Have you ever thought some snot-nosed kid would be less of a brat if he just got a good spanking?
I worked three summers as a country-club lifeguard, and I saw my fair share of children engaging in obnoxious and sometimes dangerous behavior.
I’d be a liar if I said I never wished their parents would give them a little old-fashioned discipline after their third time-out of the day, but after researching the issue, I’m glad most of the parents were not spanking their kids.
Some of the kids definitely needed more discipline at home, but a growing body of research warns parents that spanking can be effective in the short term at best, but at worst it can have long-term effects on the child’s mental development.
A recent study by Joan Durrant of the University of Manitoba and Ron Ensom of the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario examined the body of research on physical punishment conducted over the past 20 years.
The authors found the case against spanking overwhelming, saying, “Virtually without exception, these studies found that physical punishment was associated with higher levels of aggression against parents, siblings, peers and spouses.”
To be fair, ethical considerations and confounding variables make studying spanking incredibly difficult.
Linking poor behavior to spanking is challenging because bad kids are both more likely to get spanked and more likely to break the rules in the first place.
There are some issues with the reasoning behind the studies, but the sheer volume of research linking spanking to everything from aggressive and antisocial behavior to lowered IQ levels and depression makes a strong case against corporal punishment.
Some students see spanking as a necessary tool for disciplining children. Renewable natural resources junior Clay Lovelace, who was spanked as a child, thinks its necessary for communication between children and parents.
“You can’t explain logically to a kid why what they did was wrong,” he said.
Lovelace said he would probably spank his kids if they did something bad enough to deserve it.
Personally, I think children are a lot smarter than we give them credit for, and spanking can send a confusing message.
Looking at it from a child’s perspective, the people he or she relies on and trusts more than anyone in the world are now hurting him or her for something he or she probably didn’t know was wrong in the first place.
Adults hitting kids does not prepare them for the real world, where adults are not allowed to hit other adults, kids are not allowed to hit other kids and kids are definitely not allowed to hit adults.
Research has shown punishments in general can counterproductively encourage bad behavior because they let the punished feel like they “paid” for their misdeeds, thereby justifying them.
Spanking children can also teach them to fear their parents, encouraging them to hide or lie about bad behavior instead of stopping it.
Many parents go on the defensive when their parenting style is called into question. Many also rely on their own personal experiences rather than objective data, pointing out how they were spanked as children but went on to lead a normal life, or how they spanked their child and he or she is now a Fortune 500 CEO.
These anecdotes are largely irrelevant to the issue because they are incredibly biased, and more importantly, only represent isolated cases rather than the large numbers of subjects the studies provide.
Kinesiology freshman Laura McKowen did not find spanking an effective deterrent as a child.
“They’ll do whatever they did wrong anyway. I did,” McKowen said.
She doesn’t plan to spank her future children but admitted she would consider it in cases of violence or to protect from dangerous behavior.
As someone who made it through childhood unspanked, I have a hard time coming up with situations where I would have been better served with a spanking rather than facing the disappointment of my parents.
Spanking might seem like the only solution for some kids, but science tells us its just not worth the pain. Andrew Shockey is a 21-year-old biological engineering junior from Baton Rouge. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_Ashockey.
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