Spanking children as a punishment used to be commonplace but faced severe pushback in recent years for being aggressive and potentially leading to negative outcomes for kids. But a study published in Child Development suggests that infrequent hand spanking could actually be beneficial in limited circumstances.
Spanking is a form of punishment parents often use to discourage bad behavior. It is a discipline tactic that many people are critical of for being too similar to, or a form of, physical abuse. There have been concerns about the effects of spanking on the child, specifically in regard to externalizing problems, like aggression or defiance. Previous research has utilized between-subject designs, which are vulnerable to individual differences, and this study seeks to utilize a within-subject design to remedy that. Additionally, previous research has failed to separate spanking from more serious types of physical discipline or punishment, therefore making it difficult to know if it could be beneficial when used appropriately.
Researcher Joshua Pritsker of Purdue University reanalyzed data from Lansford et al (2011, 2012), which used data from the Child Development Project, a large, longitudinal study. Participants were recruited from Nashville and Knoxville, Tennessee and Bloomington, Indiana. Parents were approached and asked to participate at a kindergarten registration. Measures were utilized annually when the children were 6,7, and 8 years old. The frequency of spanking the child was measured for each year. A measure was utilized to assess externalizing problems as well.
Results showed that despite the negative effects of spanking found when utilizing a between-subject design, there were no significant results when using a within-subject design. Additionally, when utilizing a within-subject design, Pritsker found that spanking was inversely related to externalizing problems, suggesting that children who are spanked as punishment may even have reduced externalizing problems.
“The primary finding was that, when done with one’s hand (as opposed to an object) and with limited frequency, spanking appeared to decrease rather than increase externalizing problems. Children who were spanked still had more externalizing problems on average, but this didn’t appear to be caused by the spanking,” Pritsker told PsyPost. “Instead, after being spanked, children displayed lower levels of externalizing problems than they typically do. This only applied to limited spanking though — when done with an object or more frequently than once per month, it became ineffective.”
“However, it’s important to get more research like this before making concrete conclusions,” Pritsker added. “The advice of ‘don’t spank your kids’ still applies. Even if we could be perfectly certain in these results, there are other outcomes to consider. Unless future research corroborates these results across outcomes and datasets, we should continue to be cautious about spanking.”
The study focused solely on externalizing problems, but spanking and violence could potentially cause many negative effects for children. Future research could look at internalizing problems as well. Additionally, the original sample only took reports of spanking from the mother, when father’s or other caregivers could also be participating in spanking.
“There are other negative outcomes other than externalizing problems that spanking has been linked to (most notably, decreases in cognitive ability and increases in internalizing problems). Hence, even if spanking decreases externalizing problems, it could still have adverse effects elsewhere,” Pritsker said.
“The distinction between limited and more general spanking was also fairly coarse and is subject to confounding problems. For instance, it could be that parents in the limited spanking group tended to differ on other parental variables from the general spanking group, and that’s what drives the difference in effect. Hopefully, future studies will be able to examine this effect on a more detailed level.”
The study, “Spanking and externalizing problems: Examining within-subject associations“, was published October 20, 2021
