Ga. Mrs. Long and her husband, Michael, started spanking their son, Kevin, when he was four even though both weren't spanked much as children. While there are no definitive studies of how many parents spank, many pediatricians, psychologists and researchers say the numbers are on the rise. Kevin Ryan, director of the Center for the Advancement of Ethics and Character Development at Boston University, says parents are starting to reject the politically correct notion that children are too fragile to spank. That notion took hold after World War' II as Benjamin Spock, the influential pediatrician, began warning that corporal punishment can traumatize children and trigger more aggressive behavior. While academic thing on the subject has long been dominated by Dr. Spock's point of view, an emerging body of research suggests that spanking might not be such a bad thing after all.
Many parents continue to feel guilty about spanking.
Yet, of ten, the biggest deterrent to spanking isn't guilt, but community censure. Indeed, even when spanking was at its least fashionable, researchers say most parents spanked-only they did so less frequently, less firmly and out of public view. Such outside pressures still exist, of course. Last fall, Mrs. Dugan of East Haven was shopping in the local grocery store when young Mairin decided to pull cereal boxes off the shelf. Mrs. Dugan fumed.