On one hand quantitative data seems to suggest spanking had zero merit. On the other hand one I've heard from many parents that spanking was the only disincentive that could stop certain seriously bad behavior - revoking privileges, assigning chores, etc. did not solve the problem. The more extreme examples involved actions that put siblings in the ER, or behavior that would easily get kid expelled. I think it's possible for spanking to be ineffective in aggregate, but effective from the point of view of parents. If you need to stop your child from doing something <i>right now</i> because it could seriously impact their future life prospects, it may be a worthwhile trade-off to risk the chance that a child adopts more aggressive (but not intolerably so) behavior down the road. I'd be interesting in seeing the types and magnitude of behavior that instigated the spanking vs. the behavior spanked children do later in childhood.<p>While the quantitative data seems to suggest spanking is negative, the question still remains: when all other disciplinary options are exhausted, what can a parent do to stop truly intolerable behavior? The article suggests using other options, but does not list any.
I'm happy to say these guys are the experts and know better than me but this really flies in the face of all the anecdotal evidence I've seen.<p>From my peers those that grew up in strict Muslim and Christian homes, where they did get corporal punishment, they were much better behaved. That has also translated into their success now they're in their 30s.<p>But those who also got corporal punishment in more dysfunctional households have had terrible outcomes. Their "punishment" was probably much closer to child abuse that those from the other group.<p>I was not spanked my self so I have no personal reference, only that I was far worse in self discipline than the first group. I'd have expected this study to show some correlation between self discipline and spanking. I can't help but think they've conflated child abuse and hitting out of anger with spanking.<p>That said, I'm no expert.
This is just another data point in a long, long line of research demonstrating that spanking and corporal punishment in general is harmful. It is very frustrating to watch people (in this thread and elsewhere) blithely continue to believe what they want to believe contrary to the large bulk of evidence--it's as if, confronted with truth and reality, they think that there can be some argument or rhetorical gambit that makes the conclusions that they would prefer correct. That's not how truth works.
> Although spanking is traditionally supposed to teach a lesson to correct bad behavior, children who were spanked were neither more compliant nor better behaved.<p>This accords with my experience of primary school in the UK in the early 1960s. It was nearly always a specific small subset of the pupils who were punished and they continued to misbehave while those who were generally well behaved anyway but once did something stupid became more careful.