that didn't pertain to the published article.
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