If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. |
|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#1
|
|||
|
|||
Relationship between Spanking and Misbehaviour
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 |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Help with specific behavior issue | [email protected] | General | 84 | June 18th 05 02:53 AM |
Corporal Punishment Abandoned | Chris | General | 85 | November 6th 04 02:38 AM |
Poll Results:Boston Globe--->Recent SC. Decision to Allow Parents to Spank Children | nospam | Spanking | 9 | February 8th 04 01:16 AM |
| U.N. rules Canada should ban spanking | Kane | Spanking | 142 | November 16th 03 07:46 PM |