The insufficiency of the evidence used to categorically oppose spanking and its implications for families and psychological science: Comment on Gershoff et al. (2018) (original) (raw)
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Session at the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts, 2019
This outline provides pincite references for research supporting appropriate disciplinary spanking, in contrast to the predominantly correlational evidence used to oppose all spanking by the APA and AAP. Two major publications in the past year showed that (1) the correlational evidence against customary spanking becomes trivial after adjusting for pre-existing child differences. Moreover, that trivial evidence can be either harmful or beneficial on average, depending upon the statistical method used to adjust for pre-existing differences. (2) The second recent publication shows that the evidence against customary spanking is identical to the apparent effects of most corrective actions when analyzed in the same way (e.g., longitudinal analyses controlling statistically for initial differences in the outcome). This is true whether the corrective actions are by parents (e.g., other disciplinary responses) or professionals (treatments for depression in women). The outline summarizes other meta-analyses ignored in scientific summaries used to oppose all spanking and evidence that back-up spanking and phased-out spanking result in better outcomes compared to never-spanked children.
Moving research beyond the spanking debate
Child Abuse & Neglect, 2017
Despite numerous studies identifying a broad range of harms associated with the use of spanking and other types of physical punishment, debate continues about its use as a form of discipline. In this commentary, we recommend four strategies to move the field forward and beyond the spanking debate including: 1) use of methodological approaches that allow for stronger causal inference; 2) consideration of human rights issues; 3) a focus on understanding the causes of spanking and reasons for its decline in certain countries; and 4) more emphasis on evidence-based approaches to changing social norms to reject spanking as a form of discipline. Physical punishment needs to be recognized as an important public health problem.
Frontiers in psychiatry, 2011
Spanking is common in the United States but less common in many European countries in which it has been outlawed. Being spanked has been associated with child abuse victimization, poor self-esteem, impaired parent-child relationships, and child and adult mental health, substance abuse, and behavioral consequences. Being spanked as a child has also been shown to increase the likelihood of abusing one's own children or spouse as an adult. Spanking of very young children less than two is almost never recommended even among experts that consider spanking as reasonable in some circumstances. Using a cross-sectional anonymous telephone survey, we describe spanking rates among a representative sample of North Carolina mothers of children less than 2 years old and the association of spanking with demographic characteristics. A substantial proportion of mothers admit to spanking their very young children. The rate of spanking in the last year among all maternal respondents was 30%. Over ...