More harm than good: A summary of scientific research on the intended and unintended effects of corporal punishment on children

I INTRODUCTION The use of corporal punishment to discipline children remains one of the last holdouts of old-fashioned childrearing in the United States. Gone are the days of administering cod-liver oil to prevent rickets, spreading alcohol on babies' gums to dull teething pain, or even putting children to sleep on their stomachs to prevent choking on fluids--practices that have been repeated by generations of dutiful parents across centuries. The modern age of child-rearing experts has ushered in a new set of parenting techniques thought to promote optimal child development, including teaching children to use signs from American Sign Language to communicate before they are able to verbalize words, protecting children in fancy (and expensive) car seats that were unheard of even twenty years ago, and using time-out as a preferred means of discipline. Yet corporal punishment of children persists--roughly fifty percent of the parents of toddlers (1) and sixty-five to sixty-eight percent of the parents of preschoolers (2) in the United States use corporal punishment as a regular method of disciplining their children. By the time American children reach middle and high school, eighty-five percent have been physically punished by their parents. (3) These high prevalence rates are in stark contrast to the growing consensus within the social and medical sciences that the risks for substantial harm from corporal punishment outweigh any benefit of immediate child compliance. (4) Why, then, do parents continue to spank or hit their children in the name of discipline.? One reason is its long tradition--the corporal punishment of children has occurred throughout the entirety of recorded history. (5) For centuries in this country and in countries around the world, corporal punishment of children occurred in a context in which such punishment was also acceptable as a means of punishing adults for infractions, often in the form of public floggings. (6) But courts throughout the United States are no longer allowed to sentence criminals to corporal punishment, short of capital punishment. (7) In contrast, corporal punishment of children by parents remains legal and accepted; in most states parents continue to have a legal defense against assault if their intention in hitting their children was to discipline them. (8) As a result of this long history, corporal punishment has a strong intergenerational tradition in the United States. Parents, after all, learn most of their lessons about how to be a parent from their own parents. It is thus not surprising that adults' support for corporal punishment is significantly related to whether they believe their own parents were supportive of the practice (9) and whether they themselves were physically punished as children. (10) Indeed, children and adolescents who are spanked themselves tend to be more supportive of corporal punishment than children who have not been spanked. (11) Corporal punishment also persists because it is a practice with strong ties to religion, particularly to Christianity. (12) Religious leaders and religiously inspired parenting experts in our twenty-first century, (13) like their eighteenth-century compatriots, (14) make connections between firm discipline and a child's spiritual well-being, and encourage parents to use corporal punishment as an important part of their discipline repertoire. Parents with conservative Protestant affiliations in particular are more supportive of corporal punishment and use it more frequently than do parents of other Christian and non-Christian religious affiliations. (15) Although religious affiliation may explain why some parents continue to use corporal punishment as a means of discipline, a large and growing body of research has challenged the long-held assumption that spanking is a good, and perhaps even a necessary, way to make children better behaved. Despite popular parenting books that encourage parents to try nonphysical means of discipline, (16) practices such as spanking continue throughout the country. …