Throughout history spanking has been commonly viewed as necessary and effective mean of conditioning children to good behaviour.
Throughout history spanking has been commonly viewed as necessary and effective mean of conditioning children to good behaviour. Partly the practice has religious roots, as Bible is often interpreted to require parental corporal punishment (Latif, 2003). Psychological research has yet been unable to draw conclusive understanding of whether and how corporal punishment affects children. Over the past two or three decades corporal punishment of children has no longer been viewed as private family affair but an issue of public concern (Bachar et al., 1997). In increasingly many countries, including the whole Scandinavia, all corporal punishment of children is legally banned. In Britain, however, the government still accepts parental corporal punishment as "reasonable chastisement" (Gershoff, 2002). Conflict on the topic elicits passionate debates within both private and public sphere and even psychologists and other professionals disagree over the use of corporal punishment (Holden, 2002). The controversial and emotionally charged nature of the topic highlights the need to approach the issue of corporal punishment and its effects on child behaviour through scientific and thus objective means, rather than simply relying on ideologically motivated arguments (Holden, 2002; Freeman, 2002).
In this paper we shall evaluate some of the psychological evidence that would support the full legal ban of corporal punishment of children in the UK and other countries. A good starting point is to look at Gershoff's (2002) article, in which she investigates associations between parental corporal punishment and various child behaviours and experiences as well as how other factors might moderate or mediate such correlations. While causal inferences cannot be drawn from these studies, Gershoff (2002) also summarizes extensive amount of literature, which suggests reasons for abandoning the practice of spanking. Through word limit restrictions we shall focus on the findings of Gershoff's empirical data, rather than summarizing her theoretical review. We will then look at the critical accounts published in conjunction with Gershoff's study in Psychological Bulletin as well as Gershoff's reply to the criticism.
The attempt to define corporal punishment is complex as "there is no one definition that would satisfy all researchers and cover all cases and conditions of child spanking" (Latif, 2003:1). Straus (1994) defines corporal punishment as "the use of physical force with the intention of causing a child to experience pain but not injury for the purposes of correction or control of the child's behaviour" (p.4; cited in Gershoff, 2002). This definition was also used by Gershoff (2002) in her meta-analysis of 88 studies including 62 years of collected data. Gershoff looked for both positive and negative associations between parental use of corporal punishment and 11 child behaviours and experiences, including moral internalization, immediate compliance, delinquent behaviour, aggression, quality of relationship with parent and physical abuse from the parent. The study found correlations, but no causal link, between corporal punishment and all the eleven variables of which ten were negative: such as increased aggression (Gershoff, 2002).
The two largest effect sizes with corporal punishment in Gershoff's (2002) meta-analysis were increased risk of becoming an abuse victim and immediate compliance with parental demands. Gershoff states: "The fact that these disparate constructs show the strongest links to corporal punishment underlines the controversy over this practice" (cited in Campbell, 2002:1). The potential tendency of spanking to escalate into physical abuse has influenced the social policy implications in many countries to legally ban the practice (Gershoff, 2002).
Holden (2002) points out that higher level of immediate compliance after being hit is not a meaningful positive outcome, when ...
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The two largest effect sizes with corporal punishment in Gershoff's (2002) meta-analysis were increased risk of becoming an abuse victim and immediate compliance with parental demands. Gershoff states: "The fact that these disparate constructs show the strongest links to corporal punishment underlines the controversy over this practice" (cited in Campbell, 2002:1). The potential tendency of spanking to escalate into physical abuse has influenced the social policy implications in many countries to legally ban the practice (Gershoff, 2002).
Holden (2002) points out that higher level of immediate compliance after being hit is not a meaningful positive outcome, when recognizing that it applies only for short-term compliance. Moreover, the fact that corporal punishment was not positively associated with moral internalization strongly suggests that spanking is ineffective method in child rearing (Holden, 2002). Many authors agree that spanking promotes children's external rather than internal attributions for their behaviour. In this way the fear of punishment and physical pain will make children to obey in the presence of their parents but not when they are absent, while as explaining the reasoning for socially acceptable behaviour has been shown to be effective method in promoting long term compliance through internal motivation for good behaviour (Beck, 1996; Freeman, 2002). Another negative consequence of the use of spanking can be that the adult may lose the child's confidence and the child may withdraw avoiding the administrator of the physical punishment (Beck, 1996).
Holden (2002) is concerned about the quality of Gershoff's empirical data, as it is crucial to distinguish severe from normative physical punishment in order to investigate whether spanking has any of those negative outcomes, which are readily associated with abusive punishment. The definition of child abuse often involves the infliction of bruises, cuts and bone fractures, which may be caused by beating or kicking (Latif, 2003). Gershoff (2002) excluded more severe forms of corporal punishment and included what Holden (2002) called "customary physical punishment" in the meta-analyses: slapping or spanking with an object, such as spoon, belt, or paddle, to the child's buttocks or hand. However, many of the studies used in Gershoff's review may have unintentionally include abusive parents, because often parents were not inquired about severe forms of corporal punishment and through the reliance on self reports by parents excessive corporal punishment may have been underreported (Holden, 2002). Holden also identified other methodological problems, such as reliance on single and sometimes retrospective reports; lack of assessment of contextual variables and neglect of child's temperament. Another very important point is that even when corporal punishment is clearly defined, its manifestation across families is heterogeneous: It can be loving or rejecting; impulsively or instrumentally administered; the frequency and its intensity varies (Holden, 2002). Spanking also co-occurs with many other parenting behaviours, such as yelling, reasoning or raging (Holden, 2002). Studies, which systematically include these and other variables, are needed (Holden, 2002).
Holden emphasizes that despite of the problems with the design of the studies, "Gershoff's results of the meta-analysis were surprisingly consistent...as the direction of effects was largely uniform" (2002:592). Striking result was also the lack of positive outcomes (Holden, 2002). Holden concludes that "Gershoff's review reflected the growing body of evidence indicating that corporal punishment does no good and may even cause harm" and thus psychologists should not be advocating or justifying the use of spanking (2002: 594).
Baumrind et al. (2002) argued that 65% of the studies in Gershoff's meta-analysis measured overly severe forms of corporal punishment and therefore it does not provide any evidence that mild to moderate spanking is associated with negative outcomes. This disagreement mainly rose from Gershoff's decision to include the use of objects in her definition of corporal punishment. In order to get a more accurate knowledge about the effects of spanking, Baumrind et al. (2002) would operationalize corporal punishment in terms of "the more moderate application of normative spanking within the context of a generally supportive parent-child relationship" (pp. 580-581; cited in Gershoff, 2002: 602).
In her reply, Gershoff (2002) justifies her operationalization of corporal punishment through a Survey Gallup of more than 900 American parents, which revealed that 28% of parents use an object when punishing their children (Gershoff, 2002). Therefore the use of objects in spanking is a relatively common phenomenon and thus qualifies as normative (Gershoff, 2002). Furthermore, Gershoff states that there is a range in the quality of parent-child relationships and restricting the study to only include supportive parent-child relationships would ignore the importance of studying the effects of corporal punishment as moderated by the whole range of relationships (2002).
Baumrind et al. (2002) also emphasize that Gershoff's review cannot help parents decide whether to use spanking or not because of the ambiguous cause and effect relationship and third variable problem in correlational studies. Baumrind et al. argue that "it is arbitrary to treat corporal punishment as though it is the independent variable, and certainly without first establishing temporal order" (2002: 582). Does spanking make children aggressive or do badly behaving children elicit parental corporal punishment?
Three large-scale American studies tried to resolve this ambiguous direction of effect (Gunnoe & Mariner, 1997; Brezina, 1998; Starus & Sugarman, 1997): Nationally representative samples of children were administered an index measuring the level of anti-social behaviour and the amount of physical punishment experienced. Two years later the ASB index was repeated. Regardless of the original score in the ASB index, the higher the original level of physical punishment, the greater the increase in ASB in the follow-up study. The ASB scores for those children who originally experienced very little or no physical punishment did not increase or decrease in the follow-up study (Leach, 1998). Straus and Stewart (1998) conclude:
" Of course other things influence anti-social behaviour. But...we found that the tendency for physical punishment to make things worse over the long run applies regardless of race, socio-economic status, gender of child, relationship with parents or level of anti-social behaviour." (Cited in Leach, 1998: 3).
Child spanking contains a paradoxical or hypocritical message, as we aim to teach our children that violence is wrong, yet we use violence as an acceptable means of gaining obedience in children. This inevitably raises concerns about modelling or social learning theory, as children often try to emulate people they identify with (Bandura, 1967; cited in Beck, 1996).
According to UK and North American research data 90% of children are hit by their parents (Leach, 1998). Almost all children are hit between the ages of one and four and the percentage gradually drops with age (Leach, 1998). This raises the question of why only relatively small amount of people show significant negative outcomes? Gershoff (2002) states that even though not every spanked child manifest negative outcomes, the more frequently and strongly child spanking is administered the risk of damaging the child increases.
Parke (2002) argues that since socialization strategies represent packaged variables, of which spanking may be only one component, the research question may need to be reframed to include the effects of packages of parental discipline tactics on children's short- and long-term development, rather than focusing on spanking per se.
Gershoff (2002) also makes clear that situational, relational, and socio-cultural factors operate in a context mediating and moderating the influence of spanking on children. Gershoff identifies a key context of interest for future studies, which is parenting style.
Attempts to undermine the anti-spanking approach have mainly focused on the lack of evidence of child spanking's damaging nature. However, as Gershoff (2002) points out, the potential lack of negative outcomes does not justify the use of spanking. As long as there is no proof of positive outcomes associated with child spanking it should not be recommended to be used as a punishment method (Gershoff, 2002). Since there are better alternative discipline methods available, such as reasoning and time-out, why should we risk harming our children through parental corporal punishment (Gershoff, 2002)?
There is no "reasonable chastisement" of wives, servants or convicts, but it is considered as an assault (Freeman, 2002). The current child protection legislation is broad and subjectively interpretative, and thus does not provide as effective protection for children as would a clearer mandate of full legal ban on corporal punishment (Thorpe & Jackson, 1997). Why should children be excluded when all the rest of us are legally protected from violence of all kind?
