Jada Jordan-DaSilva 

3/29/2020 

English 110 

Inquiry Based Essay  

Why Spanking is Ineffective and Harmful to Children  

Most people are familiar with the age old saying ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’. It is an age-old proverb that most people believe and apply to their lives. So, for many years’ parents have spanked their children and most believe that it is an effective way of discipline. However, spanking is not an acceptable form of discipline. In fact, spanking is considered a form of corporal punishment. Spanking is non-injurious, and it is used to modify a child’s behavior. Parents use openhanded hits on a child’s bottom to cause immediate and long-term compliance. Although spanking has been normalized it is ineffective and has a negative effect on childhood development by teaching maladaptive behaviors, promoting anti-social behaviors, and affects the mental health of the child. 

Throughout history spanking has been the preferred mode of punishment for children that parents have opted for across multiple cultures throughout the world. Spanking is often defined as: “the use of physical force with the intention of causing a child to experience pain, but not injury, for the purpose of correcting or controlling behavior.” According to Clinical Psychiatry News young children who are spanked by their parents show more externalizing behaviors and less cognitive capacity several years later compared with their peers who are not spanked (Moon pg.1). Meaning they are more likely to be physically aggressive, disobey rules, cheat, and retain less information at any moment.  When children are young, they soak up lots of information and begin to mimic their parents. One of the things that they pick up on is behaviors. So, children begin to understand that mommy and daddy spank them when they do something, they don’t like so now they go and copy that behavior. Spankings teach children that violence is the answer to their problems. When they see something that they don’t like or when they’re at school and someone does something, they don’t like they feel that it is now okay to hit them or use other violent acts to solve their problems. Throughout the world about 80% of children are spanked or otherwise punished physically by their parents (Rollins). Many people say that they were spanked as a child and they turned out just fine, but if there was an exact clone of yourself sitting next to you who wasn’t spanked there is a large possibility that they could have turned out much better.  

Most parents main goal in spanking are 1) to punish misbehavior and lessen the chance of them repeating the undesirable behavior and 2) to increase the likelihood of desirable behavior in the future. But spanking as a punishment can only directly achieve the first goal. Parents also discipline to not only achieve short-term compliance but long-term compliance as well. In the 1980’s a research team at Idaho State University conducted a series of experiments that compared spanking with giving time outs. They tested young children with behavior problems and some who disobeyed instruction were put into time out and others were put into time out but spanked if they did not stay for the entire duration of the punishment. The children were then observed to see if they complied with a series of 30 commands from their mothers. In a meta-analysis of these studies children were more likely to comply when their mothers used time outs than when spanked. A second study across the preschool years with more than 2,500 children found that spanking at ages 1, 2, and 3, predicted increases in externalizing behaviors one year later. According to these studies spanking did not provide the parents with the outcome they had wanted. Rather it made the children who were spanked consistently show increasing aggression over time.  

Beyond the irony of parents acting aggressively in order to reduce aggression in their children, spanking is ineffective because it doesn’t adhere to the conditions that behaviorist say must exist for punishment to be effective. For punishments to be effective they need to be “immediate, consistent, and delivered after every instance of the targeted behavior” (Gershoff). Yet it is very difficult for parents to achieve all these conditions when giving a spanking. According to psychologist Grusec and Goodnow children learn by more complicated methods rather than learning which behaviors elicit a physical punishment. Spanking alone does not teach children why their behavior was wrong or what they should do in lieu of the unacceptable behavior. It only teaches them that they should behave and follow instructions when the threat of physical punishment exists and once the threat is gone the child now has no reason to behave appropriately.  

In the study of family life, there is a constant question of whether or not spanking is associated with the changes in a child’s behavior. Several researchers have suggested that spanking is associated with behavior problems and can contribute to the increase of anti-social behaviors during adulthood. When children in the U.S. start kindergarten as many as 80% will have been spanked (Gander). A study published in JAMA Network Open showed that children were more likely to engage in anti-social behavior if they were reprimanded physically even if they were not mistreated in any other ways. 47.3% of anti-social behavior in the U.S. could be linked to physical discipline (Gander). And both men and women who had been physically disciplined, but not maltreated, were more likely to act antisocially than those who weren’t. A parent’s goal in spanking their child is not to psychologically damage their children but based on studies and research we can see that is exactly what it’s doing. The results of spanking your child are unintended yet detrimental. The intention and hope that your child shows immediate and long-term compliance, spanking them only does the opposite.  

While children can be delightful there is most likely a two-legged terror amongst the group and most people believe that a “good hard spanking” is long overdue. But spanking does not improve morals or behavior nor does it make children more successful. Instead regularly spanking children increases the likelihood of a wide variety of undesirable outcomes. One of those undesirable outcomes being poor mental health. Parents spank, scream, or threaten because the change and response in the child is often immediate. But what have we taught them? We’ve now taught them to fear the physical punishment rather than understand why we don’t do certain things. Children also learn to build a tolerance to the punishment. 

“Instead of understanding that we do not climb the bookshelf because it can be dangerous, the 3-year-old now has a new goal of climbing the bookshelf without getting hit. They will try and try until they meet their need of exploring the wonderful bookshelf that to him looks more like a fun ladder to climb” (Acosta) 

Spanking is mostly a last resort and when you build the child’s tolerance you slowly lose yours while you escalate your response every time. “First you scream, then you have to scream and hit a table to make a loud sound, later you have to scream hit the table and grab the child and finally you end up hitting your 3-year-old child in full adult rage” (Acosta). Even though not all parents escalate to that point of no return. In the moment the child loses the love that they have for their parents and its replaced with fear. People often say they were hit with “the belt, a switch, la chancleta” and I’m just fine, but the question is are they really? Do you remember what it felt like to be hit? Did you feel understood? In the moment did you trust and love your parent or were you hurt and scared? Finally, did you stop doing what you were doing because you understood why or because you were afraid of what was yet to come if you did it again? Children begin to no longer trust their parents in fear of being physically punished and that follows them into their teenage and adult years. Parents want their children to be open and honest with them but think about it, to those who were spanked as a child did you share everything with your parents, or did you keep certain things to yourself? Studies show that children who are spanked grow up to spank their own children even more often than the amount that they were as a child. This in turn not only causes the behavior to be consistently passed along but the consequences as well.  

To further my understanding of the reason why parents spank their children and to spread the newfound knowledge of the negative effects, I chose to conduct an actual study of my own. I work at a preschool/ childcare facility so, I decided to conduct some interviews with some of the parents. I interviewed 20 parents over the course of a week, and I asked them all the same four questions. The first one being were you spanked as a child, the second one being do you spank your children, and the third one being do you think it is effective. Before I asked the fourth question, I had shared with the parents some of the statistics and adverse effects that spanking actually has on children. Once I shared the facts, I then asked the final question which was now that they have heard the facts would they still spank their kids and if they said yes to question number three if they still believed that spanking was effective. Once I finished all of my interviews, I then calculated all of the percentages for each question. For question number one only one parent said that they were not spanked as a child so 95% of my sample was spanked as a child. For question number two only two parents said that they do not spank their children so, 90% of the sample do spank their children. For question number three 7 parents said that spanking is not effective so 65% of my sample believed that spanking does help correct behavior. Finally, for question number four 100% of my sample said that once they were aware of the adverse effects, they no longer believed that spanking was effective and that they would no longer spank their kids. From this brief study I realized that parents believe that if they are not hitting their children to the point of bruising or extreme abuse then they believe that what they are doing does not have an effect on them, but it does. They also believe that because they were hit, and they are “just fine” it will be the same for their kids but that is not the case.  Even if the effects of spanking their child in particular aren’t extreme cases there is still that part of their child that has now been mentally and physically hurt that they cannot come back from. After all of my interviews I asked them if they had any questions to ask me or if they have any comments that they wanted to share. About 90% of the parents shared with me that the maladaptive behaviors that result from spanking a child, they see some of the behaviors in their children. The most common one being violence like hitting, kicking, and biting other children or a teacher in a result of their peers doing something that they don’t like. 

 Even though many parents spank their children and believe that it is an effective way of disciplining and insuring compliance it actually teaches the opposite. Spanking is ineffective and teaches maladaptive behaviors, increases the likelihood of anti-social behavior in adulthood, and effects the child’s mental health. If parents can change their views than we can create a whole new generation of parents and children for the better.  

 

 

Works Cited  

Scholarly sources  

Gershoff, Elizabeth T. “Spanking and Child Development: We Know Enough Now To Stop Hitting Our Children.” Child development perspectives vol. 7,3 (2013): 133-137. doi:10.1111/cdep.12038 

Moon, Marry Ann. “Spanking Linked to Later Behavioral, Cognitive Problems.” Clinical Psychiatry News, vol. 41, no. 11, Nov. 2013, www.questia.com/magazine/1G1-352377490/spanking-linked-to-later-behavioral-cognitive-problems. Accessed 29 Mar. 2020. 

Smith, B. (2012, April). The case against spanking. Monitor on Psychology, 43(4). http://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/04/spanking 

Rollins, Judy A. “Spanking revisited.” Pediatric Nursing, vol. 42, no. 4, 
     July-Aug. 2016, p. 162. Gale Academic OneFile, 
     https://link-gale-com.ccny-proxy1.libr.ccny.cuny.edu/apps/doc/A462508285/ 
     AONE?u=cuny_ccny&sid=AONE&xid=a008a3bd. Accessed 10 Mar. 2020. 

Popular sources  

Acosta Sandaal, Lina. “What Spanking May Be Teaching Your Children.” MomsRising.org, 14 Sept. 2014, www.momsrising.org/blog/what-spanking-may-be-teaching-your-children. Accessed 18 Mar. 2020. 

Picard, Caroline. “How Bad Is Spanking, Really?” Good Housekeeping, www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/parenting/a46709/effects-of-spanking/. Accessed 10 Mar. 2020. 

Gander, Kashmira. “Spanking Children Linked to Antisocial Behavior in Adulthood.” Newsweek, 25 Jan. 2019. Newsweek, www.newsweek.com/spanking-children-linked-antisocial-behavior-adulthood-1304852. Accessed 30 Mar. 2020. 

Interviews  

The interviews were done at Celebree School 1203 Agroa Drive Bel Air MD 21014