Instead of post propaganda from a no-spanking website, why not post the
study by Durrant and let's compare data? Do you want to know the truth,
Kane?

Doan


Begin include
Two recent reviews of parental corporal punishment have found little sound
evidence of detrimental child outcomes such as child aggression. This paper
explores whether the 1979 Swedish law against all corporal punishment has
reduced their child abuse. Sweden's 1979 law was welcomed by many as a much
needed policy toward reducing physical child abuse. Surprisingly, this
search located only five published studies with any relevant data. The best
study found that the rate of child abuse was 49% higher in Sweden than in
the United States, comparing a 1980 Swedish national survey with the average
rates from two national surveys in the United States in 1975 and 1985. By
comparison, a retrospective survey of university students in 1981 found that
the Swedish child abuse rate was 21% of the USA rate in the 1960s and the
1970s, prior to the anti-spanking law. More recent Swedish data indicate a
489% increase in one child abuse statistic from 1981 through 1994, as well
as a 672% increase in assaults by minors against minors. The article discusses
possible reasons for this apparent increase in child abuse and calls for
better evaluations of innovative policies intended to reduce societal abuse
and violence.

Poster presented at the XXVI International Congress of Psychology, Montreal,
August 18, 1996.

Where is Evidence That Non-Abusive Corporal Punishment
Increases Aggression?

Two recent reviews of the literature on parental corporal punishment have
found few methodologically sound studies. Further, hardly any of the soundest
studies found detrimental child outcomes associated with corporal punishment.
This paper explores whether there is evidence that the outlawing of corporal
punishment by parents in Sweden and other countries has had any discernible
effect, particularly on child abuse and, to a lesser degree, on child outcomes
such as aggression.

Lyons, Anderson, and Larson (1993) attempted to review all journal articles on
corporal punishment by parents from 1984 through 1993. Only 24 of the 132
articles (17%) included any empirical data on corporal punishment. Less than
half of those (11) investigated corporal punishment as a possible cause of
some other variable. Most (83%) of the studies were cross-sectional, and only
one made any attempt to exclude child abuse from the measure of corporal
punishment.

They concluded that there was empirical evidence supporting one of three
hypotheses: Several studies found that parents were more likely to use corporal
punishment themselves if their parents had used it. There was no sound evidence
that corporal punishment was ineffective, nor that it was associated with child
aggression.

Larzelere (in press) built on their review by extending the search of peer-
reviewed articles to the period 1974 to 1995 plus older articles that met the
inclusion criteria. The inclusion criteria were designed to exclude studies
that were cross-sectional or whose measures emphasized the severity of usage
of corporal punishment. Only 18 studies were found that both met the two
inclusion criteria and limited the sample to children under 13 years of age.
The 8 strongest studies found beneficial outcomes of corporal punishment,
usually in 2- to 6-year-olds. The 10 other studies were prospective (6) or
retrospective (4). Three of them found detrimental outcomes, but only 1 of
those 3 made any attempt to exclude abuse from its measure of corporal
punishment. Further, none of the 10 studies controlled for the initial level
of child misbehavior. This seems to be an important methodological problem,
since the frequency of every type of discipline response tends to be
positively associated with child misbehavior, whether the associations are
cross-sectional or longitudinal (Larzelere, Sather, Schneider, Larson, & Pike,
1996; Larzelere, Schneider, Larson, & Pike, in press). Finally, no alternative
discipline response in any of the 18 studies was associated with more
beneficial child outcomes than was corporal punishment, whereas 7 alternatives
were associated with more detrimental child outcomes, mostly in 2- to
6-year-olds. These reviews suggest that the empirical linkage between
nonabusive corporal punishment and aggression comes only from cross-sectional
studies, studies of teenagers, studies measuring particularly severe forms
of corporal punishment, and, perhaps, studies of punitiveness. This led us
to ask how well current societal experiments are working in countries that
have outlawed all forms of parental use of corporal punishment.

In 1979, Sweden passed a law prohibiting all corporal punishment by parents.
This was hailed as a crucial step in the effort to reduce child abuse (Deley,
1988; Feshbach, 1980; Ziegert, 1983). Several countries have passed similar
laws since then (Norway, Denmark, Finland, Austria, and Cyprus), and
organizations have formed to advocate against parental corporal punishment
throughout the world (e.g., End Physical Punishment of Children [EPOCH]: Radda
Barnen, no date).

This movement represents one of the most sweeping changes ever advocated by
social scientists. In the United States, for example, about 90% of parents
have spanked their 3-year-old children in the past year (Straus, 1983;
Wauchope & Straus, 1990). Some social scientific research has been used to
support the anti-spanking position (e.g., Hyman, 1995; Straus, 1994), but the
reviews summarized above have found such support coming primarily from
methodologically poor studies. Given the inconclusiveness of relevant research
and the importance of the issue, it is desirable to know whether child abuse
has decreased in Sweden following their 1979 anti-spanking law. Accordingly,
this article asks two inter-related questions: (1) To what extent have social
scientists evaluated the effect of the 1979 anti-spanking law in Sweden, and
(2) what do those evaluations indicate about the effects of the anti-spanking
law in reducing child abuse? We also report one finding about Swedish trends
in assaults by minors discovered during our study.

Literature Search for Evaluations

Two procedures were used to find evaluations of the effects of Sweden's anti-
spanking law. First, PsycLit was searched from 1974 through June of 1995 for
all publications that included "Sweden" or "Swedish" and either "punishment"
or "spanking" in their abstracts. Second, Social Sciences Citation Index was
used to identify all articles citing Gelles and Edfeldt (1986) through April
1995, because their study reported a well-done survey of Swedish child abuse
rates one year after the anti-spanking law was passed.

Empirical Evaluations of Sweden's Anti-Spanking Law

Five published studies and one unpublished paper were found that included any
empirical information relevant for evaluating the 1979 anti-spanking law.
Ziegert (1983) published a conceptual, preliminary article on why the law
should be effective. His only empirical data was from a Swedish opinion poll
showing that the percentage of respondents considering corporal punishment
to be necessary had dropped from 53% in 1965 to 35% in 1971 to 26% in 1979 and
1981. In an article comparing Swedish and American use of corporal punishment,
Solheim (1982) reported that 26% of Swedish respondents considered corporal
punishment necessary in 1978. Like Ziegert (1983), Solheim's (1982) article
was mostly nonempirical, discussing such issues as court decisions about
corporal punishment in schools, the 1979 law, and expert opinions. Together
these two articles show that the decline in support for the necessity of
parental corporal punishment in Sweden preceded the 1979 law, and it did not
decrease thereafter, at least through 1981.

A third article reported the rate of child homicides in various European
countries, comparing 1973/1974 with approximately 1987/1988 (Pritchard, 1992).
Note that this compared statistics before and after the 1979 law. The Swedish
child homicide rate was the sixth lowest of the 17 countries at both time
periods. However, it nearly doubled from 1973/1974 to 1986/1987. Sweden's
93% increase in its child homicide rate was the fifth largest percentage
increase among the 17 countries. It should also be noted that the rate of
accidental baby deaths in Sweden was the lowest of the 17 countries at both
time periods. Unlike the child homicide rate, it decreased by 67%
between the two time periods, although 10 of the other 16 countries decreased
their accidental baby death rates by an even larger percentage.

A fourth article compared child abuse rates among university students at one
Swedish university compared to one American university as reported in a 1981
survey (Deley, 1988). Because these were retrospective reports, they were
child abuse rates during the 1960s and the 1970s as these students were growing
up, a time period preceding the 1979 law. The critical question asked whether
a spanking had ever left physical marks that lasted for more than 10 minutes.
Two percent of the Sweden students reported receiving such physical marks from
a spanking, compared to 9.5% of the American students. Although this is far
from a representative sample, this suggests that the child abuse rate in
Sweden was only 21% of the American child abuse rate in the 1960s and 1970s
(i.e., 2.0 divided by 9.5 = .21).

The fifth and best study used telephone surveys of a nationally representative
sample of Swedish parents to measure the rates of spanking and of child abuse
in 1980 (Gelles & Edfeldt, 1986). It used the Conflict Tactics Scale, which
was also used to measure the prevalence of spanking and child abuse in two
National Family Violence Surveys in the USA (Straus & Gelles, 1986; Straus,
Gelles, & Steinmetz, 1980). Gelles and Edfeldt (1986) compared their 1980
Swedish survey only with the 1975 National Family Violence Survey. They
concluded that a smaller percentage of parents were spanking their children in
Sweden than in the United States, but that there were no significant
differences in child abuse rates.

It would have been more appropriate, however, to compare their 1980 Swedish
survey with the 1985 National Family Violence Survey in the USA (Straus &
Gelles, 1986), which reported a 47% lower rate of child abuse in the United
States than in 1975. For one thing, the 1980 Swedish survey was closer to the
1985 USA survey in its method, because both used telephone interviews. In
contrast, the 1975 USA survey used face-to-face interviews. Table 1 gives the
percentage of Swedish and United States parents reporting the use of various
forms of physical aggression in both national surveys in the United States and
the national survey in Sweden. In contrast to Gelles & Edfeldt (1986), we
report whether the Swedish rate was significantly different from the mean USA
rate from both the 1975 and the 1985 surveys. This approach represents a
compromise on the issue of which USA survey is the most appropriate comparison,
and it assumes that the 1980 rates in the USA might have been halfway between
the 1975 and the 1985 rates.


Table 1 Prevalence Rates of Various Forms of Physical Child Abuse in the
United States and Sweden
__________________________________________________ ____________________

United States
Sweden
Type of Violence 1975 1985 1980

1. Threw things at 5.4% 2.7% 3.6%
2. Pushed, grabbed, or shoved 40.5 30.7 49.4***
3. Hit (spanked or slapped) 58.2 54.9 27.5***
4. Kicked, bit, or hit with fist 3.2 1.3 2.2
5. Hit with an object (*1) 13.4 9.7 2.4***
6. Beat up 1.3 .6 3.0***
7. Threatened with a weapon .1 .2 .4
8. Used a weapon .1 .2 .4
Very Severe Violence (4, 6-8) 3.6 1.9 4.0*

__________________________________________________ ______________________
1 In the United States this item referred to attempted or completed
hits. In Sweden, the item referred only to completed hits. The 1975
and 1980 surveys are taken from Gelles & Edfeldt (1986) and the 1985
survey from Straus & Gelles (1986).
*p .05, 2-tailed t-test of proportions, comparing the combined USA
samples with the Swedish sample.
***p .001, same test.


As can be seen, significantly fewer Swedish parents spanked or hit their child
with an object, compared to USA parents. Nonetheless, 27% of Swedish parents
reported spanking or slapping their child in the past year, reflecting
imperfect compliance with the law. In contrast, most of the more serious types
of physical aggression occurred more often in Sweden one year after passing the
anti-spanking law than they did in the United States. The rate of beating a
child up was three times as high in Sweden as in the United States, the rate
of using a weapon was twice as high, and the overall rate of Very Severe
Violence was 49% higher in Sweden than the United States average from the 1975
and 1985 surveys. Except for weapon usage, all of these differences were
significantly different using a test of differences between proportions (Downie
& Heath, 1974, chap. 13), p .05. In addition, the rate of pushing, grabbing,
or shoving was 39% higher in Sweden than the average rate in the United States,
p .001. Thus, the rate of spanking was significantly lower in Sweden than in
the United States, but the rate of other forms of physical aggression,
including child abuse, was significantly higher in Sweden than in the United
States.

Because there were so few published studies with relevant empirical data, we
also included an unpublished field study by Haeuser (1988) and sought
additional data from Swedish sources. As co-founder of EPOCH-USA, an
organization advocating the banning of all corporal punishment in the
United States, Haeuser (1988) explicitly wanted to "promote positive visibility
of this Swedish law in the U.S. and garner U.S. support for the possibility of
promoting U.S. parenting norms which avoid physical punishment" (p. 2). Her
paper was based on her 1981 and 1988 field visits to Sweden, using extensive
interviews of 7 parents and 60 personnel in government, health and human
services, and schools.

In the summary, she concluded, "Most, if not all, believe the law has not
affected the incidence of child abuse" (p. iii). Specifically, she reported
that concerns about sexual abuse and youth gang violence had superseded
concerns about physical child abuse by 1988. She also reported that she
observed toddlers and young children often hitting their parents in her 1988
visit.

According to her, "In 1981 both parents and professionals agreed that parents
had not . . . found constructive alternatives to physical punishment [within
the two years since the law was passed]. For most parents the alternative was
yelling and screaming at their children, and some believed this was equally,
perhaps more, destructive" (p. 22). Haeuser went on to report that most Swedish
parents had developed firmer discipline techniques by 1988.

Haeuser (1988) concluded that the child abuse rate was lower in Sweden than
in the USA based on Swedish police statistics of 6.5 cases of physical child
abuse per 1000 children in 1986. Haeuser compared this to a "U. S. rate of 9.2
to 10.7" per 1000 (Haeuser, 1988, p. 34), but acknowledged, "Since the Swedish
police data omits child abuse cases known to social services but not warranting
police intervention, the actual Swedish incidence rate is probably higher"
(p. 34).

However, the American survey that she cited (National Center on Child Abuse and
Neglect [NCCAN], 1988) indicated that the basis of the rate of 9.2 or 10.7 per
1000 differed from the Swedish police statistic in two ways. First, the USA
rate included sexual and emotional abuse as well as physical abuse. Second,
the USA rate included not only cases known to police, but also cases known to
at least one professional across a wide range of occupations, including those
in child protection services, public health, education (schools, daycare
centers), hospitals, mental health, and social services. If limited to only
physical abuse, the USA rate was only 4.9 or 5.7 known to at least one of
these professionals, depending upon the definition of physical child abuse. If
limited to all three kinds of abuse known specifically to police or sheriffs,
the USA rate was only 2.2 per 1000 (NCCAN, 1988).

The most relevant statistics we have obtained from Sweden are police-record
trends in physical abuse of children under 7 years of age (Wittrock, 1992,
1995). Those records showed a 489% increase in the child abuse rate from 1981
to 1994 (see Figure 1). The same police records also indicated a 672% increase
in assaults by minors against minors (under 15 in Sweden) from 1981 to
1994 (see Figure 2).

Discussion and Conclusions

Although the Swedish anti-spanking law was intended to reduce child abuse, the
best empirical study since then indicated that the rate of child abuse in
Sweden was 49% higher than in the United States one year after the anti-
spanking law was passed. Does this mean that the anti-spanking law increased
the rate of physical child abuse in Sweden? Deley's (1988) retrospective data
indicates that the Swedish physical child abuse rate was 21% of the USA rate
in the 1960s and 1970s. This suggests that the anti-spanking law not only
failed to achieve its goal of reducing child abuse, but that the child abuse
rate increased from 21% to 149% of the equivalent USA rate, a seven-fold
increase relative to the decreasing rate in the United States. We doubt that
the increase was actually that substantial, because Deley used a retrospective
measure with a small unrepresentative sample. Nonetheless, the available
evidence suggests that a sizeable increase in the Swedish child abuse rate
occurred around the time of the 1979 anti-spanking law. The other studies
indicate no changes in attitudes about corporal punishment nor in child
homicides due to the 1979 law.

Was the apparent increase in the Swedish child abuse rate only a temporary
increase following their anti-spanking law? More recent data on Swedish child
abuse rates would help answer that question. One piece of subsequent data was
the 6.5 cases of physical child abuse per 1,000 children in official 1986
Swedish police statistics, which was substantially higher than the 2.2 per
1,000 known to police or sheriffs in the USA. The other available evidence is
the sharp increase in physical child abuse in Swedish police records from 1981
through 1994, along with a similar sharp increase in certain assaults by
minors.

Why might Sweden experience an increasing child abuse rate and an increase in
assaults by minors after outlawing corporal punishment? Haeuser's (1988)
description of some parental frustration and yelling in 1981 might indicate an
increased risk of escalation to abuse at that time. This is reminiscent of
Baumrind's (1973) observation of permissive parents. Compared to authoritative
and authoritarian parents, permissive parents were the most likely to report
"explosive attacks of rage in which they inflicted more pain or injury upon
the child than they had intended. . . . Permissive parents apparently became
violent because they felt that they could neither control the child's behavior
nor tolerate its effect upon themselves" (Baumrind, 1973, p. 35). Permissive
parents used spanking less than did either authoritative or authoritarian
parents. So it could be that the prohibition of all spanking eliminates a type
of mild spanking that prevents further escalation of aggression within
discipline incidents (see Patterson's [1982] coercive family process).
Haeuser's (1988) report suggests that Swedish parents later developed new,
firm discipline responses that reduced escalations to yelling and possibly to
child abuse. But adequate data on the resulting child abuse rates are lacking.

In conclusion, the available Swedish data indicate that we cannot reduce child
abuse just by mandating that parents stop using corporal punishment. Parents
also need new, effective techniques to replace corporal punishment if it is to
be outlawed. It is even possible that mild corporal punishment may play an
important role in preventing escalation to abuse for some parents. The other
surprise is that there has been so little empirical evaluation of the effects
of Sweden's anti-spanking law. Perhaps it has seemed so obvious that
eliminating parental spanking would reduce the child abuse rate that people
have felt that no evaluation was needed. If so, this summary of available
evidence should shake us out of our premature complacency. The role of parental
discipline responses in preventing aggression in parent and child is
surprisingly complex (Grusec & Goodnow, 1994; Patterson, 1982; Snyder &
Patterson, 1995). We need better research to understand the complexities
involved in parental discipline, including its relationship to child abuse. We
need to discriminate effective from counterproductive forms of discipline
responses, including the role of different forms of corporal punishment in
increasing or decreasing the risk of child abuse. We also need better
evaluations of policies designed to change parental discipline, given that the
effects of the Swedish anti-spanking law seem to have had exactly the opposite
effect of its intention, at least in the short term.
End include

On 2 Nov 2003, Kane wrote:

"For a number of years, various media have carried reports stating
that child abuse has increased in Sweden since the passage of the 1979
corporal punishment ban. This statement, which was recently given new
life in the Canadian Charter Challenge to Section 43 of the Criminal
Code, is completely erroneous. All available evidence indicates that
Sweden has been extremely successful in reducing rates of child
physical abuse over the past few decades and that reduction has been
maintained since the passage of the corporal punishment ban. The
purpose of this brief report is to disseminate accurate information on
this issue."

Click below to view the article in its entirety.

http://nospank.net/durrant2.htm