Study links physical punishment to later mental disorders
Children who are spanked, hit, or pushed as a means of discipline may be at an increased risk of mental problems in adulthood - from mood and anxiety disorders to drug and alcohol abuse, new research suggests. Ref. Source 6
Why would you even want to spank children or hurt them in any way? From what little I've seen once you are involved in your children's lives you don't have to resort to any kind of physical distress on them to get the kind of behavior you're expecting.
Spanking can be detrimental for children's behavior, even 10 years later. Physical discipline experienced during infancy can negatively impact temperament and behavior among children in the fifth grade and into their teenage years, new research indicates. Source 3x.
Spanking linked to increase in children's behavior problems. Children who have been spanked by their parents by age 5 show an increase in behavior problems at age 6 and age 8 relative to children who have never been spanked, according to new findings. The study, which uses a statistical technique to approximate random assignment, indicates that this increase in behavior problems cannot be attributed to various characteristics of the child, the parents, or the home environment - rather, it seems to be the specific result of spanking. Source 5d.
Ever since Western society has put a severe anathema on spanking children, parents have been at a disadvantage when dealing with their children. Resorting to bribes, cajoling, object-based punishments, etc. Has made the job of parenting that much harder, especially for those who are also full-time employees/workers. Digging deeper into this study, you find that the statistics they include are vague and generalization - such as parents who spank often are included with those who hardly use it, skewing the data results. That being said, a child does not deserve violent response at every turn and in fact a proper 'spanking' should be a controlled, dispassionate event, with minimal force. More of a shock of the actual event than any kind of pain. As A child, my parents used hands, belts and wooden spoons for discipline, but I can count on the number of times they did so on two hands. As a parent of four, both my wife and I have 'spanked' our children rarely, and never with intent of injury and never skin of skin. In fact, I can lay bets that together, we may have had a dozen times at worst, across 50 child-years of time, and never once they were older than 10. As our society becomes more and more homogenized, our children need to be aware of both methods of control, the carrot and the stick, and be able to handle each. When a child is raised with love and compassion, using all the available discipline methods, that is when a child can become a healthy adult. Developing them into good, stable adults is the challenge we are set as parents, and some of us fail.
Edited: Gknightbc on 20th Nov, 2017 - 5:06pm
From the last article: