Risks of harm from spanking confirmed by analysis of 5 decades of research

[Thanda]

Not even the occasional punch is sanctioned for use on an adult, though people argue that the occasional swat is ok for kids. Strange, I thought kids were more vulnerable than adults?

I remember growing up we always encouraged each other to fight it out if we had deep issues. We preferred to fight our friends and two people who fought usually didn't ever argue with each other again

 

[Milton Platt]

A swift swat on the backside is simply an attention getter; beating a kid into submission while angry is criminal.

And there ya go.......
The flip side is that any teacher will tell you that children are showing disrespectful and disruptive behavior at much higher rates than the previous generations. It seems that there is a missing component......good parenting skills.

 

[Thanda]

I must say there seems to be some very resistant kids out there in the world. Are you guys really telling me that no behaviour changed as a result of spanking? Are these kids not born with the adaption or evolution gene at all? I certainly remember adapting my behaviour to avoid spanking (though I agree there comes an age where you should have better reasons to adapt you behaviour).

When I got back home from my missionary service I found my niece (who was only a couple of months when a left) a little two year-old terror. Her mother would talk tough but would never deliver. I talked tough a few times (she would just cry and then continue with the behaviour). Eventually I decided to follow through on my promise of punishment. And what did you know she actually began listening. I am sure I did not spank her more than thrice.

I personally believe than with children being so diverse, one should keep their options open. What's important is keeping the child safe and instilling good values into them. There is no set curriculum for achieving that - each parent will have to figure it out for themselves as well as for each child they have.

 

[Thanda]

And it begs to be asked why should they be authorized to hit a child when they couldn't do that to an adult, and spanking doesn't work anyways, unless you count setting them up for a higher risk of problems as working.

Should we also authorize the police to discipline children?

 

[Thanda]

At the risk of beating dead horse, if you read the study it clearly tells how you can link behavior to spanking. It's very easy. In short, since I guess you're not going to read it, they defined 17 behaviors (aggression, anti-social personality, resisting authority, etc.) Then they studied the frequency of these behaviors in groups of people who were 1) never spanked 2) spanked occasionally and 3) spanked frequently. Over and over again, study after study over 50 years shows the people who were spanked engage in 13 of the 17 noted behaviors more frequently than those who were not spanked.

This looks like correlation - not causation. Other things may also correlate with spanking (such as being neglectful of children) which the may also have detrimental effects.

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

I'd prefer that you answer my "why" and "what brings you to this conclusion" questions before I answer yours, just out of common courtesy, but I'm an easy going fella so I won't insist on it.

The answer is yes, I believe physical violence from a parent to a child can cause behavioral issues down the road for that child, absolutely. I don't believe it's all the time, certainly. Plenty of people who smoke don't get lung cancer and plenty of people who do smoke don't. Just like plenty of kids who were spanked don't exhibit behavioral problems and plenty of kids who were not spanked do.

But on average, yes, I believe parents who show violent tendencies of any sort...spanking, excess yelling, fighting etc...tend to produce children who have a greater tendency to exhibit similar behaviors. I believe the greater the level and frequency, the greater the change of a negative effect. It's not revolutionary thinking.

I mean we accept this about dogs right? We're not supposed to hit puppies in certain ways, never with your open hand, etc, as we train them, or they grow up with behavioral problems. You don't suppose the same is true about raising a small child?

Love is the key that stops the behaviors - real, understood, and, in fact able to be taken for granted by the child. I guarantee it. You can look for the smoking gun in singular acts or parental behaviors of this type or that, but you're deluding yourself in thinking that "if we only do enough research, crunch the right numbers, we'll figure it out!" And by "you" I mean the general/communal "you" - as in any/all of us. My parents spanked me on occasion - but their love was unquestionable, undeniable, so easy to see it was would be dumb to deny. It didn't make a bit of difference EXCEPT as a corrective measure that they did so either. I knew not to do certain things, period. Kids at school used to talk about their parents as if it was common knowledge that "parents suck" - I honestly had no idea what the hell they were talking about. To this day I think about those types of conversations and the head-cocked-in-mutual-understanding statements like "... but you know parents". Those kids didn't have my parents... obviously not anything close. And did they have behavioral issues? You bet they did.

 

[Quintessence]

Should we also authorize the police to discipline children?

Well, that would certainly be interesting. At least it would be consistent. I foresee it opening a very large can of worms given current cultural norms in the United States. And probably a lot of well-deserved lawsuits.

This looks like correlation - not causation. Other things may also correlate with spanking (such as being neglectful of children) which the may also have detrimental effects.

Just so you know, when it was determined that smoking causes cancer, this conclusion was drawn through studies via correlations. When there is enough accumulated evidence of correlation, it is reasonable to conclude causation, and this is frequently done in the sciences particularly when the questions pertain to humans. Why? Because for this reason called "ethics" we do not allow scientists to set up proper experiments with controls to test humans. The only way to draw certain conclusions is through stacking up reams of correlationary studies. Which is what this meta analysis does, and it pretty thoroughly demonstrates that spanking children is a risk factor for various things.

 

[Thanda]

Well, that would certainly be interesting. At least it would be consistent. I foresee it opening a very large can of worms given current cultural norms in the United States. And probably a lot of well-deserved lawsuits.

Okay, so are you saying police using force is wrong (since you seem to have a if good for the goose it's good for the gander philosophy)

Just so you know, when it was determined that smoking causes cancer, this conclusion was drawn through studies via correlations. When there is enough accumulated evidence of correlation, it is reasonable to conclude causation, and this is frequently done in the sciences particularly when the questions pertain to humans. Why? Because for this reason called "ethics" we do not allow scientists to set up proper experiments with controls to test humans. The only way to draw certain conclusions is through stacking up reams of correlationary studies. Which is what this meta analysis does, and it pretty thoroughly demonstrates that spanking children is a risk factor for various things.

Sure, but I think you really seem to be confusing two very different subjects. It was not really all that difficult to verify causation with smoking since almost everyone who smokes gets addicted - whether they are rich or poor, whether they are educated or uneducated etc.

The issue here is that there is a very real likelihood that parents who use corporal punishment as a go to method of disciplining and training their children, may in fact share similarities in other ways. They may not talk often (or even play often) with their kids. They may be poor or uneducated.

What I am asking is whether they investigated whether the parents who smacked their children shared any other similarities which also could have the same negative effects. Until such time as they make that investigation we are left appropriately asking whether this study shows correlation or causation.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Perhaps we should spank adults or give some form of corporal punishment instead of locking them up in Jail. You really didn't get that?

I asked you how spanking kids prepares them for life in the real world. We don't hit adults in the real world. It's a crime. So what are the kids being prepared for when they're spanked?

And as to what you said here, the findings of the study in the OP seem to indicate that hitting children doesn't teach them anything or change their behaviour. So why would it work on adults?

 

[Quintessence]

Okay, so are you saying police using force is wrong (since you seem to have a if good for the goose it's good for the gander philosophy)

Nope, I'm not saying police using force is "wrong" or that any force is "wrong." I simply find it very odd that a culture would allow more physical assault against children by their parents than it does between adults. Very, very odd. There are a few norms in my culture that I find just plain $#@% backwards. This is one of them. Another is that our media content standards freak out if a female human breast is shown, yet you can show humans getting stabbed and shot. Very, very odd.

Sure, but I think you really seem to be confusing two very different subjects

I'm really not.

In my graduate level statistics course, we talked about this at length, because in high school and undergrad, students are usually taught the adage "correlation does not equate to causation." This is true, but it is also something of a lie. This gets taught at lower levels because non-scientists frequently and routinely conflate correlation with causation, and we want to beat that bad habit out of students. Then you get to graduate school, and will get told "yeah, well, we kind of lied there" and have a discussion about how you go about establishing causation from correlation. The example we used was "smoking causes cancer." This was all established using correlation studies, just like this meta analysis about spanking. When you have heaps of correlation studies piled together (aka, a meta analysis) that can account for uncontrollable confounding factors (i.e., level of education, socioeconomic status) that are noising up the signal. And there were lots of tooth-and-nail fights about the results of those "smoking causes cancer" studies, just like there is for spanking.

 

[bobhikes]

I asked you how spanking kids prepares them for life in the real world. We don't hit adults in the real world. It's a crime. So what are the kids being prepared for when they're spanked?

And as to what you said here, the findings of the study in the OP seem to indicate that hitting children doesn't teach them anything or change their behaviour. So why would it work on adults?

My last post

When I was 15 we were at my friends house in the backyard he brought out his hunting rifle and shot it in the air we all cheered. His father found out yelled at him and banned him from hunting all year. Next year we were at his house drinking and he brought out a gun that was unloaded and shot our friend in the butt. Nobody died.

I like knifes, I carve, I whittle, I own hatchets and axes. I have taught my son's how to use them properly. I have told them they are not to use them without me around and never with friends. Lets say I come home from work and my son and friends are throwing my hatchets around in the backyard. I am sending all the kids home. I am explaining to my son what he did wrong. I am smacking him as hard as I can on his hand and then I am punishing him.

The pain works to mark the memory of what was said and all wakes him up from the stupor of being caught. I know I studied the mind. Think about your most painful experiences how good is your memory of them. When he starts drinking there is something more there to wake him up if he thinks of doing it again.

No kids being wounded or killed is worth any detrimental effect it has on him. I am not changing my mind.

 

[Thanda]

ope, I'm not saying police using force is "wrong" or that any force is "wrong." I simply find it very odd that a culture would allow more physical assault against children by their parents than it does between adults. Very, very odd. There are a few norms in my culture that I find just plain $#@% backwards. This is one of them. Another is that our media content standards freak out if a female human breast is shown, yet you can show humans getting stabbed and shot. Very, very odd.

Perhaps it is a bit odd. But perhaps people see a difference between the relations between family members and those between non family members. It also seems to me that society has decided that it should show some mercy to children by letting their parents deal with their errant ways for a certain number of years - after that, society takes over and administers the consequences.

I'm really not.

In my graduate level statistics course, we talked about this at length, because in high school and undergrad, students are usually taught the adage "correlation does not equate to causation." This is true, but it is also something of a lie. This gets taught at lower levels because non-scientists frequently and routinely conflate correlation with causation, and we want to beat that bad habit out of students. Then you get to graduate school, and will get told "yeah, well, we kind of lied there" and have a discussion about how you go about establishing causation from correlation. The example we used was "smoking causes cancer." This was all established using correlation studies, just like this meta analysis about spanking. When you have heaps of correlation studies piled together (aka, a meta analysis) that can account for uncontrollable confounding factors (i.e., level of education, socioeconomic status) that are noising up the signal. And there were lots of tooth-and-nail fights about the results of those "smoking causes cancer" studies, just like there is for spanking.

So are you able to confirm that (via this meta-analysis) spanking (by itself) has now been confirmed to cause the detrimental effects described and that no future studies would ever contradict that?

 

[Papoon]

Speaking with relation to Australian aborigines, I would raise the point that they, much like other peoples around the world, do not have a universal position. Further, Australian aborigines are not even a single coherent peoples in terms of language and culture.
Sorry, I don't mean that to sound like an attack against your point. Traditionally, physical punishment of children was not common at all in most Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander communities (to my knowledge).
I just have some personal issues with stereotyping of indigenous cultures, even when that stereotype is a positive one.

You'll need nanotech to split hairs that fine.

Clearly, my point is that there are cultures where any violence against children is abhorred. And that includes Australian aborigines, at least any mobs I ever heard of whose cultural history is known. Which I agree is incomplete, due to the near genocide committed by our illustrious British ancestors.

 

[Papoon]

An interesting question is - is there a correlation of men who were consistently physically attacked by their mothers as children, and men involved in domestic violence as adults ?

 

[Thanda]

An interesting question is - is there a correlation of men who were consistently physically attacked by their mothers as children, and men involved in domestic violence as adults ?

That is an interesting question. I would reckon that men and women are equally guilty of domestic violence (i.e. physical abuse in the home) but that women are able to go get away with it more often since they do it (to their children) under the cover of spanking.

 

[Thanda]

That is an interesting question. I would reckon that men and women are equally guilty of domestic violence (i.e. physical abuse in the home) but that women are able to go get away with it more often since they do it (to their children) under the cover of spanking.

And yes I know dads also physically abuse children - but I think most of us will agree it was our mothers who did most of the spanking and physical abuse (when it went that far).

 

[Quintessence]

So are you able to confirm that (via this meta-analysis) spanking (by itself) has now been confirmed to cause the detrimental effects described and that no future studies would ever contradict that?

No, because that's not how sciences work. Sciences are not psychic seers, nor dogmatic religious texts. Nor do a few studies with contradictory results necessarily negate the overall pattern when the majority of studies all point in the same direction. Furthermore, the study never said that spanking "by itself" causes negative effects. As I've said - and requoted once or twice - it's saying it is A RISK FACTOR for certain types of problems, just like smoking is A RISK FACTOR for developing certain types of cancer. Here, let's do this AGAIN:

...perhaps one issue here is the pro-spanking crowd don't quite get what studies like this are saying. When we talk about risk analysis, it's speaking of the probability of harm given exposure. The studies are not saying "if you spank your kids, they will turn out maladjusted." What they are saying is that it is a risk factor that increases the probability of various negative outcomes. There will be kids who do fine in spite of being spanked, but what the studies are saying is that it's a significant risk factor for these various negative outcomes.

And you know what, for good measure, I'm going to post this up again too:

A total of 111 unique effect sizes were derived from data representing 204,410 child measurement occasions; these studies included data from a total of 160,927 unique children.

...

In childhood, parental use of spanking was associated with low moral internalization, aggression, antisocial behavior, externalizing behavior problems, internalizing behavior problems, mental health problems, negative parent–child relationships, im- paired cognitive ability, low self-esteem, and risk of physical abuse from parents. In adulthood, prior experiences of parental use of spanking were significantly associated with adult antisocial behavior, adult mental health problems, and with positive attitudes about spanking. The remaining four meta-analyses were not significantly different from zero. The 13 statistically significant mean effect sizes ranged in size from .15 to .64. The overall mean weighted effect size across all of the 111 study-level effect sizes was d .33, with a 95% confidence interval of .29 to .38; this mean effect was statistically different from zero, Z = 14.84, p = .001.

[GALLERY=media, 7436]Study1 by Quintessence posted Apr 27, 2016 at 11:21 AM[/GALLERY]

 

[Demonslayer]

I am smacking him as hard as I can on his hand and then I am punishing him.

The pain works to mark the memory of what was said and all wakes him up from the stupor of being caught.

There is a problem here in that this is what many people think is the result, but the studies show otherwise. One of the behaviors noted in the study...and others I remember seeing in the past as well...is that children who are spanked are more likely to rebel and disobey their parents on purpose.

It is possible that if you had a conversation about the dangers of axe-throwing instead of whacking him for it, he would be more likely not to do it again. The theory is if you whack someone and say "don't do that again" they might be angry from being whacked and say "oh yeah, well I'll show you!" and then throw an axe the next day to rebel.

Again, nothing is concrete and certain in every case, but the whole point of this study is to show the result of certain things is not necessarily what people think it's going to be.

 

[Thanda]

No, because that's not how sciences work. Sciences are not psychic seers, nor dogmatic religious texts. Nor do a few studies with contradictory results necessarily negate the overall pattern when the majority of studies all point in the same direction. Furthermore, the study never said that spanking "by itself" causes negative effects. As I've said - and requoted once or twice - it's saying it is A RISK FACTOR for certain types of problems, just like smoking is A RISK FACTOR for developing certain types of cancer. Here, let's do this AGAIN:

Science does at times work that way. The pythagoras theorem for example can be confirmed to be true and that no other theory in future can ever contradict it.

In any event let me try to make my point clear - I am concerned as to whether spanking (versus some other behaviours that might commonly be associated with it) has been properly isolated in order to establish it's risk factor status. This is important because the obvious result of this study will be pressure on governments to ban spanking with the assumption that that alone will reduce the detrimental outcomes mentioned in the study. But if spanking is merely a symptom of a deeper problem (which is perhaps the actual cause) rather than the cause then we may expect there to be little change in detrimental outcomes even when it is no longer practiced. In fact should it prove only to be a symptom then we may expect parents to adopt some other less than worthy measures to subdue their kids instead of spanking (solitary confinement or timeouts for example) - and soon enough we'll be having another "meta-analysis" about the detrimental effects of solitary confinement.

 

[Quintessence]

Science does at times work that way. The pythagoras theorem for example can be confirmed to be true and that no other theory in future can ever contradict it.

The pythagorean theorem is mathematics, not science.

In any event let me try to make my point clear - I am concerned as to whether spanking (versus some other behaviours that might commonly be associated with it) has been properly isolated in order to establish it's risk factor status.

It has, per decades of research. Decades. Which is what it took for the smoking thing, too.

This is important because the obvious result of this study will be pressure on governments to ban spanking with the assumption that that alone will reduce the detrimental outcomes mentioned in the study.

*chuckles* If only the sciences had that much influence on legislation and government in the United States. As it stands, not only will results like this fail to put pressure on lawmakers to make spanking children a crime in the United States, but any attempt to forward anti-spanking legislature would be an act of political suicide. The cultural norm of "parents have primary if not sole authority over the raising of their children" is much too strongly ingrained for any erosion of that to be tolerated.

Naw, what will happen from this is it will be business as usual. For the most part, the study will be a burp in the wind that gets ignored like most of science is in this country. Special interest groups that have a vested commitment to following this sort of information would have already embraced the fact that spanking kids is probably not a good idea, so this meta analysis will simply be another tick in an already filled box. Those special interest groups will continue to do their usual outreach, with relatively limited impacts. There may be some attempts at educating parents, but given there is no "parenting license" required for humans to breed, again, relatively limited impacts. Yup. The obvious results of this study is that things will be business as usual, because in America, we don't make massive cultural and policy changes based on the sciences as a general rule, for better or for worse.