USA Today is profiling a study in the medical journal Pediatrics that connects non-abusive physical punishment (i.e. spanking) of children with mental disorders later in life.
“There is a significant link between the two,” says Afifi, an assistant professor of epidemiology in the Department of Community Health Sciences at the University of Manitoba, Canada. “Individuals who are physically punished have an increased likelihood of having mental health disorders.” Approximately 2% to 7% of mental disorders in the study were linked to physical punishment, she says.
The study’s findings add evidence to the argument that “physical punishment should not be used on any child, at any age,” she says.
Interestingly, physical punishment of any form has been banned for years in 30 countries, but is still legal in the US and Canada.
One person contesting the conclusions of this study is Robert Larzelere, who coauthored a study in 2005 that studied many forms of discipline. He feels that “appropriate” physical punishment combined with non-physical discipline can be the most effective tool in curbing bad behavior.
As a parent, on a personal level, I know that the type of physical punishment recommended by Lazerlere is rare. Most often, it seems spanking or other forms of physical discipline come when a parent is angry, not when they’re monitoring themselves closely to be sure to inflict the right amount of pressure combined with non-physical behavioral consequences. I would be interested in a study of parents who use physical punishment to discover whether they’re doing it “right”.
I fear, rather, that parents who use physical discipline in anger, without the appropriate corresponding behavioral consequences and conversations, will take any excuse to say “Spanking is healthy and important” without looking at the data.
What do you think? Were you spanked or otherwise punished physically?
How do you discipline your children?
If you did spank, did you always feel totally in control of yourself? How were you sure that you didn’t go too far?
Photo of lonely boy courtesy of Shutterstock
About Joanna Schroeder
I was spanked with a wooden spoon if I didn’t do x by the count of three, (and I never remember my mum doing it in anger)… I seriously doubt it did long term damage. If human beings were that delicate then we’d have died out long ago.
I do know people who were the victim of uncontrolled violence, but that’s rather different.
I was spanked as a younger child. I find it hard to relate to most of the negative portrayals of spanking that I encounter, because they seem to bear little relation to my childhood experience. Although I was spanked on many occasions, I can never once remember being spanked in anger. My parents were extremely angry with me on several occasions, but they committed themselves never to discipline me or my brothers without a calm temper and they really kept to that.
The routine was very clear. They would take me to a private place, explain what they believed that I had done wrong, and give me a chance to explain myself or apologize. After hearing my side out, they would arrive at a judgment. If the evidence was uncertain, I wouldn’t be physically punished. At that point I was spanked. It stung a little at the time, but was never very hard. After the punishment had taken place, they would hug me and sometimes pray for me in a very positive way.
My most ‘traumatic’ memories of punishment are all of non-physical forms of punishment (in all cases but one, not by my parents). The physical punishment of spanking, as my parents carried it out, had the advantage of being swift, just, with a set process and an opportunity to hear all sides of the matter, and being designed to restore relationship as quickly as possible. Indeed, the whole point of the spanking that I received was principally geared towards setting right a broken relationship. It wasn’t primarily about deterrence or punishment at all. The thing that I found difficult about other forms of punishment is that they generally lacked the qualities necessary to restore a highly functional and loving relationship quickly and were far more manipulative and alienating. I wasn’t given a responsible voice in such processes and a sort of running psychological battle between me and the authority figure was established when there was no clear and swift process of reconciliation.
I will almost certainly follow my parents’ example if and when I have kids.
For years, I thought that the way my father spanked was the way everyone else who spanked did it, and that Mom was unusually gentle.
Mom: “Why did you do that?” “I–I don’t know…” “You need to think before you act. *spank* Now go and play, and don’t do that again.”
Dad: “WHY DID YOU DO THAT?” “I–I don’t know.,..” “WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU DON’T KNOW? HOW STUPID ARE YOU? *WHACK* DON’T YOU EVER *WHACK* DO *WHACK* THAT *WHACK* AGAIN! YOU HEAR ME?”
I don’t remember Mom ever being in the room when I was spanked though, so I don’t think she ever realized that my dad was that…harsh.
Spanking is one of those murky things in life. I am not fan because of the cognitive dissonance it causes children but we live in a world where hitting in the name of discipline is still accepted so I will let parents decide what they feel is appropriate.
I wouldn’t argue if it is right or wrong. I don’t like the words in most context. I prefer healthy and unhealthy. This study seems to support the latter. Let us see if more studies can confirm this. Then we as a society can adjust accordingly.
Thanks for sharing.
I’m against spanking. I don’t think it’s necessary. And, it is problematic – confusing message for children and also many more research studies (than the one cited above) indicate it to be harmful. I wrote a bit more about my own thoughts on this topic here: http://judiciouse.blogspot.ca/2011/12/why-i-dont-spank-my-children.html
I’m glad to see the GMP picking up on this topic. cheers!
There is a difference between a light spank, and a flat out abuse. I support light spanking on the buttocks, just enough for someone to realize their behaviour is bad but I’d keep it more for when they do something dnagerous (playing with fire, etc). I’d try non-spanking methods first though, but it depends on what works.
Spanking didn’t work on me, I’d laugh it off apparently. My cousin was immune to pain for some reason, I could punch him in the arm as hard as I could and he’d giggle? The most traumatic experiences for me weren’t painful, it was verbal, the screaming and being thrown into a cupboard by a teacher scared the shit out of me. Spanking was nothing. Hell it was probably more traumatic for me to be given injections, I was scared shitless of those! Forcing me to get medical procedures probably did more harm than spanking ever did.
I was spanked. Mom tended to do it the “right way,” using an appropriate amount of pressure and not letting her anger get in the way of being a good mother.
But when Dad got angry, we got to sit through about 10-20 minutes of screaming, and spankings ALWAYS left a mark. Even the threat of a spanking was enough to keep us in line, although it tended to ruin the mood of that fun family trip to the pizza place. My Dad was both a member of military special forces AND extremely type-A, so he spanked over more minor offenses than Mom did, and seemed to take a small child’s lack of impulse control as a personal insult.
Since we lived in a conservative Christian rural area, everyone else’s parents spanked too, so to us it was just What Parents Do. To me, getting in trouble with Mom was bad enough, but if Dad was home, that meant you were yelled at by Dad for not being (his idea of) a Good Child before being spanked, and if nothing else, the waiting was torture. Mom got it over with and didn’t make a big deal out of “you’re such a bad kid, why did you do that?” You were spanked, you cried it out, and then you usually felt like having fun and not doing whatever you’d done again.
Before you assume physical abuse, I would like to point out that we were always spanked on the bottom, not slapped around or beaten with blunt objects. If we went way over the line, a belt might be taken out, but only a smooth leather one, and NEVER with the buckle end. This was rare, however–we were usually spanked bare-handed.
The problem was, when I was little, I was easily-enough amused that “time out” didn’t work. So when I was too little for loss-of-privileges discipline to work, my parents spanked me because it was the only thing that worked at the time. They just…forgot to re-evaluate later when I was older and see if a different form of discipline would work. My brother progressed to getting the loss-of-privileges punishment, but I was still spanked until I was 16. (My ADHD and independent spirit made it harder for me to behave properly, and I often did particularly juvenile things long after my younger brother had outgrown them.)
No kids yet, but I am NOT spanking them if anything else works at all, and I’m going to make sure to “catch them doing right” as well. I am also going to evaluate how the punishment aspect of discipline looks to the siblings, and try to keep things fair. It made me feel angry and humiliated that I was spanked for so much longer than my brother or my classmates, and I’m sure it’s one of the reasons I struggle with feelings of inadequacy all the damned time.
The article lists “grabbing” as one of those punishments. If they start to take off, I grab my kids any time we’re near a parking lot, street or pool.
I think the disclaimers, “may be linked,” and “research suggests” are the most accurate parts of the article. Because that’s all you can draw from this kind of research. A linkage or correllation has been found. Certainly a causative relationship has not been proven.
My kids get spanked very rarely, as in, it’s been months. And they seem less confused by it than by other forms of discipline. I never hear them wonder or ask, “If you love me, why did you spank me?” On the other hand, after a discussion of some misbehavior, it is not uncommon to hear them say things that show they don’t always understand that a good kid can sometimes do a bad thing.
I did get spanked occasionally as a kid, most often from my mother. I can remember a few times of us embroiled in an argument and I got up the gumption to talk back, but then immediately ran away with my hands covering my butt. It did not happen often, we had to really make her mad. On the spectrum of “abuse” to “punishment” her slaps probably skewed a bit more towards abuse if only because they were not measured or moderated but impulsive acts of anger.
I have a vague memory involving a slap across the face, but honestly cannot remember if she actually did this or just threatened to. “Sometimes I just want to pick you up and slam you against a wall” is another sentence burned into my memory.
While I don’t think it’s directly affected my mental health, she and I do not have a healthy relationship (in fact, we’re currently not on speaking terms), and that unhealthy relationship did contribute to a period of depression I went through last year.
I don’t plan on having kids. I don’t really support spanking but don’t feel strongly enough about it to be compelled to prevent other people from spanking.
I was abused as a child, so I thought I would never spank my children.
Nope.
When my son was was little, he might get a swat to the butt if he engaged in a behavior that was really over the top or dangerous. It happened very rarely, but he did know there was a ‘nuclear deterant.’ Most of the time, I could verbally redirect him, esp. if the redirection was laced with humor. It was pretty effective. As he has gotten older, I’ve been able to reason things out with him. I think the last time he got spanked, he was 6. He’s almost 17 now.
There was one time I thought I was going to hit him in anger. When my son was about 2-3, I was studying art in college. In my home studio, I had just completed one of the most intricate, time consuming paintings I had ever attempted. I was really proud of it.
My son, in the past, had never touched one of my paintings. To this day, I don’t know why he did this, but he ran into the studio, ran his fingers through the still wet paint, and then proceeded to take his oil paint covered fingers and smearing them all over the walls. I considered the thought he had been possessed.
I really wanted to run over to him and beat the sh*t out of him. It was bad. I knew if I spanked him him, it wouldn’t been a swat and it wouldn’t have been just one.
Instead, I called a friend, who was another art student and a mother. She rushed over (based on the tone of my voice on the telephone), assessed the situation, and sent me for a walk. On my return, my son and the walls were clean. She was forlornly trying to salvage the painting. Later that evening, we ended up laughing about it.
I’m still grateful to her for that swift act of kindness. If she han’t got there as quickly as she did, this story might not have had such a cheerful ending. It was instructive for me to learn that, as much as I loved my son, that I was capable of hurting him. Soon afterwards, I talked to a therapist who told me that the situation was handled correctly, and I shouldn’t freak out about it. Still…
We have talked a lot about spanking, but we’ve never done it. The way my wife and I see it, spanking is a nuclear option ultra consequence for a really major issue. We have talked, for example, about disciplining a child who has nearly run out into traffic. We’ve also discussed spanking with our five year old as a possible consequence for a behavior he continued doing despite a lot of other discipline (he was holding his two year old little sister and “hugging” her despite her screaming “no” at the top of her lungs). We had talked with our son, given him time-ins, revoked privileges, sternly lectured, and no chane in his behavior. We sat him down and explained that this behavior was so serious that if he kept doing it, it might get to the level of spanking. He hasn’t done the behavior since. He’s never had a spanking.
This study is bogus and very likely created to arrive at the desired conclusion.
All discipline causes pain, either physical or emotional. Clearly, emotional pain has as much or more potential for long term harm. Whatever discipline method is chosen, including time outs and the like, can be abusive.
Ok, I have a stupid question. Does anyone else have experiences like the following?
Nearly every one of my male friends and family (black and white) have a variation on a story that could be entitled, “…And that was the last time my parents hit me.”
Sometimes it because kid fed up and hauled off on the parent (kid still got beat but he was sixteen and well past the point when physical punishment should have been a viable option), sometime the kid shamed the parent (“Does this make you feel big?”), sometimes the kid showed he simply didn’t care (kid got beat and deliberately did the same action again to prove a point.)
I have never seen the so-called “quiet spanking” where the parent is in control of their emotions and it was a cold calculated decision. There is always some degree of rage and being out of control… even when the parent doesn’t realize it. (It might start off quiet but…)
At a certain point it’s less about discipline and more about maintaining control.
I believe in corporal punishment but feel it is used far too often and far too late in many instances.
I saw quiet spanking a lot. My stories range from “my dad/mum abused the hell out of me”, “I got spanked a bit and was fine”, and “I never got spanked”. Interestingly enough some of the worst abuse wasn’t physical at all, the power of words can really fuck people up. A spank is better than telling a child they’re good for nothing for instance.