Raising kids is no mean feat. It can sometimes make you want to tug at the ends of your hair and rip it out. And, often the only way of disciplining them seems like a good spanking. If you’re reading this out loud, and you have some solemn grandma in the room who can’t help but nod in agreement, well we have got news for her, and you of course: spanking doesn’t do any good to kids.
Yes! You heard that right. All that ‘…back in our days’ stuff doesn’t really count. If you grew up believing that it was the fear of God beating that made you a more disciplined and likable person, well it hasn’t’, and you can be sure of that.
Now that we’ve run around in circles and are on the verge of exhaustion let’s get down to the nitty-gritty. A recent Journal of Family Psychology study concluded that spanking is not only useless for disciplining kids, but also has the exact opposite effect as it makes children misbehave even more.
So, you can safely tell that old-fashioned aunt, or grandma that spanking doesn’t help. We’d suggest you break it to her gently, as older people are rather skeptical about ‘Internet research,’ as they would like to call it.
According to Science Daily, “the more you spank children, the more they are likely to defy you parents and to experience increased anti-social behavior, aggression, mental health problems, and cognitive difficulties”.
For those of you who’re thinking that this is just the conclusion of some controlled study, well it isn’t. The University of Texas at Austin and The University of Michigan’s combined research study on 160,000 children was spread over 50 years.
The study also suggests that spanking only pushes a child towards aggressive behavior and leads to other behavioral issues later in life. Moreover, children who are spanked are more likely to grow up to be parents who use spanking to discipline their child, thus continuing this cycle.
But, what does spanking mean? How do you define it? In the simplest terms, spanking is a simple slap on the butt or extremities of the body but is not something that can constitute child abuse.
According to Dr. Elizabeth Gershoff, our perception of child abuse and spanking as different behaviors, leads us to believe that spanking may do some good, but the study rubbishes that pretext.
University of Michigan associate professor Andrew Grogan-Kaylor mentioned that spanking only heightens the chances of children being aggressive, rebellious, and everything that you don’t want them to be.
So, all those earlier controlled studies, the ones whose findings we sneered at, were right. Spanking doesn’t do any good to a child, either in the short-term or long-term. It affects children, mentally, physically and psychologically.
The next time you decide to spank your child, think about how you could be harming her. Look for less violent and derogatory ways to discipline your little one.
