Spanking?

[Anonymous]

https://www.brookings.edu/research/hitting-kids-american-parenting-and-physical-punishment/

Children spanked frequently and/or severely are at higher risk for mental health problems, ranging from anxiety and depression to alcohol and drug abuse, according to some research studies. Children whose parents hit them regularly may also develop more distant parent-child relationships later on.

There is also robust evidence of an increased incidence of aggression among children who are regularly spanked. A 2002 meta-analysis of 27 studies across time periods, countries, and ages found a persistent association: children who are spanked regularly are more likely to be aggressive, both as a child and as an adult. Many parents spank their children to put an immediate stop to bad behavior (e.g., shoving another child, reaching for a hot stove, etc.). Being on the receiving end, children may learn to associate violence with power or getting one’s own way. Indeed, much of the aggressive behavior attributed to children who were spanked differentially tends to correspond to interactions where violence is used to exert power over another person—bullying, partner abuse, and so on.

Differences by Educational Attainment
In 2014, college-educated women and men were less likely to endorse spanking than their counterparts with less education.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oh god. So barbaric, and so low class. Literally one of the trashiest parenting moves out there. Not to mention sickening

What is actually low class is having kids who need to be spanked, and are entitled and tedious, yet their parents are so desperately trying to be UMC and enlightened that they don't discipline them.

In the actual upper classes, spanking is incredibly common.

Do you have any evidence to cite that spanking is incredibly common in the actual upper classes? That's where I am and we would never consider spanking. Ever. And my friends in the actual upper classes don't spank either.

Can't wait to see your evidence of this.

Statistically, spanking is the LEAST common among highly educated people.

https://www.childtrends.org/?indicators=attitudes-toward-spanking

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is such a white American discussion.

Spanking is not associated with negative outcomes across all cultures. For example, in black Americans some studies have found that spanking has an inverse association with outcomes. Here's an excerpt from NurtureShock:

Excerpt from Nurture Shock, p. 186-187:

“...so Dodge conducted a long-term study of corporal punishment’s affect on 453 kids, both black and white, tracking them from kindergarten through eleventh grade.
When Dodge’s team presented its findings at a conference, the data did not make people happy. This wasn’t because blacks used corporal punishment more than whites. (They did, but not by much.) Rather, Dodge’s team had found a reverse correlation in black families - the more a child was spanked, the less aggressive the child over time. The spanked black kid was all around less likely to be in trouble.

Scholars publicly castigated Dodge’s team, saying its findings were racist and dangerous to report. Journalists rushed to interview Dodge and the study’s lead author, Dr. Jennifer Lansford. A national news reporter asked Dodge if his research meant the key to effective punishment was to hit children more frequently. The reporter may have been facetious in his query, but Dodge and Lansford - both of whom remain adamantly against the use of physical discipline - were so horrified by such questions that they enlisted a team of fourteen scholars to study the use of corporal punishment around the world.

Why would spanking trigger such problems in white children, but cause no problems for black children, even when used a little more frequently? With the help of the subsequent international studies, Dodge has pieced together an explanation for his team’s results. To understand, one has to consider how the parent is acting when giving the spanking, and how those actions label the child. In a culture where spanking is accepted practice [an African-American community, in this study’s case], it becomes ‘the normal thing that goes on in this culture when a kid does something he shouldn’t.’ Even if the parent might spank her child only two or three times in his life, it’s treated as ordinary consequences. In the black community Dodge studied, a spanking was seen as something that every kid went through.

Conversely, in the white community Dodge studied, physical discipline was a mostly-unspoken taboo. It was saved only for the worst offenses. The parent was usually very angry at the child and had lost his or her temper. The implicit message was: ‘What you have done is so deviant that you deserve a special punishment, which is spanking.’ It marked the child as someone who has lost his place within traditional society.

It’s not just a white-black thing either. A University of Texas study of conservative Protestants found that one-third of them spanked their kids three or more times a week, largely encouraged by Dr. James Dobson’s Focus on the Family. The study found no negative effects from this corporal punishment - precisely because it was conveyed as normal.

Each in its own way, the work of Cummings and Dodge demonstrate the same dynamic: an oversimplified view of aggression leads parents to sometimes makes it worse for kids when they’re trying to do the right thing. Children key off their parents’ reaction more than the argument or physical discipline itself.”

And here's a link to the original study:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2772061/

Alfie Kohn has a good rebuttal to this in Unconditional Parenting. Nurture Shock in general is some good science mixed with junk science.

PP here. Can you summarize since no link? Also, why do you think Nurture Shock contains junk science?

P.S. I've looked a bit more into the African American spanking literature today, out of curiosity. While there are some inconsistencies in the literature, the African American and conservative Protestant examples mentioned here suggest the following: in cultures/social circles where spanking is commonplace and normative, it is not consistently found to be associated with negative outcomes. But in cultures where it's taboo/shameful and only reserved for the worst infractions, it's more consistently associated with negative outcomes. So, context matters, it seems. The outcomes will be different if spanking is done calmly and consistently and not severely (e.g., perhaps a swat on the hand, as I occasionally got as a kid), vs. if it is meted out inconsistently, severely, and when the face of the parent is twisted in anger, for example. I'd imagine the temperament of the child would also matter--there is some evidence that kids that have behavioral problems are spanked more, and I'd imagine that in these kids, spanking is more likely to exacerbate behavioral problems/externalizing disorders (although this is a guess; I haven't read the literature closely enough to say this conclusively).

Obviously, the APA and AAP want to give one consistent message that's easy for the public to understand, so they say all spanking is a no-no. A similar example may be the AAP's position on co-sleeping, which is a nuanced issue with many relevant contextual factors, and yet here again, they've decided that the best public safety message is that cosleeping is never recommended, when many of us know families who co-sleep safely without risk factors present.

[Anonymous]

I'm not reading this ultra long thread, but just chiming in that I would not ever wish to resort to any type of physical punishment. How can you live with yourself knowing that the only way to control your child is by physically hurting him/her? Shameful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oh god. So barbaric, and so low class. Literally one of the trashiest parenting moves out there. Not to mention sickening

What is actually low class is having kids who need to be spanked, and are entitled and tedious, yet their parents are so desperately trying to be UMC and enlightened that they don't discipline them.

In the actual upper classes, spanking is incredibly common.

Do you have any evidence to cite that spanking is incredibly common in the actual upper classes? That's where I am and we would never consider spanking. Ever. And my friends in the actual upper classes don't spank either.

Can't wait to see your evidence of this.

Statistically, spanking is the LEAST common among highly educated people.

https://www.childtrends.org/?indicators=attitudes-toward-spanking

Wow you are seriously obsessive. I was speaking from experience. I'm an immigrant and most of my friends at boarding school and many at the ivy undergrad and business school I attended were also immigrants but many weren't . We talked about spanking because most of us had kids in b school. We weee all spanned and many of us spanned. We all come from rarefied backgrounds. As for the educational relationship to spanking what I saw there is women with the most education often spend the least time with their children. Women who work full time I'm guessing are much less likely to spank.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oh god. So barbaric, and so low class. Literally one of the trashiest parenting moves out there. Not to mention sickening

What is actually low class is having kids who need to be spanked, and are entitled and tedious, yet their parents are so desperately trying to be UMC and enlightened that they don't discipline them.

In the actual upper classes, spanking is incredibly common.

Do you have any evidence to cite that spanking is incredibly common in the actual upper classes? That's where I am and we would never consider spanking. Ever. And my friends in the actual upper classes don't spank either.

Can't wait to see your evidence of this.

DP. That's what you think.

Still waiting for evidence to show this is true. I tend to believe my friends when they say they don't spank. Too bad your friends lie to you.

I'm not sure what evidence you're raving on about. If you are actually upperclass, and of my generation, so around 40, you would have gone to schools where corporal punishment was normal and accepted. But as for say studies? I didn't refer to a study. Feel free to try to find one saying the upper class don't spank but given that it would be reliant on self reporting? Who cares?

This is far from being true for all Americans who are around your age . By the time today's 40-year-olds started kindergarten, corporal punishment had already been banned in many US school districts & was no longer used in many private schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not reading this ultra long thread, but just chiming in that I would not ever wish to resort to any type of physical punishment. How can you live with yourself knowing that the only way to control your child is by physically hurting him/her? Shameful.

Oh brother. Why can't you accept there are real cultural differences to raising kids, and your method isn't the ONLY way to parent? I'm black, my wife is Mexican. We were both spanked as kids. So were 90% of the kids around us. I certainly can't speak for all of them, but will say my wife and I don't carry any ill effects. And somehow our parents can even live with themselves!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oh god. So barbaric, and so low class. Literally one of the trashiest parenting moves out there. Not to mention sickening

What is actually low class is having kids who need to be spanked, and are entitled and tedious, yet their parents are so desperately trying to be UMC and enlightened that they don't discipline them.

In the actual upper classes, spanking is incredibly common.

Do you have any evidence to cite that spanking is incredibly common in the actual upper classes? That's where I am and we would never consider spanking. Ever. And my friends in the actual upper classes don't spank either.

Can't wait to see your evidence of this.

DP. That's what you think.

Still waiting for evidence to show this is true. I tend to believe my friends when they say they don't spank. Too bad your friends lie to you.

I'm not sure what evidence you're raving on about. If you are actually upperclass, and of my generation, so around 40, you would have gone to schools where corporal punishment was normal and accepted. But as for say studies? I didn't refer to a study. Feel free to try to find one saying the upper class don't spank but given that it would be reliant on self reporting? Who cares?

This is far from being true for all Americans who are around your age . By the time today's 40-year-olds started kindergarten, corporal punishment had already been banned in many US school districts & was no longer used in many private schools.

I'm 38 and can still clearly remember being spanked in kindergarten by my teacher once.

[Anonymous]

Weighing in, also. We did very similarly to the parent who was having the defiant bedtime issues. It wasn't a matter of being unable to sleep, or scared, or anything like that. And spanking solved it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oh god. So barbaric, and so low class. Literally one of the trashiest parenting moves out there. Not to mention sickening

What is actually low class is having kids who need to be spanked, and are entitled and tedious, yet their parents are so desperately trying to be UMC and enlightened that they don't discipline them.

In the actual upper classes, spanking is incredibly common.

Do you have any evidence to cite that spanking is incredibly common in the actual upper classes? That's where I am and we would never consider spanking. Ever. And my friends in the actual upper classes don't spank either.

Can't wait to see your evidence of this.

Statistically, spanking is the LEAST common among highly educated people.

https://www.childtrends.org/?indicators=attitudes-toward-spanking

Wow you are seriously obsessive. I was speaking from experience. I'm an immigrant and most of my friends at boarding school and many at the ivy undergrad and business school I attended were also immigrants but many weren't . We talked about spanking because most of us had kids in b school. We weee all spanned and many of us spanned. We all come from rarefied backgrounds. As for the educational relationship to spanking what I saw there is women with the most education often spend the least time with their children. Women who work full time I'm guessing are much less likely to spank.

Your ad hominem comment doesn't add anything to the discussion.

Your experience is irrelevant. The plural of anecdote is not data.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Weighing in, also. We did very similarly to the parent who was having the defiant bedtime issues. It wasn't a matter of being unable to sleep, or scared, or anything like that. And spanking solved it.

Various other things including locking the child in a dark closet might have solved it as well. That doesn't make the solution right.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oh god. So barbaric, and so low class. Literally one of the trashiest parenting moves out there. Not to mention sickening

What is actually low class is having kids who need to be spanked, and are entitled and tedious, yet their parents are so desperately trying to be UMC and enlightened that they don't discipline them.

In the actual upper classes, spanking is incredibly common.

Do you have any evidence to cite that spanking is incredibly common in the actual upper classes? That's where I am and we would never consider spanking. Ever. And my friends in the actual upper classes don't spank either.

Can't wait to see your evidence of this.

Statistically, spanking is the LEAST common among highly educated people.

https://www.childtrends.org/?indicators=attitudes-toward-spanking

Wow you are seriously obsessive. I was speaking from experience. I'm an immigrant and most of my friends at boarding school and many at the ivy undergrad and business school I attended were also immigrants but many weren't . We talked about spanking because most of us had kids in b school. We weee all spanned and many of us spanned. We all come from rarefied backgrounds. As for the educational relationship to spanking what I saw there is women with the most education often spend the least time with their children. Women who work full time I'm guessing are much less likely to spank.

Your ad hominem comment doesn't add anything to the discussion.

Your experience is irrelevant. The plural of anecdote is not data.

No shit Sherlock. I never mentioned data. I said in my experience. This isn't a peer reviewed article being critiqued, btw. People are literally being asked for their anecdotes. Are you new to the internet?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oh god. So barbaric, and so low class. Literally one of the trashiest parenting moves out there. Not to mention sickening

What is actually low class is having kids who need to be spanked, and are entitled and tedious, yet their parents are so desperately trying to be UMC and enlightened that they don't discipline them.

In the actual upper classes, spanking is incredibly common.

Do you have any evidence to cite that spanking is incredibly common in the actual upper classes? That's where I am and we would never consider spanking. Ever. And my friends in the actual upper classes don't spank either.

Can't wait to see your evidence of this.

DP. That's what you think.

Still waiting for evidence to show this is true. I tend to believe my friends when they say they don't spank. Too bad your friends lie to you.

I'm not sure what evidence you're raving on about. If you are actually upperclass, and of my generation, so around 40, you would have gone to schools where corporal punishment was normal and accepted. But as for say studies? I didn't refer to a study. Feel free to try to find one saying the upper class don't spank but given that it would be reliant on self reporting? Who cares?

This is far from being true for all Americans who are around your age . By the time today's 40-year-olds started kindergarten, corporal punishment had already been banned in many US school districts & was no longer used in many private schools.

+1 Um, yeah, I'm 42, grew up with very wealthy parents and went to a snooty private school, nobody was spanked, and corporal punishment was illegal in California

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oh god. So barbaric, and so low class. Literally one of the trashiest parenting moves out there. Not to mention sickening

What is actually low class is having kids who need to be spanked, and are entitled and tedious, yet their parents are so desperately trying to be UMC and enlightened that they don't discipline them.

In the actual upper classes, spanking is incredibly common.

Do you have any evidence to cite that spanking is incredibly common in the actual upper classes? That's where I am and we would never consider spanking. Ever. And my friends in the actual upper classes don't spank either.

Can't wait to see your evidence of this.

DP. That's what you think.

Still waiting for evidence to show this is true. I tend to believe my friends when they say they don't spank. Too bad your friends lie to you.

I'm not sure what evidence you're raving on about. If you are actually upperclass, and of my generation, so around 40, you would have gone to schools where corporal punishment was normal and accepted. But as for say studies? I didn't refer to a study. Feel free to try to find one saying the upper class don't spank but given that it would be reliant on self reporting? Who cares?

This is far from being true for all Americans who are around your age . By the time today's 40-year-olds started kindergarten, corporal punishment had already been banned in many US school districts & was no longer used in many private schools.

+1 Um, yeah, I'm 42, grew up with very wealthy parents and went to a snooty private school, nobody was spanked, and corporal punishment was illegal in California

Corporal punishment was never illegal in California. I'll consider that blatant falsehood when I weigh how much credence to lend the rest of your comment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'll wade into this fray. I have spanked my daughter, currently five, and would do so again. I'm not particularly proud of it, and I didn't set out to have that within the repertoire of our parenting/discipline techniques. I was never opposed to it, though, and we came to a point when she was around 3 1/2 or 4 when we decided it was necessary because nothing else worked to address a particular problem we were having, namely, her throwing huge tantrums at bedtime and overnight. I'm sure I'll get flamed for spanking over bedtime issues, what's the big deal, but the issues were severe, disrupting the entire family, and basically allowing her to rule the roost, which we did not want to tolerate. We tried everything else, including positive reinforcement via rewards/bribes, silent walk-back, co-sleeping, locking her in her room, everything. Over a period of months. We came to spanking because (1) we couldn't *make* her do the behavior we needed her to do, i.e., stay in bed and sleep, and (2) she was old enough to understood the issue and the punishment but not old enough to be out of that terribly irrational stage. So, we implemented a relatively mild physical punishment to correct the behavior. She has been spanked probably a total of 8 to 10 times, over the past two years. We also implemented spanking for her deliberately trying to break things, for example, kicking a door (she split the admittedly cheap wood on her closet door at the bottom) or trying to pull over a shelf (which she almost pulled over onto herself).

She obviously throws severe tantrums. I will note she did this before we ever started spanking. As she has aged, she has gotten better though she remains just a volatile child. Ironically, it is my perception that spanking helps her calm down faster. I believe that she CAN control herself, but she needs a real push to do so, and spanking provides that. I have also tried staying with her when she tantrums, doing the time-in thing; my presence would work her up more.

We also utilize time-outs, 123 magic, and positive reinforcement. We praise good behavior, have rewards sticker charts, etc. I do consider myself pretty strict on many things, I just don't enforce most things via spanking.

We also have a son, and he has a totally different personality. I very seriously doubt I"ll need to spank him and if I don't, I won't. I also don't anticipate spanking my daughter for much longer, because I feel less comfortable spanking an older child.

We spank by leaning her over a chair or her bed and giving her firm swats on the bottom, one for each year of age. We are calm when we do it, not out of anger.

DH got "swats" as a child for misbehavior such as not behaving during church. I don't think it was frequent. DH is extremely close with his parents. I was spanked but it was more like a hit, and it was definitely out of anger by my dad. It was infrequent though, but I was scared of him as a child. We have a fine relationship now.

We are UMC and were raised middle class to UMC.

You suck. You should be ashamed of yourself.

-1. I do not believe this poster sucks. She says in her first line it's something that she isn't proud of and I believe she is sincere. PP, you could be me. Very similar issues, same aged child. Same issue of not setting out to use spanking as part of your repertoire of discipline techniques, severe tantrums even before the spanking, all of that.

I think many of these parents decrying spanking were blessed with kids who have mild temperaments or malleable personalities, and they just don't get it.