Spanking controversies - Chris said none exist.

Is Spanking Actually Harmful to Children?
By Walter L. Larimore, M.D.


We've all seen the surveillance tape. Madelyne Gorman Toogood exits the department store. She looks around
to see if anyone is watching and then begins to shake and pummel her 4-year-old daughter inside the car,
hidden from the camera's view. We can't get it out of our heads. And can't really believe that any parent
would do such a thing. Incidents like this beg the question: should a reasonable and civilized country
ban parental spanking?

Psychologist Elizabeth Thompson Gershoff of the National Center for Children in Poverty at Columbia
University recently analyzed 88 studies involving corporal punishment, spanning 62 years of collected
data, and concluded corporal punishment encourages negative behaviors in children.

But what if a medical study were released on the dangers of eating apples, and media outlets nationwide
championed the banishment of oranges instead? Wouldn't that be absurd? Well, apples are magically being
turned into oranges when it comes to the subject of child discipline.

However, Gershoff's study (and, for that matter, the Toogood incident) is not about spanking. It was about
corporal punishment employed by many, if not most, loving parents. The excessive punishment of some
misguided, angry or cruel parents should not become an argument to not discipline at all.

Not only was Gershoff's work misrepresented, many articles ignored reports countering Gershoff's review,
including one by a prominent trio of researchers that was published in the same edition of the Psychological
Bulletin of the American Psychological Association. The group, including two researchers from the University
of California at Berkley and one from the University of Nebraska

What is appropriate spanking? The issue is not whether parents should spank, but how they spank. An important
scientific conference defined spanking as physically non-injurious, intended to modify behavior, and
administered to the extremities or buttocks. We would add that such discipline is never administered in anger.
Used with children from approximately 18 months to 6 years of age (never later than puberty), spanking has
been shown to be effective, especially when used in conjunction with other forms of discipline, such as
time-outs, reasoning and other disciplinary tools.

Further, when studies that isolate mild spanking from abusive behaviors are analyzed, results have proven
repeatedly that the practice is not harmful. Why have we not seen these findings reported in the press?

Proper spanking is often a necessary tool in parenting. Studies have shown an increase in child abuse in
homes where appropriate spanking does not occur, as eliminating spanking takes away a strong, useful and
suitable tool from a parent. Equating appropriate spanking with punishment that includes child abuse is
inaccurate, unfair and misleads parents who are striving to properly raise their children.

Based upon the best evidence available, we would support the many parents who believe in spanking, when
necessary. But we also believe it must be administered wisely and only when appropriate. The evidence
does not show that spanking is a disciplinary cure-all.

Not all children need to be spanked, and not all parents should spank their childrenoutbursts. However, a
parent that does not teach that there are consequences to behaviors will leave it to the police and others
to do that later in the child's life.

Parents, for millennia, in virtually every recorded culture, have spanked their young children, when
necessary, to teach them and to shape and mold their character