Spanking

 

Is spanking an effective and acceptable way to teach a baby lessons and deter unwanted behaviors?

Competing Opinions

Perspective #1: Spanking makes no sense—it doesn’t work, and it’s harmful. Babies’ bodies and brains are too fragile, and children this age are developmentally unable to make the connection between spanking and a desired behavior. Plus, especially since parents of infants are by definition exhausted, there’s greater potential for spanking to escalate into more serious harm. Babies need to trust their caregivers, and if their caregivers are inflicting pain on them, it can make the children feel unsafe in the world. There are simply more effective ways to discipline without the risks.

Perspective #2: It’s definitely true that spanking in anger, or when the parent is out of control, should never take place. But spanking is a long-standing and trusted parental approach, and sometimes that’s the only way babies can learn, especially if they’re too young to understand logical explanations. So if a caregiver is calm and can spank in an intentional manner, it can be an effective way to teach a baby appropriate conduct and to discourage misbehavior.

What the Science Says

I’LL FOCUS HERE on spanking in general, while highlighting information regarding the first year. Unless otherwise noted, I’m defining spanking the way it’s described in current research literature, meaning corporal punishment where a parent uses an open palm and doesn’t leave a mark. I’m not, in other words, discussing harsh and frequent physical punishment. There’s no debate in any of the literature that that type of discipline is ever effective or warranted. It does significant harm, impacting the developing brain in ways that can last a lifetime. (See the “Discipline” entry for more on an overall approach to discipline.)

As with most research, particularly in the social sciences, we can’t claim proof with 100 percent certainty that all spanking of any kind leads to significantly negative outcomes for all children. While researchers have become increasingly methodical in how they control for variables that could skew their results, this is a difficult subject to study, especially when it comes to taking into account such varied contexts as culture, education, parental emotional state, researcher bias, how much conversation and explanation accompanies the discipline, how frequently it occurs, whether it’s accompanied by affection and repair afterward, whether expectations have been communicated, and more.

Still, despite this caveat, we can say with great confidence that fifty years of research leans strongly in the direction of two general claims regarding spanking: (1) that it’s ineffective in producing better long-term behavior, and (2) that it can lead to negative outcomes, many of them severe and significant.

Five key meta-analyses have appeared since 2002 looking at what the overall research says about spanking’s effects on children. Each analysis acknowledges the difficulty of making claims of causality and other methodological challenges, but the overall conclusion we see again and again from reputable studies is that physical punishment is linked with negative child outcomes.

Each subsequent meta-analysis has improved on the earlier ones—for example, becoming more precise regarding the definition of “spanking”—and the evidence against spanking looks more and more compelling. Four of the five reviews come to decidedly confident conclusions regarding the correlations between spanking and negative outcomes. They point to individual studies determining that spanking is not effective as a long-term deterrent and linking it to various negative outcomes such as aggressive and difficult temperaments, defiance of parents, antisocial behavior, depression, anxiety, and hyperreactivity, to name only a few. In other words, according to these reviews, spanking may increase behavioral problems, not reduce them, and it can reduce overall well-being. The most recent and robust meta-analysis of available studies concludes by saying, “Parents who use spanking, practitioners who recommend it, and policymakers who allow it might reconsider doing so given that there is no evidence that spanking does any good for children and all evidence points to the risk of it doing harm.”

One of the five meta-analyses disagrees, stopping short of determining that no benefits lead from spanking. It points to studies demonstrating specific examples when spanking can be effective to correct behavior. But even this review concludes by recommending that parents use “the mildest disciplinary response that will be effective for maintaining age-appropriate levels of cooperation” and points to a study finding that “the only use of spanking that has been demonstrated to be more effective than alternatives is when it is used to enforce time out when 2- to 6-year-olds refuse to comply with it.” Its authors emphasize that what it calls “conditional spanking” should be “motivated by love” and used without anger and as a last resort “in such a way that reduces the need to use it in the future.”

Two key observations about this outlying review should be highlighted. First, its focus is on whether or not spanking is “effective” for “reducing child compliance or antisocial behavior.” Whereas many of the spanking opponents’ arguments stress the negative effects on children’s overall well-being, the attention here is on compliance. Also, regardless of their conclusions regarding the merits of occasional spanking, the authors of this review emphasize that it “should never be used in an infant’s first 12 months of life.”

Finally, it’s worth noting that the AAP, the American Psychological Association, and the CDC have all reviewed the literature and issued formal policy statements against spanking and any form of corporal punishment. And as of 2018, more than fifty countries have banned physical punishment in schools and in homes.

The Bottom Line

CERTAIN LIMITATIONS EXIST in the scientific literature on spanking, and more research is needed. That being said, though, the science that we do have overwhelmingly argues against spanking. More to the point of this book, even researchers who favor spanking in certain instances agree that it should never be used during the first year of a baby’s life.

A Personal Note

I’M FIRMLY AGAINST spanking, for children of any age. In addition to the research studies, other bodies of literature in the child development and child-rearing sciences bolster opposition to spanking. Consider, for example, the neurobiological process that takes place during physical punishment. As mammals, we’re wired to run to our parents when we’re threatened in any way. But what if the parent is also the source of our pain and fear? Research exploring parent-child relationships has demonstrated over the last several decades that when a parent inflicts physical pain or produces significant fear within a child, that child faces an unresolvable biological paradox. One circuit drives the child toward their attachment figure for safety, while the other, competing circuit tries to escape the parent who’s inflicting pain.

When we create this unresolvable biological paradox in our child’s brain, it has the potential to produce all kinds of adverse long-term consequences. If we scare or inflict pain on our children, we activate the primitive-reactive brain, which then starts calling the shots, leading to more reactive behavior. Plus we risk teaching our kids that physical pain, used in the service of power and control, is the only alternative we could find to influence them—a lesson that can continue across the generations without some reflection.

Another primary reason I’m against spanking is that other options exist that not only are likely to be more effective but also can help build the problem-solving higher structures of the brain (instead of activating the reactive, lower mechanisms). Some parents begin their deliberation about how best to discipline by asking, “What punishment should I give in this instance?” That’s actually the wrong question. Instead, we should ask, “What lesson do I want to teach here?” After all, that’s what discipline is: teaching so that your child learns to be self-disciplined over time. If your child has misbehaved in some way, you of course want cooperation, to have her act in an appropriate manner. But you also want to teach her, helping her build skills so she can act more appropriately in the future. That’s why you ask yourself, “What lesson do I want to teach here?” Some might believe that spanking is the best way to teach, but it activates a threat response in the nervous system, which means that little learning can take place. We have to be in a state where we are safe before we can learn. You can set clear limits and enforce boundaries—that’s definitely important, and in a child’s best interest—with your words and nonverbal communication, all while maintaining a nurturing connection with your child and helping her feel safe. Doing so will give you a much better chance of achieving your goal of building skills that will lead to better behavior and a more fully developed conscience down the road. It tends to strengthen your relationship with your child as well.

In other words, rather than immediately offering punishment, it’s often more effective to connect emotionally with a child, engaging the higher, more sophisticated, thinking parts of her brain. By relying on respectful conversation and connection, we can (and should) still set limits, but in a caring manner. Then our children can learn to make healthy and thoughtful choices while handling their emotions well, all while understanding that they can come to us, share their mistakes, and be safe.

My final point is a caution: spanking can escalate into greater violence. Every parent—and for sure anyone who’s ever taken care of an infant while working on a far-too-limited amount of sleep—knows that anger and frustration can rise to the surface when we least expect it. We can lose control so easily. One minute you’re changing a diaper while your infant squirms and resists; then you find yourself holding him down; then, in your sleep-deprived state, all of a sudden you feel the urge to swat him or shake him. This kind of reaction can happen to anyone.

The problem with allowing even the possibility of spanking your child “under certain circumstances” is that you’re setting up a terrible risk of doing something more extreme in a moment of weakness or rage than you ever intended. And the fragility of a baby means that shaking, twisting, shoving, and so on can lead to tragic results. Studies have found that children spanked at age one are 33 percent more likely to be involved in a child protective services issue than non-spanked babies, and spanked babies are more likely to be abused and to sustain a physical injury.

Deciding not to spank won’t prevent you from losing control and acting in ways you know you shouldn’t. But if you begin from the position that you’re never going to inflict any kind of physical harm at all on your baby, you’re at least starting that much farther away from that scary endpoint.

For all of these reasons, I strongly oppose spanking. I believe that all children should feel safe, to not be hit or hurt by their caregivers. I believe the research will continue to prove more emphatically the negative effects of spanking, and that eventually we will reach a tipping point, where children who are spanked are in the minority.

I also know that some of you reading this will regret that you’ve spanked your child in the past. Be gracious with yourself and recognize that you were doing your best with what you knew then, and now you know more. It’s not too late to make a change. Children benefit hugely when we make positive changes, so commit now to always choosing safety and connection while you set boundaries.