Long Term Effects on Your Children of Spanking

Parents often try their hardest to raise their children the best way that they know how. Whether it be just going off of the example of the past generations that raised them, a trial and error microexperiment, a deep study into cause and effect, or a blend of all three, parenting can be either an easy or a hard experience. Regardless, it is a journey that we as parents dedicate ourselves to do, and at different levels of understanding.

An often controversial topic that hits home to all of us, challenging personal mores and dogma, and challenging thoughts of past generations' success is disciplining children. I realized after my daughter's second birthday even more from the first moment that I held her that she was the most special person in my life, and my decisions regarding her upbringing should be made with love and a fine amount of knowledge on the topic.

I was disappointed when speaking to other parents hearing vague answers like "Just love her" and "if you're tough on them, they'll listen to you" and other useless garbage like that which can be found inside a fortune cookie with the same amount of adaptation and thought of a random generation computer. However, the peaceful, non-violent parents that I spoke to seemed to have a lot more information than "I was spanked and I turned out ok". I liken that to "I do heroin and I didn't OD" kind of advice. Peaceful parents had more meaningful analogies that hit home with more insight. After speaking to several of them, I came up with a few of my own.

Imagine if you grew up with your closest confidant telling you "If you don't do what I say, I'm going to beat the crap out of you!". Now for a second, imagine that person isn't your parent, but instead is your classmate, boss, or significant other. Would this foster a good school learning environment? A positive workplace full of productivity and idea sharing? A healthy marriage? Of course not. Now my only question for you based on this is WHY THE HELL WOULD IT WORK WITH RAISING CHILDREN!

If my boss came over to my desk and told me I did a report incorrectly, and then swatted me on the ass with a paddle, would I stay there and work hard? If I was stupid enough to stay at that job, would I be more or less open to communicating future issues with my boss?

Even though about 70% of parents agree it's an acceptable punishment, a new study suggests spanking is way, way worse than a smack on the butt. According to an article by Caroline Picard in Good Housekeeping:

"Researchers from the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Michigan used data on more than 150,000 children over a 50-year period to come up with a fairly damning conclusion: Spanking is linked to aggression, antisocial behavior, mental health problems, cognitive difficulties, low self-esteem, and a whole host of other negative outcomes. As for the upsides, there were absolutely zero — the practice revealed no redeeming effects but consistently strong links to 13 bad ones."

If you are still skeptical about my point of view, below are some studies on spanking and the results they came up with:

1. Tulane University researchers polled 2,500 mothers and found that 54% of them have spanked their children at least once. Out of these mothers polled, two years later, it was found that the children who were spanked were more aggressive, prone to violence and would fight and threaten others frequently... You don't say.. Kids don't learn this stuff on their own.

2. Elizabeth Gershoff, PhD, who researches physical punishment at the University of Texas at Austin, made the claim that spanking has no positive outcomes. Why? When parents see that spanking doesn't have any effect on calming their children, they increase the violence. Does that change anything? No. children do not learn discipline lessons from spanking, but instead begin to fear the parent and develop aggression. Starting to sound more and more like the examples I listed above yet?

3. Whites, on average, are 11 percent less likely to spank their children than African-Americans. Non-whites and non-blacks (classified as Asians, Native Americans, etc.) are 5 percent less likely than whites to approve of spanking. Remember folks, statistics cannot be racist. However, they can help us explain aggression within culture that may explain inequalities in our lives. Not color, culture.

4. Spanked kids are more likely to lie. When researchers and study authors polled 3- and 4-year-old students from both punitive and non-punitive schools, they found a significant increase in how they reported information. Turns out, children who are spanked are more likely to lie than those who are not. This further proves the lack of transparency in a relationship between a parent inciting fear and a child trying to find any means necessary to avoid physical aggression.

These are just a few of the gems I picked up that has led me to believe that I cannot raise a freedom-loving child with liberty in her heart by having her raised by an authoritarian dictator from the time she is out of the womb.

Let's create a more peaceful and loving world, starting at home. With Our Children.

For more statistics, the following video was extremely helpful for me: