Spanking Backfires, Researcher Finds Behavior Worsens The More It’s Used On Kids Age 6 To 9

From the dawn of time, parents have been spanking their children. Sometimes brutally with belts and hairbrushes and buckles. And sometimes in frustration, with a swat to the rear or a smack on the hand.

But research being published today by the American Medical Association suggests that times may have to change. Researchers have found that the more a parent spanks a child for misbehaving, the worse, over time, that child behaves.

“I’ve always felt that spanking is counterproductive, but no study has been able to nail that down, including my own research, until this one,” said report author Murray A. Straus, a sociologist at the University of New Hampshire and an avowed anti-spanker.

“We are now able to show that when parents attempt to correct their child’s behavior by spanking, it backfires,” he continued. “In the study, the more they spanked, the worse a child behaved two years and four years later.”

Behavior got worse with more spanking, regardless of how much love, affection and attention the parents showed the child, Straus said. Thus, Straus strongly advocates that parents use nonphysical alternatives to teach children good behavior, such as setting clear rules, reasoning, timeouts and the withdrawal of certain privileges when necessary.

But far from settling the score, the report, being published in the AMA’s Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, is sure to fuel the already white-hot debate over whether to spank or not to spank.

On one side are anti-spanking child advocates and psychologists concerned about abuse and future violent behavior. On the other side are pro-spanking parents and conservative Christians, such as Focus on the Family’s James Dobson, who fear undisciplined children will run wild.

The new report has its limitations. It examined the disciplining of children age 6 to 9, but not younger children. It still leaves completely unanswered what to do with toddlers exploring their world, terrible 2-year-olds throwing tantrums and preschoolers testing their limits.

Robert Larzelere, research director at Boys Town in Omaha, Neb., who takes a middle ground approach to spanking, called Straus’ work “the strongest study to date” that links spanking with bad behavior. And he agrees that if parents are still routinely spanking their 6- to 9-year-olds, “clearly something has gone wrong with the way parents are dealing with the child.”

But he said Straus overlooks at least eight other studies that show some spanking of children, age 18 months to 3 years, has improved behavior.

His research, along with that of Diana Baumrind of the University of California at Berkeley, indicates that “authoritative” parents, as opposed to permissive or authoritarian parents, who set clear rules, reason with toddlers, but use a swat to the rear as a last resort, discipline their children best.

Straus, who is often picketed and heckled when he lectures, recognizes his research comes at a time when some states like Pennsylvania and Washington have or are considering limitations on parental spanking, and when, in contrast, conservative groups are pushing pro-spanking parental rights amendments to many state constitutions.

In the polarized world of spanking research, most studies have been inconclusive. They have never been able to answer the “chicken or egg” question - whether a child’s bad behavior caused the parent to spank, or whether a parent’s pattern of spanking promoted aggressive, bad behavior.

What’s different about this study, Straus and even some of his critics said, is that for the first time, he and his colleagues have begun to answer that question.

Using 1986 to 1990 data collected from interviews with the mothers of 900 children, age 6 to 9, Straus measured the level of a child’s anti-social behavior in 1986, along with the number of times the child was spanked each week. He then tracked both behavior and the frequency of spanking over the next four years.

“Of the children whose mothers didn’t spank, two years later, their misbehavior score was better, they had less misbehavior,” Straus said. “For those whose mothers spanked once a week or twice a week, two years later, their misbehavior score was higher. And the highest of all were the kids whose mothers spanked them three or more times during the past week. They got worse.”

Anti-social behavior for kids who were spanked three times a week or more increased 14 percent from 1986 to 1988, Straus said.

Straus defined anti-social child behavior as lying, cheating, bullying or being cruel to others, not feeling sorry after misbehaving, breaking things deliberately, being disobedient at school and having trouble getting along with teachers.

Although the number of parents who say that sometimes a kid needs a good, hard spanking has fallen from about 94 percent in 1968 to about 65 percent, attitudes haven’t changed much about spanking toddlers. In the 1950s, 99 percent of all parents spanked their toddler. Today, about 90 percent of all parents do.

Straus vehemently disagrees with any spanking.

“I just think that people should not be hit,” Staruss said. “Just as it would be morally wrong for me to hit one of my colleagues, I wouldn’t slap a child for knocking over a glass and messing up the tablecloth. Children learn overwhelmingly by example.”