Betty Wolf said:
(I am not talking about black-and-white studies of adult violent
criminals - I'm talking about attempts to prove that *any* spanking has
a long-lasting negative affect.)

Life is complex and you never know what might
happen. In a particular individual case, having
one's leg accidentally broken could turn out to
provide more benefit than harm: it could happen
to result in being in the right place at the right
time for some wonderful result. However, on average,
having one's leg accidentally broken is a harmful
thing. I'm not attempting to prove that every single
spanking causes more harm than good. However, in general,
on average, when parents do it with intention to control
misbehaviour, it causes more harm than good. On average,
it doesn't even improve behaviour in the long run. No one
has succeeded in identifying particular subclasses
of spanking situations where it does more good than
harm on average. In fact, no long-term benefit from
spanking has been established in any scientific study as
far as I know. So I don't think a person about to spank
a child can reasonably know that it will probably do
more good than harm.

It's not necessary for me to prove that I would certainly
get run over by a car if I were to try to cross the
road right now; I can wait until it looks safer anyway.
Similarly, it's not necessary to prove that a particular
spanking is certainly going to cause more harm than good;
the parent can choose a more positive parenting method anyway.
Spanking always causes pain, which is a form of harm.

Betty Wolf said:
I think the purpose of citing, unasked, an over-simplified
study summary, coupled with an opinion that the poster is damaging her
children, *is* to make parents feel bad.

I don't know whether you were talking about me here, but
if you were you were mistaken. Making people feel bad
is not the purpose of any of my posts. I realize that
some people feel bad when they read material, whether
written by me or by others, which provides information
comparing the relative effectiveness of various
parenting methods. However, the purpose of providing
the information, at least when I do it, is not to make
people feel bad but to provide people with an opportunity
to make a more informed choice. I hope that choosing
better parenting methods will make both parents and
children feel better in the long run. The more good
information available, the better informed choices
people can make.

The purpose of providing a simplified summary of a
study was to make some information available to people
who might not have time to read either the whole study,
or a longer summary which I could have written instead
(I actually spent more time editing it down so it
could be read quickly). I said I would provide more
information if asked. I'm sorry it's taken me so
long to get around to providing more information.
I was busy. I also provided the references to the
studies and I hope some people will look them up in
the library and carefully read them and form their
own opinions. (See references at end of this post.)

I am not sure the studies can isolate spanking from other aspects of
parenting that may cause increased misbehavior.

Numerous studies have found correlations between spanking
and misbehaviour. These correlations continue to be
found in spite of controlling for many possible confounding
variables such as socio-economic status.

(CW had said
Straus & Mouradian (1998) reported that children whose mothers never
spanked them in their entire lives were significantly less antisocial than
even
the most infrequently-spanked children.

I would need to know more about the design of the study.

If the results are based on the mothers filling out surveys, why should
we believe the mothers are not lying?

Why should the mothers lie on an anonymous telephone survey
conducted for scientific purposes?

If the mothers lied, why should a large enough number of them
lie and why should they just happen to lie in such a pattern as
to produce a statistcially significant correlation between
reported spanking and reported misbehaviour?

If the results are based on recollections of children, what is the
assurance that their memories are correct about what happened to them as
toddlers?

This study (Straus and Mouradian, 1998) is based on a telephone
survey of mothers of children aged 2 to 14.

Is it only mothers this study was concerned with, as the above summary
suggests? If so, why?

"The limited budget for this study prevented interviewing both
parents. Mothers were chosen as the respondents because
mothers have much more of the day to day responsibility
for child care."

What was the age of children assessed? How was antisocial behavior defined?

Ages 2 to 14.

ASB (anti-social behaviour) was measured using questions about 11 behaviours,
3 of which were modified based on the age of the child.
The 8 constant items asked how often in the past six months
the child was "cruel or mean to other kids, bullies;
cruel or mean to or insults you; denies doing something he
or she really did; hit a brother or sister, hit other kids;
hit you or other adults; damages or destroys things; and stolen
money or something else."

I don't actually expect answers to these questions, because every time
I've asked similar questions of the "never-ever-spank" crowd, they've
ignored me.

I've been meaning to reply to your message but was too busy
to get to newsgroups at all for a while. When I said I was
willing to provide more information I assumed I would
be able to provide it within a couple of days, but
didn't realize how busy I would be.

If spaanking as normally used in families causes harm on average,
why do you think smaller amounts of spanking wouldn't also cause
harm -- just less harm? What is it about the rareness of the
spanking that makes you think it's less harmful?

It is, of course, impossible to quantify the amount of harm that might
occur from a single spanking, but it is infinitely less harm than a
child getting run over by a car, for example.

It is possible to estimate the amount of harm from a single
spanking by measuring the approximate average amount of harm
from a large number of spankings, and then dividing.
Rare spankings could cause either more harm (because of
the surprise factor, the feeling of betrayal and loss of
feeling of safety, etc.) or less harm (because each
spanking may increase the child's anxiety level and
propensity to feel startled or traumatised).
I see no reason to assume rare spankings would cause
no harm.

I have occasionally treated my son in ways I wish I hadn't. This week,
for the first time ever, he ran out of the grocery store toward the
parking lot when I asked him to hold my hand. I dropped the groceries,
grabbed him by the shirt, and got down in his face and yelled at him. I
apologized immediately and explained how much he had scared me.

I've made a lot of mistakes and done a lot of things
I regretted, too.

How much did I damage our relationship? Would it have been more or less
damaged if I had swatted him instead?

I don't think anyone knows this.

I think that when spanking is rare, each individual spanking
somes as a great shock to the child and causes the child to
feel vulnerable, scared, hurt etc., causing more harm than
any one out of a larger number of spankings (which we
know tend to lead to more misbehaviour).

Do you have any evidence of this, or is it just what you think?

It's how I imagine I would react if someone tried to control
me by hitting me.

Do you think that the reason for spanking, a major safety infraction vs
an end-of-her rope mother swatting her toddler, make any difference in
the amount of harm? If not, why not? If so, how much?

The things which determine the amount of harm are not
the parent's motivation for spanking, but the way the
spanking is perceived by the child: expected versus
unexpected, perceived as just versus unjust, very painful versus
slightly painful, etc. The spanking is always perceived
by the child as an attempt to control the child's
behaviour using hitting -- that doesn't vary, and on average
tends to increase the child's tendency to hit others.

There are also those who initially intend to spank
rarely but find themselves on a slipperly slope.
Spanking causes other discipline methods to be
less effective. Some parents find themselves spanking more
and more often as time goes on.

I think that when spanking is very rare, it probably does address the
specific behavior to the point that the "slippery slope" argument is not
valid.

If, after the child grows up, with retrospect one can
say that the spankings were rare, then you can know that
the "slippery slope" was not slid down for that particular
child. If the child is still young, you can't know that.
Rare spankings this year might still increase to be
frequent spankings next year or the year after: it
happens in some families, and all too often progresses to
severe physical abuse.

Parents do not usually make a decision like "I'm going
to spank, but no more than 5 times in this child's lifetime."
Instead, they tend to make decisions like "I'm going
to spank, but only for really severe misbehaviour
such as X." If the child then begins to do X frequently,
what does the parent do?

I don't understand how addressing a particular
behaviour problem makes the "slippery slope" analogy
invalid. What I mean is that using spanking (even once)
not only has some effect on the particular behaviour it's
aimed at, but also affects the whole relationship: it
demonstrates the use of violence, which necessarily changes
the child's ideas about violence one way or another;
and it makes the parent-child relationship more control-
oriented. This has repercussions for other situations
later on, possibly leading to increased use of spanking.

What is the evidence that spanking makes other discipline methods less
effective?

Well, think about it. What do you do when someone tries
to forcefully make you do something you don't want to do?
Most people react by digging in their heels. If that
same person later comes to you and tries to ask you
nicely to do that same thing -- or even something else --
how are you going to react?

Betty Wolf said:
That's a very good point about another possible shortcoming of "the
studies." It's impossible to design studies to take into account all
the possible different kinds of punishments, and how each individual
child will respond to every possible punishment. My DH was not hit as a
child, but if he disagreed with his mother or acted in a way she didn't
like, she threatened to kill herself. Hard to believe that a swat or
two could be worse than that.

The existence of things that are worse than spanking does not
in any way prove that spanking is OK nor does it invalidate
the results of any scientific studies.

Catherine Woodgold wrote:
What particular variables do you believe can't be controlled for?

Betty Woolf ) writes:
I understand that the good studies ask about frequency of spanking,
whether it is done in anger, other discipline methods, etc. They
control for race, income level, SAHM/WOHM, amount and type of daycare,
parental situation, etc. I have no quarrel with that.

Let's say some of the other things a good study would have to try to
look at are other parenting decisions, such as cosleeping or
breastfeeding, to try isolate spanking as the ultimate cause of the
undesirable behavior. (ie one could argue that the lack of cosleeping
or breastfeeding could cause antisocial behavior, so a good study would
have to attempt to address that.) Then they would have to address
weaning from the family bed and from breastfeeding. They'd have to
quantify whether the child was actually ready to be weaned (was a rough
weaning to blame for the "antisocial behavior," whatever that means?).
And you'd have to get these answers trusting that the recollection was
accurate (My son is not even 4, but I can't remember if he weaned at 2y
1mo or 2y 3 mo.) and that the survey taker was telling an objective
truth ("He moved to his own bed when he was ready, at 11 months")

I don't think it's possible to separate one particular parenting
behavior from a whole parenting style and blame that one thing for how a
child acts on a particular day/set of days when they are being observed
for "antisocial behavior."

There are huge numbers of variables involved. When a statistical
study is done, averages are calculated and the other variables
generally average out and therefore have little or not effect on
the result. If a correlation is found, (and if it's not a fluke),
then there is some reason for it. The reason may be something
complex, such as that breastfed kids behave better on average (if they do)
or whatever. However, for a more complex relationship between the
variables to be the cause of the correlation, the correlation between
each pair of variables has to be even stronger than if it's a
direct causation one way or the other. The most parsimonious
explanation is that spanking causes misbehaviour in the long term.
Besides, there are theoretical reasons to explain why it would.

Do you have particular reasons for believing that some
particular variables, other than a direct cause-and-effect
relationship, may have caused the correlations in particular
spanking studies? That is, do you have reasonably plausible
alternative explanations for the results other than that
spanking causes misbehaviour in the long term?

I said I would provide more information on some particular
studies if people were interested. I'm planning to reply to
an earlier post of yours, but I'm working full-time and parenting
my children, so it may be several days before I have time to
carefully re-read the studies. Meanwhile, I encourage anyone who
wishes to to look up those studies; they can be obtained
by inter-library loan at public libraries, I believe.

I apologize if I came on too strong. I am interested in your answers.

I hope I answered your questions about the studies.
I'm interested in further discussion but I don't know
whether I'll have time for it or not. I hope I've
clarified for you my position. I think it would be
interesting to further clarify our positions and exactly
what we agree and disagree on.

I'm glad you got involved in this discussion and I hope
we can come to some understanding about what exactly
we disagree about (if anything) and why.


References:

Straus, M. and V.E. Mouradian, 1998. Impulsive
Corporal Punishment by Mothers and Antisocial Behavior
and Impulsiveness of Children. Behavioral Sciences
and the Law, 16, 353-374.

MacMillan, H.L, et al., 1999. Slapping and spanking
in childhood and its association with lifetime
prevalence of psychiatric disorders in a general
population sample. Journal of the Canadian Medical Assocation,
161 (7), p. 805-822.







--
Cathy Woodgold
http://www.ncf.ca/~an588/par_home.html
There are two types of people in the world: those
who divide the world into two types of people, and