A new study reveals the positive effects of spanking (up to age 6) by Marjorie Gunnoe, professor of psychology at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The study involved 2,600 children, including questioning 179 teenagers about getting spanked and smacked by their parents.
“The claims made for not spanking children fail to hold up. They are not consistent with the data,” said Gunnoe.
Those who were physically disciplined performed better compared to those who weren’t in several categories, including school grades, an optimistic outlook on life, the willingness to perform volunteer work, and the ambition to attend college. Gunnoe found little difference between the sexes or races.
Supporting the findings of this study is another published last year in the Akron Law Review by Jason Fuller, which examined criminal records and found that children raised in areas with a legal ban on parental corporal punishment were much more likely to be involved in crime.
Sweden became the first nation to completely infringe upon parental rights, banning all forms of physical discipline. The net result of ‘enlightened’ nanny-state interference has been skyrocketing child abuse, which has exploded over 500 percent according to police reports. Even after the first year of the ban, and after a massive government public education campaign, Fuller found that “not only were Swedish parents resorting to pushing, grabbing, and shoving more than U.S. parents, but they were also beating their children twice as often.”
After a decade of the ban, Fuller’s analysis showed that “rates of physical child abuse in Sweden had risen to three times the U.S. rate” and “from 1979 to 1994, Swedish children under seven endured an almost six-fold increase in physical abuse.”
“Swedish teen violence skyrocketed in the early 1990s, when children that had grown up entirely under the spanking ban first became teenagers,” Fuller noted. “Preadolescents and teenagers under fifteen started becoming even more violent toward their peers. By 1994, the number of youth criminal assaults had increased by six times the 1984 rate.”
Dozens of other countries have followed Sweden’s ban, such as Germany, Italy, and New Zealand, where a parent cannot even legally take a child’s hand to bring him where he refuses to go.
All too often academics impose their half-baked theories via the government onto the citizenry with disastrous results. Only occasionally do they get it right and verify what ordinary people understand as common sense.
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Spirit of the law or letter of the law?: The vast majority of professionals agree that child bottom-battering/slapping isn’t healthy. A marginal few (mostly religious fundamentalists as those at Calvin) think that child bottom-slapping is good.
“The much-touted ‘biblical argument’ in support of corporal punishment is founded upon proof-texting a few isolated passages from Proverbs. Using the same method of selective scripture reading, one could also cite the Bible as an authority for the practice of slavery, adultery, polygamy, incest, suppression of women, executing people who eat pork, and infanticide. The brutal and vindictive practice of corporal punishment cannot be reconciled with the major New Testament themes that teach love and forgiveness and a respect for the sacredness and dignity of children, and which overwhelmingly reject violence and retribution as a means of solving human problems. Would Jesus ever hit a child? NEVER!”
The Rev. Thomas E. Sagendorf, United Methodist Clergy (Retired), Hamilton, Indiana. Personal communication, 2006.
First, Calvin is not exactly a fundamentalist school. It may be somewhat to the right of the UMC, but it’s fairly close. (I happen to be both a member of the UMC and someone who knows a fair amount about Calvin).
Second, and more to the point, the article in question isn’t a proof-text argument for spanking. Indeed, it’s not an argument for spanking at all: it’s merely a finding that spanking children in to their teenage years is associated with problems, but spanking them during younger years is associated with more positive outcomes. Do you have some specific criticism of the data or the way the study was conducted?
I have tended to be anti-spanking due to the data on it (the data I’ve seen says that it’s not an effective method of punishment), but I’ve been acutely aware that (1) the studies that have this finding tend to lump spanking and yelling into the same category, so the studies can’t show if it’s the yelling or spanking that’s ineffective and (2) the studies don’t distinguish method of corporal punishment or the age of the child. For this reason, I’ve been a little hesitant to fully endorse the findings of the “experts.”
If the “experts” disagree with the findings of this study, they should do their own on these same outcomes and take care to study spanking alone and take the age of the child into consideration. I’d be interested to know what a larger study would conclude.
People used to think it was necessary to “spank” adult members of the community, military trainees, and prisoners. In some countries they still do. In our country, it is considered sexual assault if a person over the age of 18 is “spanked”, but only if over the age of 18.
For one thing, buttock-battering can vibrate the pudendal nerve, which can lead to sexual arousal. There are multitudinous other physiological ways in which it can be sexually abusive, but I won’t list them all here. One can use the resources I’ve posted if they want to learn more.
Child bottom-battering/slapping vs. DISCIPLINE:
Child bottom-battering (euphemistically labeled “spanking”,”swatting”,”switching”,”smacking”, “paddling”,or other cute-sounding names) for the purpose of gaining compliance is nothing more than an inherited bad habit.
Its a good idea for people to take a look at what they are doing, and learn how to DISCIPLINE instead of hit.
I think the reason why television shows like “Supernanny” and “Dr. Phil” are so popular is because that is precisely what many (not all) people are trying to do.
There are several reasons why child bottom-slapping isn’t a good idea. Here are some good, quick reads recommended by professionals:
Plain Talk About Spanking
by Jordan Riak,
The Sexual Dangers of Spanking Children
by Tom Johnson,
NO VITAL ORGANS THERE, So They Say
by Lesli Taylor M.D. and Adah Maurer Ph.D.
Most compelling of all reasons to abandon this worst of all bad habits is the fact that buttock-battering can be unintentional sexual abuse for some children. There is an abundance of educational resources, testimony, documentation, etc available on the subject that can easily be found by doing a little research with the recommended reads-visit the website of Parents and Teachers Against Violence in Education.
Just a handful of those helping to raise awareness of why child bottom-slapping isn’t a good idea:
American Academy of Pediatrics,
American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry,
American Psychological Association,
Center For Effective Discipline,
Churches’ Network For Non-Violence,
Nobel Peace Prize recipient Archbishop Desmond Tutu,
Parenting In Jesus’ Footsteps,
Global Initiative To End All Corporal Punishment of Children,
United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
In 26 countries, child corporal punishment is prohibited by law (with more in process). In fact, the US was the only UN member that did not ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
PDeverit:
It’s interesting how your argument essentially revolves around “professionals” being better able to raise the children of other people rather than the parents of those children.
Never once did you mention the rights of the parents, who are legally, financially, and in every other way responsible for their children. How about the novel idea of letting parents raise their children the way they see fit? The American way is liberty (or it used to be), which means government does not interfere in the family unit. Other countries can do as they like, but the family unit is supposed to be a sovereign entity.
Occasional and controlled physical force used on prisoners lead to better cooperation and less violence. In the hands-off approach today, we see even more violence in the prison population compared to 50 years ago.
It’s absurd to suggest that a child will be ‘sexual aroused’ by a single swat on the buttocks – aka spanking (a term which existed long before the euphemism “child bottom-battering”). Using pseudoscience and pop-psychology to overturn centuries of successful parenting practices is not persuasive.
All the organizations and people you refer to are coming from the same postmodern philosophical framework with its associated assumptions about humanity. You support the arrogant notion that a handful of human beings can better run the lives of many other human beings. I, and others, do not believe those assumptions and therefore we should be free to decide for ourselves how to raise our children — not you or Desmond Tutu.