Why Don’t Parents Stop Spanking Their Kids?

New studies support years of research about the damage it does.

When I was a child, spanking was my mother’s go-to punishment.

That’s the reason I decided — long before I had children — I’d never use physical discipline.

When she lost her temper, my mother grabbed a flyswatter, a hairbrush, a paint stirrer, a paddle, or a switch and started swinging. If nothing was within reach, her open hand left the same lingering sting.

I remember clenching my fists, squeezing my eyes closed, and telling myself, “I’m not going to cry. I’m not going to cry,” over and over when she spanked me.

Despite my feigned defiance, I was scared of my mother and always worried about making her angry.

I promised myself my children would never feel the same: I couldn’t bear the thought of them looking at me with fear in their eyes.

A mountain of research supports my decision never to use physical discipline but also makes me wonder: How much evidence do parents need before they stop spanking?

As recently as 2016, a meta-analysis of five decades of research that included more than 160,000 children showed that the more often children are spanked, “the more likely they are to defy their parents and to experience increased anti-social behavior, aggression, mental health problems, and cognitive difficulties.”

Yet spanking is still common and legal in all 50 states, the Washington Post reported.

Pointing to 2018 results from the biennial General Social Survey, the newspaper noted that 66 percent of American adults agreed or strongly agreed that “a good, hard spanking” is sometimes necessary to discipline a child.

What the latest research shows

A new study published in Psychological Science examined 1,030 sets of twins, including more than 400 identical twins who share the same DNA, per the Washington Post. Many were children whose parents disciplined twin siblings differently.

Researchers found that that “the child who was hit or yelled at more often was consistently more likely to display delinquent or antisocial behavior,” the newspaper reported.

Liz Gershoff is a professor at the University of Texas at Austin and worked on the 2016 meta-analysis. As one of the new study’s co-authors, she and colleagues wanted to know whether a child’s antisocial behavior is caused by genetics or physical punishment.

The results, she told the Washington Post, were unequivocal: “When we study children’s behavior, oftentimes there’s a mix of both genetic and environmental factors, so we were expecting that when we looked at harsh parenting. But this one, it really was the parenting that explained the behavior.”

Gershoff told the Austin American-Statesman that spanking makes parenting harder because kids’ behavior gets worse over time.

Spanking, she told the paper, is like having “a boss that is hitting me all the time or yelling at me all the time.”

“I’m not going to listen to them,” she said. “You need kids to want what you want, and fear doesn’t really get them that.”

A second study, from Harvard University, was just published in Child Development.

It found spanking may affect a child’s brain development in ways similar to more severe forms of violence.

Researchers analyzed data about children aged 10 and 11 who were spanked. Their brain activity was measured using an MRI as they reacted to photos of actors displaying “fearful” and “neutral” faces.

They discovered that children who got spanked and those who suffered abuse, responded similarly to the “fearful” faces.

Harvard Associate Professor Katie A. McLaughlin, the senior researcher on the study, said she hopes the results “may encourage families not to use this strategy, and that it may open people’s eyes to the potential negative consequences of corporal punishment in ways they haven’t thought of before.”

The Harvard researchers also noted that corporal punishment had been linked to anxiety, depression, behavioral problems, and substance abuse, Science Daily reported.

What pediatricians recommend

In 2018, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that parents refrain from spanking, hitting, slapping, threatening, insulting, humiliating, or shaming when disciplining their children.

The APA represents about 67,000 doctors, and the strongly worded policy statement updated 2008 guidance, which recommended that parents be “encouraged” not to spank, the New York Times reported.

The APA’s parenting website, HealthyChildren.org, offers healthy discipline strategies, including setting limits, redirecting bad behavior, and calling a time out. Recognizing and rewarding good behavior and modeling the behavior parents want to see are also recommended.

Younger generations discipline differently

Research reveals that parents who were spanked as children are more likely to support the physical punishment of their own kids, underscoring how attitudes can be passed down through families.

Fortunately, there are signs a shift is underway.

Millennials and Gen X parents appear to be spanking their children less than previous generations, CNN reported.

A 2020 research letter in the journal JAMA Pediatrics was based on national data collected by Monitoring the Future. The ongoing study by the University of Michigan measures “the behaviors, attitudes, and values of Americans from adolescence through adulthood.”

Researchers at the University of Minnesota analyzed 25 consecutive groups of high school seniors and then reassessed them around age 35, the university reported. Among those with children age 2 to 12 living at home, the number of parents who reported spanking a child decreased from 50 percent in 1993 to 35 percent in 2017.

Dr. Robert Sege, the lead author of the APA’s policy statement on corporal punishment, said the JAMA analysis points to a generational change.

“Younger people tend not to hit their children,” Sege told the Philadelphia Tribune. “As we’ve woken up to the issues of domestic violence and intimate partner violence, there’s been a growing rejection of any sort of violence within the home, including spanking.”

My mother died many years ago. With the perspective time provides, I have compassion for that young single parent struggling to support three little girls while studying for her nursing degree, then working late-night shifts in a hospital emergency room.

I understand she was re-enacting what she experienced in her own home, where she was the oldest of seven and where harsh physical discipline was meted out regularly.

More than anything, though, I’m grateful that my experiences helped me make better decisions and that spanking stopped with me.