Spanking detrimental to children, study says

SirJosephPorter

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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.
 
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DaSleeper

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Troll
 

Cannuck

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Not only is he a troll, he is a fool. He presents arguments that refute his own arguments.

If (as Joey suggests) we are getting more violent, one has to wonder about his link to spanking because corporal punishment is on the decline. If spanking causes violence, we should be getting less violent.

The reality is that we are becoming less violent however, it isn't because of reduced spanking. It is the other way round. We are spanking less because we are less violent. The real problem with these studies and stories is that there is no separation between a swat on the rear and a smack with a wooden spoon. All corporal punishment is seen as the same. Of course it isn't and as you said, this is trolling plain and simple.
 

carpenter dave

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Not only is he a troll, he is a fool. He presents arguments that refute his own arguments.

If (as Joey suggests) we are getting more violent, one has to wonder about his link to spanking because corporal punishment is on the decline. If spanking causes violence, we should be getting less violent.

The reality is that we are becoming less violent however, it isn't because of reduced spanking. It is the other way round. We are spanking less because we are less violent. The real problem with these studies and stories is that there is no separation between a swat on the rear and a smack with a wooden spoon. All corporal punishment is seen as the same. Of course it isn't and as you said, this is trolling plain and simple.
I agree as a child i was chastised with a smack mainly on the back of the legs .I can still remember its sting today ,but it wasnt a beating theres a big difference.Smacking has its place in extreme circumstances ,but beatings are just plain abuse.I remember when i went to school the teachers could cane you if you were out of order ,now the teachers darent because of the laws in this country ,and our schools are now out of control ,the kids now have no respect at all .
 

Kreskin

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In this day and age, and with everything we know about parenting and childhood development, there is no need for it. There are better ways to parent.
 

karrie

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as with most studies regarding human behaviour, isolating cause and effects makes saying 'a=b' almost impossible.

A child (in the case of this study, baby imo) who receives physical punishment rather than verbal direction, is not going to have the same mental pathways at that development stage as a child who receives the opposite. Is it detrimental in the long run to hit learning stages at different times than your peers? The study would have to extend a heck of a lot farther, and take into account an awful lot more information. In the end my experience has been that personality and genetics override much of our early years anyway... we're not as 'programmable' in the long term as child development experts would like to scare parents into believing.

As a side note, the spanking this study examines, is illegal in Canada, and in my view, ridiculous.
 

Lou Garu

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In this day and age, and with everything we know about parenting and childhood development, there is no need for it. There are better ways to parent.


Forgive me Kreskin, but aren't there so many ways and theories about the subject that contradiction rules?
 

karrie

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Punishment does not work.

If punishment didn't work, we wouldn't have prison systems, traffic fines, etc. Punishment doesn't give the 'results' modern society wants, that doesn't mean it doesn't work. It just means that society wants kids on agenda 'b' now and agenda 'a' gets thrown out as useless, when it's not. Not all kids will be well adjusted or okay raised the exact same way.
 

Niflmir

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If punishment didn't work, we wouldn't have prison systems, traffic fines, etc. Punishment doesn't give the 'results' modern society wants, that doesn't mean it doesn't work. It just means that society wants kids on agenda 'b' now and agenda 'a' gets thrown out as useless, when it's not. Not all kids will be well adjusted or okay raised the exact same way.

But new age cures don't work and we still have them around. The fact that the punishment exists is what works--sometimes--but not the punishment, it is somewhat paradoxical, but true.

There was extensive documentation of this by our parliament recently. I'll dig it up if you are interested.
 

Kreskin

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If punishment didn't work, we wouldn't have prison systems, traffic fines, etc. Punishment doesn't give the 'results' modern society wants, that doesn't mean it doesn't work. It just means that society wants kids on agenda 'b' now and agenda 'a' gets thrown out as useless, when it's not. Not all kids will be well adjusted or okay raised the exact same way.

I only speak for myself but a friend of mine is a retired pediatrician who studied this issue passionately for most of his working life. I spent a lot of time with him because his theories fascinated me. We tried to work with those theories when our child was a young. Having seen them work with my own eyes I really do believe the whole punishment thing is overestimated and there are better ways.

A quote from him:

Punishment comes from the Latin word "punire",which means "to hurt". Punishment always hurts the child, whether the child is being hit or not being hit.
 
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karrie

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I'm more than aware of the different schools of thought on directing behaviour. And I'm also aware that directing behaviour through positive actions and words rather than negative ones, can be very successful. I try to seek alternatives to a spanking by ALL means. Pretty much everyone knows what punishment is, and how it works, etc. BUT... to say that it never works, that people should never, etc., is where I draw a definite line.
 

Kreskin

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One workshop I attended of his he asked the attendees how their kids reacted to verbal direction from each parent. Quite often it was one parent or the other who was more effective at getting kids to do as told. Then he asked which parent was most likely to punish the child. In every case we discussed, the parent who had used punishment the least was the most effective.
 

TenPenny

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I'm assuming that the text in black is SJP, and the rest is the quoted article.

But that's a big assumption.

Edited to add: that's actually what he says in the preamble, but that's assuming that he is the one writing that he is the one writing in black.
 

SirJosephPorter

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Sure way to earn the respect of fellow posters is resurrecting a still-born thread.

Nobody is resurrecting a still born thread, YJ. This study was released just yesterday. And I think it is relevant, so it makes for a good subject for discussion. This study really has nothing to do with the last thread (except that the subject is the same).


And earn the respect of fellow posters, of anonymous bloggers? Now why would I try to do that?
 

SirJosephPorter

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Forgive me Kreskin, but aren't there so many ways and theories about the subject that contradiction rules?

Not really, Lou. More and more psychologists and psychiatrists are coming to the conclusion that spanking is harmful. While once upon a time spanking was the mainstream position, by now it is very much a fringe position.

In this respect, spanking reminds me of smoking. At one time smoking was considered acceptable, even cool. These days smoking is discredited. It the same with spanking.
Moderator Edit: Removed Religious & Political Trolling that didn't pertain to the published article.
 
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SirJosephPorter

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I only speak for myself but a friend of mine is a retired pediatrician who studied this issue passionately for most of his working life. I spent a lot of time with him because his theories fascinated me. We tried to work with those theories when our child was a young. Having seen them work with my own eyes I really do believe the whole punishment thing is overestimated and there are better ways.

A quote from him:

Quite right, Kreskin. Punishment doesn’t work. Even in prison, the purpose of punishment is not to rehabilitate the prisoner, but more as retribution. In a prison, punishment without any attempt at rehabilitation would be self defeating (unless the prisoner is locked up for life, not let out into the society).

However, punishment is separate from discipline. Punishment doesn’t work, but discipline is necessary, and it does work.
 

SirJosephPorter

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One workshop I attended of his he asked the attendees how their kids reacted to verbal direction from each parent. Quite often it was one parent or the other who was more effective at getting kids to do as told. Then he asked which parent was most likely to punish the child. In every case we discussed, the parent who had used punishment the least was the most effective.

That doesn’t surprise me. Punishment (and by that I mean physical punishment) is the easy way out. It is more difficult to parent without punishment. So it stands to reason that the parent who finds it difficult to parent tends to use corporal punishment.