Spanking increases children's aggression

Many American parents use corporal punishment as discipline, despite overwhelming scientific evidence that corporal punishment has little value and many possible negative effects. Many cultures across the world do not use corporal punishment at all in their child rearing. In one representative poll from Survey USA, 72 percent of Americans felt that it was OK to use corporal punishment to discipline a child, although various professional organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics have condemned corporal punishment.

A new study adds to the mountain of evidence about the potentially toxic effects of corporal punishment. This extremely well designed study asked the question: "Does corporal punishment of young children increase their tendencies to be aggressive?" The answer turns out to be, "yes." Three-year-old children who are spanked two or more times in the month that was studied had a significantly greater chance of being more aggressive at age 5, even if all other important factors in their environment that could cause aggression were separated out from the analysis!

There are many better ways to discipline children than by using corporal punishment. If you are interested, we discuss this in much more detail in an article that is available as a pdf for download at http://lucydanielscenter.org/page/spanking-children. We also have dealt with a related aspect of the topic on this blog: see Using strong discipline with hard-to-manage children?


– Mental Health Matters! is written by the Lucy Daniels Center for Early Childhood and posted on the Carolina Parent Magazine's website, the Triangle's family resource - in print for over 21 years!  And online at www.carolinaparent.com.