Why do parents hit those they love? What effect does it have on children? What can be done to end this pattern? These are some of the questions explored in The Primordial Violence. Featuring data from over 7,000 U.S. families as well as results from a 32-nation study, the book presents the latest research on the extent to which spanking is used in different cultures and the subsequent effects of its use on children and on society. It presents longitudinal data showing that spanking is associated with subsequent slowing of cognitive development and increase in antisocial and criminal behavior. Both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies are explored in an accessible fashion. An abundance of high quality research has produced findings that are highly consistent from study to study, which show that spanking is a risk factor for aggressive behavior and other social and psychological problems. Because of these findings, the authors argue for policy changes and recommend never spanking. Policy and practical implications are explored in most chapters.
The Primordial Violence highlights:
The benefits of avoiding spanking such as the development of better interpersonal skills and higher academic achievement;
The link between spanking and behavioral problems and crime;
The extent to which spanking is declining and why, despite the unusually high level of agreement between numerous studies that found harmful effects from spanking, most parents continue to spank.
This book is clearly written. Technical material is in an appendix. It is readable by a general audience and suitable for undergraduate and graduate courses in child development, parenting, child abuse, family violence, juvenile delinquency, criminal behavior, social development, sociology of the family, family relations, human development, family studies, education, social work, and social policy.
Murray A. Straus is Professor of Sociology and founder and Co-Director of the Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire.
Emily M. Douglas is an Associate Professor of Social Work at Bridgewater State University.
Rose Anne Medeiros is Quantitative Methodologist in the Department of Sociology at Rice University.
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Preface
Being spanked for misbehavior is part of growing up for almost all children, in all but a few nations of the world. What explains parents hitting those they love, what effects does it have on children, what can be done to end this millennia long pattern of violent child rearing? Those are the questions addressed by The Primordial Violence. Part I documents the worldwide use of spanking and presents research showing that misbehavior by the child is only one of many reasons parents spank. The chapters in the next three parts give the findings from our research on the effects of having been spanked: child behavior problems in Part II, mental ability and academic achievement in Part III, and crime as an adult in Part IV. The chapters in the concluding section, Part V, examine trends in spanking, with the emphasis on the social factors that have triggered the movement away from spanking and also the social factors that have obstructed the trend. The concluding chapter argues that changing just this one aspect of parenting is likely to have profound benefits, not only for the children and families specifically involved, but for the society as a whole. A nation without spanking is likely to have less crime and violence and, as the saying goes, be "healthier, wealthier, and wiser."
What Stands in the Way?
If bringing up children without spanking has benefits for children, for their parents, and for society as a whole, what stands in the way? Some of the many obstacles are discussed in Chapter 20 and in a few other places such as Chapter 18. In that chapter we describe what seem to be contradictory opinions about whether to spank. Although there are no clear survey results, we believe that, in the United States, most parents and most professionals who provide information and services for parents have come to believe spanking should be avoided if possible. However, for the reasons explained in that chapter, they also believe that spanking is sometimes necessary. These are not contradictions because toddlers are notorious recidivists. After several instances of "No" and other corrections, a parent is likely to conclude that this is an instance when it is not possible to avoid spanking, and a parent who "doesn't believe in spanking," spanks. Our solution to this dilemma is presented in Chapter 18.
Another obstacle is touched on in Chapter 2. Textbooks in courses on child development, criminology, pediatrics, social work, etc. present almost nothing on spanking and the results of the large body of research showing that the less spanking the better off the child. We hope that The Primordial Violence contributes to changing that by providing the results of 15 years of empirical research conducted at the Family Research Laboratory of the University of New Hampshire on spanking.
It is even possible that the evidence presented will help lead to public policy to ban spanking children. We dare to entertain this hope because the information in The Primordial Violence is both comprehensive and scientifically sound. Of course, not everything that needs to be known is covered, but the following seems to be a good start.
• Why parents spank. It is much more than whether the child misbehaves. It is also determined, for example, by the cultural norms and beliefs of the society and the social and psychological characteristics of the parents. Evidence from national and international surveys is presented showing the relation of these social and psychological characteristics to whether parents spank and how much they do it.
• The link between spanking, and child and adult problems, and crime. Three of the five parts of the book provide evidence on this crucial issue. As mentioned previously, we present empirical evidence showing the relation of spanking to 15 problem behaviors on the part of children and adults.
• Longitudinal evidence. Over 90% of the studies that investigated the effects of spanking have found that children who were spanked have more problems, both as children and as adults. This is an unusually high degree of agreement between studies. However, most of the studies used a cross-sectional design, and that type of study cannot determine if the problem behavior was caused by the child being hit, or whether the problem behavior caused the parents to hit, or whether it works both ways. Most of the studies in The Primordial Violence are cross-sectional and, therefore, subject to that important limitation. However, the chapters on the relation of spanking to antisocial behavior (Chapter 6), to IQ (Chapter 10), and to crime as a young adult (Chapter 15) are longitudinal. The chapter on child antisocial behavior, for example, shows that spanking is associated with a subsequent increase, not a decrease, in antisocial behavior. In addition to those three longitudinal studies, Chapter 19 summarizes results of 16 additional studies by others. Twelve longitudinal studies found that spanking is associated with a subsequent increase rather than decrease in the probability of antisocial and aggressive behavior. Four longitudinal studies of adult crime are summarized, and all four found that the more spanking, the greater the probability of the child later in life perpetrating a crime.
• International in scope. Most research on spanking has been done in the United States. How broadly applicable are the results? On the issues of the' high percent of parents who spank, the relation of spanking to physically assaulting a romantic partner later in life and forcing sex on a partner (Chapters 3, 13, and 16) found remarkable similarity in 32 nations.
• Controls for 32 confounding variables. The results of correlational studies, including longitudinal studies, can be "spurious" if there are variables that result in both spanking and problematic behavior. For example, parents with low-education and living in poverty have repeatedly been found to do more spanking, and their children have repeatedly been shown to have higher crime rates. It might be dire life circumstances, not the spanking per se, which produces the relation of spanking to crime. Fortunately, modem statistics let us take that into account. This was done in one chapter or another for 32 such sources of a spurious correlation, yet the link of spanking to problematic behavior remained.
• Trends in spanking and what stands in the way of further decline. The Primordial Violence pays particular attention to the paradox that, in the United States, more and more parents and professionals think spanking should be avoided, but the decrease in the percent who spank has been extremely small for preschool-age children-the age when spanking is most likely to occur.
• Policy and practice implications. This is part of most chapters, and the main focus of two chapters.
• Understandable. Although complex statistical methods were used in the research, we tried to present the results in a way we hope is understandable by any college educated person. One of the devices to achieve this was to put the necessary technical documentation of statistical procedures and results in the appendix.
Influence of Social Science on Public Policy
Will the evidence on the harmful effects of spanking lead to change in public policy and what parents do? Some understanding of whether this is likely can be gleaned by putting the issue in historical context and comparing the history of legislation and policy statements about spanking with that on corporal punishment by teachers.
Medical research has frequently led to new public policies. Research from psychology, sociology, anthropology, and social work (the disciplines most concerned with spanking by parents), however, has seldom been the basis for new public policy. These disciplines have nevertheless made important contributions to public policy. Weiss and Bucuvalas's historical analysis showed that the contribution of social science has mainly been to justify, revise, and sometimes correct policies that had been previously initiated in response to changes in social circumstances, including changes in cultural norms and values.
A specific example is the effort by feminists starting in the mid 1970s to change police treatment of domestic violence. The change was happening, but slowly. However, the pace quickened dramatically after publication of the results of an experiment comparing three modes of police action: separating and calming down the parties, referral to services, and arrest of the offender. The study found that those arrested were less likely to reoffend. This experiment is unlikely to have been done, and the results are unlikely to have been the subject of an information brief sent to all police departments in the United States, were it not for changes in public tolerance for what came to be called domestic violence, brought about by the women's movement.
Policies to end corporal punishment in the armed services and in schools occurred because of a change in values and beliefs, not because of research evidence. Similarly, the Swedish no-spanking law of 1979 was enacted primarily on the basis of moral principles. In the United States, about half the states and almost all large school districts prohibit spanking by teachers. This change began long before there was empirical research, and even now, the quality of research showing harmful effects of spanking in schools is minimal.
The sequence of events for policy on spanking by parents in the United States has been almost the opposite. There has been a large amount of research, much of it of high quality. It has produced findings that are highly consistent from study to study showing that spanking is a risk factor for aggressive behavior and many social and psychological problems. Despite that, this research has largely beet). ignored. We suggest that this will continue until there is what Gusfield (1963, 1981) calls a "moral passage" that brings about policy changes and with it receptivity to the empirical evidence to justify and improve the policy. Such a moral passage is starting to occur in respect to spanking, but in the United States it is minimal and has extremely strong opposition. But perhaps, if the research on spanking continues to grow in quantity and scientific quality, and if it continues to consistently find harmful side effects, together with the increasing demand for evidence-based interventions and policies, spanking will be one of the few examples of research resulting in a new social policy.
Intended Audience
This book is intended for a general audience of readers who are interested in child development and parenting, and for courses in child abuse, family violence, juvenile delinquency, criminal behavior, social development, sociology of the family, or parenting and family relations taught in psychology, human development, family studies, criminology, education, social work, sociology, and social policy.
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About the Authors
Murray A. Straus is professor emeritus of sociology and founder and codirector of the Family Research Laboratory at the University ofNew Hampshire. He has been president of the National Council on Family Relations, the Society For the Study of Social Problems, and the Eastern Sociological Society. He is the author or coauthor of over 200 articles on the family, research methods, and South Asia and 17 books, including Corporal Punishment by Parents in Theoretical Perspective (Yale,.2006), Beating the Devil Out of Them: Corporal Punishment in American Families (Transaction, 2001), Physical Violence in American Families: Risk Factors and Adaptations to Violence in 8,145 Families (Transaction, 1990), Four Theories of Rape in American Society (Yale, 1989), and Stress, Culture, and Aggression (Yale, 1995). He is widely recognized for his research on partner violence and on spanking and other legal forms of corporal punishment and for efforts to reduce corporal punishment as part of primary prevention of child physical abuse and partner violence.
Emily M. Douglas is an associate professor of social work at Bridgewater State University. Her research focuses on child and family well-being with strong implications for programmatic and policy interventions. Her areas of expertise include corporal punishment, fatal child maltreatment, male victims of partner violence, and divorced families. She is the author of 30 articles and two books: Mending Broken Families: Social Policies for Divorced Families (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006) and Innovations in Family Policy (Lexington Books, 201 0). Her degrees are in psychology and public policy, and she is the founder and director of the National Research Conference on Child & Family Programs & Policy.
RoseAnne Medeiros received her PhD in 2010 in sociology from the University of New Hampshire. Dr. Medeiros is interested in a variety of statistical topics, including latent variable modeling (including SEM) and handling of missing data. Dr. Medeiros' substantive work has included research on partner assault, corporal punishment of children, and the parent-child relationships of LGBT young adults. Her research on partner assault focused on the role of gender in partner assault, with a special interest in partner assault in same-sex couples.
Part I
Prevalence and Social Causes of Spanking
1 The Social and Scientific Context of Research on Spanking
Spanking and other forms of legal corporal punishment by parents is the primordial violence in two senses. First, as shown in the next chapter, over 90% ofU.S. parents spank or slap toddlers. Of this 90%, at least one third of parents start hitting their children when they are less than a year old. Thus, for almost everyone in the United States and most other nations, the first experience of being the victim of a deliberate physical attack is in the form of being slapped or spanked by parents who wish to correct what they perceive as misbehavior.
The second way in which spanking is the primordial violence became evident when this book was being considered for publication. Some reviewers objected to the title The Primordial Violence because, as one put it, primordial has connotations of the beginnings of the earth and the primordial soup. But, for better or worse, that is exactly the connotation we intended. We believe that spanking is the primordial violence, not only because it is usually a child's first experience with violence, but even more because research shows that it is one of the bases out of which almost all other violence grows. Ironically, this is because parents spank for the morally correct and socially important purpose of correcting misbehavior and preparing a child to be a law-abiding citizen. Thus, spanking teaches the morality of violence. Chapter 5, for example, shows that approval and use of spanking is correlated with approval of other types of violence, even including torture. All five chapters in Part IV and the longitudinal studies summarized in Chapter 19 show that the more a child was spanked, the greater the probability that he or she will approve of or engage in violence and other crime later in life.
What Is Spanking?
We define corporal punishment as the use of physical force with the intention of causing a child to experience pain, but not injury, for the purpose of correction or control ofthe child's behavior. This definition is discussed in more detail in Straus (2001a).
What to Call It?
In the United States and Canada spank and spanking are sometimes used to refer to slapping a child on the buttocks and also to slapping a child on other parts of the body. In Great Britain and other English-language nations, the equivalent terms: are smack and smacking. Although these are the most common terms, there are many others such as thrash, beat, belt, paddle, warm his butt, whipping, and whupping. Even U.S. President Barack Obama, who is on record as not spanking, used one of those terms in a speech at the centennial convention of the National Asso, ciation for the Advancement of Colored People on July17, 2009. He said, "And by the way, we need to be there for our neighbor's sons and daughters. We need to go back to the time, back to the day when we parents saw somebody, saw some kid fooling around and-it wasn't your child, but they'll whup you anyway."
When Obama and others use terms like whup him or beat him, they usually mean hitting on the buttocks or slapping a child, not the severe attacks that they would signify for relationships between adults. They refer to forms of spanking that are legal in every state in the United States and in most other nations. In the United States, legal spanking includes hitting with traditionally accepted objects such as a hairbrush or belt, provided that no serious injury results. Chapter 2, which is on the prevalence of spanking in the United States, shows that 28% of parents of children age 5 to 12 had hit their child with one of these traditionally approved objects in the previous 12 months.
Hit is a synonym for spank that we use from time to time. Those who believe spanking is appropriate and necessary may object to hit because, as Rosemond (1994b) says in his widely read book To Spank or Not To Spank, "calling spanking hitting is nothing more than misleading propaganda. Even people who are not on one side or the other of the spanking debate may object on the basis of biased terminology because hit has a negative connotation." Our view is that hit is no more biased than spank. The difference is in the direction of the bias. Spank and smack describes hitting a child, but with the connotation of a socially and legally approved act. When an adult physically punishes another adult for some misbehavior such as flirting with his wife, it is called assault. However, the assault laws of all U.S. states and most other nations contain a specific exemption for hitting a child to correct misbehavior. It is only in the case of children that we search for neutral words or euphemisms. We do not think there is a neutral word in everyday English that describes using spanking against a child. In this book, we use spank most of the time because that word is in the questions asked parents or children to obtain the data analyzed. In addition, as previously noted, parents use spank and smack to mean hitting in general (as defined above) not just hitting on the buttocks.
Outside the academic world, almost no parent uses corporal punishment to describe what they do to correct misbehavior. We have found that when we talk about corporal punishment, some parents don't realize we are talking about spanking or slapping a child's buttocks or hand. This was illustrated when one of us was interviewing the mother of a four-year-old. The child repeatedly interrupted the mother despite the mother's pleas. Finally, she slapped the child on the shoulder. Then, somewhat embarrassed, she explained "There are times when nothing except spanking will get a child to mind" (emphasis added). It is also illustrated by a book for parents that says that at about 18 to 24 months, "spanking means a brief swat on the fingers or leg at the instant of infraction" (Guarendi & Eich, 1990).
Spanking, Violence, and Child Abuse
Is Spanking Violence?
Some parents we have talked to say they don't hit their kids, even though they have just told us about spanking the child when necessary. Few Americans think of an occasional slap on the hand or butt to correct a child's misbehavior as a physical attack or violence, although they would think of an occasional slap of another adult as a physical attack or violence. This is because violence refers to culturally disapproved uses of physical force. People who favor the death penalty do not think of executions as violence, but people who are opposed to the death penalty do. Similarly, the three quarters of Americans shown in Chapter 18 who believe that a good hard spanking is sometimes necessary, dismiss the idea that spanking is a form of violence. Before the largely feminist-based effort to end violence against women, if a husband occasionally slapped his wife, it was considered a family fight, not family violence. Before the 20th century, slapping a wife was often legally identified as physically chastising. Until the 1870s in the United States, husbands had the legal right to physically chastise their wives (Calvert, 1974); that is, they were permitted to use corporal punishment, just as parents still have this right with children. For most of the 20th century, police, in some jurisdictions, followed an informal "stitch rule." This directed them to avoid making an arrest in family disturbance cases unless there was an injury that required stitches or other immediate medical attention (Straus, 1976). In economically developed nations today, very few still believe that an occasional slap by a husband to correct misbehavior by his wife is harmless, but many believe that an occasional slap by a parent to correct misbehavior by a child is morally correct and harmless.
To understand the reasoning behind identifying spanking as a form of violence, it is necessary to start with the definition of violence:
Violence is "an act carried out with the intention of, or perceived as having the intention of physically hurting another person." (Gelles & Straus, 1979,p.553)
The physical hurt can range from slight pain, as in a slap, to murder. The basis for intent to hurt may range from a concern with a child's safety (as when a child is spanked for going into the street) to hostility so intense that the death of the other is desired (Gelles & Straus, 1979, p. 554). Now compare the definition of violence with the definition of spanking given in the previous section: "The use of physical force with the intention of causing a child to experience pain, but not injury, for the purpose of correction or control of the child's behavior."
The difference between the two definitions is that the definition of spanking is restricted to attacks that are not intended to cause injury and to attacks that are for purposes of correction and control. This makes spanking an example of instrumental violence (Gelles & Straus, 1979), that is, violence perpetrated to achieve some end other than pain or injury as an end in itself, such as hitting a, wife or husband just because of anger and fury. The latter is called expressive violence. When parents are angry at the child for repeated misbehavior, it is often also an act of expressive violence. Another example of violence that is both instrumental and expressive is someone hitting a neighbor who dumps trash on their property. However, unlike hitting a child who misbehaves, which is legal and socially legitimate in most of the world, hitting the repeatedly misbehaving neighbor is an example of illegal violence. Empirical data on the theory that spanking is part of a pattern of violence in other spheres life are presented in the chapter on spanking and the approval of violence (Chapter 5).
The Line between Spanking and Physical Abuse
It is important to keep in mind that this book is about socially acceptable and legal corporal punishment, not physical abuse of children as that term is used in. law, social work, and social science. Legal definitions of physical abuse vary, and there is tremendous ambiguity concerning the line between physical punishment and physical abuse, discussed in Gelles and Straus (1988) and Straus (1990b ). However, in practice the de facto definition is almost always an attack on a child that results in an injury. According to the law in most U.S. states, parents can be charged with physical abuse if it exceeds the frequency and severity of violence allowed by cultural norms for disciplining children. In fact, that rarely happens, because child protective services seldom have the resources to attend to such cases. This largely happens because the norms are not clear and because numerous court decisions in many states have not accepted as abuse cases where the child is not injured or does not show bruises (Associated Press, 1995; Olson, 2008). In addition; the laws exempting parents from prosecution for assault do not provide a clear guideline because they permit parents to use reasonable force but fail to specify what acts are and are not reasonable. At one extreme, the attorney general of Texas told a reporter that corporal punishment becomes abusive "only if observable and material impairment occurs as a result" (Work, 2011).
Why Focus on Just One Narrow Aspect of Discipline?
Spanking is just one of many methods of discipline. The Dimensions of Discipline Inventory (Straus & Fauchier, 2011 ), for example, measures four punitive and five non-punitive methods of correction. Only one of these nine is spanking. However, as shown in Chapter 2, over 90% of U.S. parents spank toddlers. Any parental behavior that is that close to being universal needs to be examined and understood, it is part of the socialization experience of nearly all children in the United States and in most of the world's societies. A second reason for focusing on spanking is the extensive body of research that found harmful side effects, many of which are presented in this book. The combination of something that is nearly universal and engenders a risk of harm to children and to society needs to be understood to provide a basis for protecting children and lowering the level of violence in society.
Harsh Discipline
Many child researchers prefer to study the more general concept of harsh discipline. They usually believe that spanking is just one aspect of harsh discipline and that a better understanding of the effects of discipline on children can be obtained by investigating the broader concept of harsh discipline, for example by also studying verbal attacks on the child. We believe that both harsh discipline in general and the spanking component of harsh discipline need to be understood. They overlap, but are not the same. Many parents who spank do not use other modes of harsh parenting. Moreover, using a composite harsh parenting index seems to assume that spanking is best viewed as one manifestation or symptom of inadequate parenting. This is not likely to be true. Consider the fact that more than 90% of U.S. parents spank. No one knows the percent of parents that are inadequate, but over 90% is not plausible. So there must be a sizable number of good parents who spank. Another reason for not treating spanking only as part of a more general pattern of harsh parenting is that it ignores an extremely important question: Does spanking by good parents, who do not use other methods of harsh discipline, have harmful side effects? A large part of this book is devoted to that question.
Public Attitudes and Beliefs about Spanking
Whether to spank or not has always been a question that interests parents and professionals concerned with children and families. The interest dates to biblical times, and no doubt long before. In the last decade both public interest and research on spanking has substantially increased.
The high level of interest by parents and Americans in general was shown dramatically by the reaction to a Time magazine article in April 2010, The Long Term Effects of Spanking. It described the results of a large-scale study using a gold-standard longitudinal design. The study found that spanking had the long-term effect of increasing the probability of aggressive and antisocial behavior. The day after publication, over 1,000 comments were posted in response to a copy of the article on Yahoo! News. Six days after publication, there were over 10,000. One of us read the first 30 and then a few in each of the next few days. At least 95% of the individuals who commented doubted the validity of the study or condemned the study.
This is just one bit of evidence showing that spanking is a controversial issue. It is very likely that this book will be controversial, and that the results will be denied, condemned, or ignored. This has been the fate of much of the other. 1 research on spanking, as shown by the response to the study described in Time ' and as shown by the virtual absence of spanking in child development and child psychiatry textbooks described below.
A major obstacle to accepting research showing that spanking has harmful side effects occurs because the research contradicts deeply embedded cultural beliefs in many societies. The 2006 General Social Survey found that three quarters of the U.S. population believe that spanking is sometimes necessary. Many parents are very strongly committed to spanking as necessary for the well-being of their children, and their right to do so is protected in many state statutes, as we show in Chapter 17. Several have put it to us as necessary to keep their children from being delinquent and jailed as an adult. During a 20/20 segment on spanking in which one of us discussed spanking with parents, two parents said, that they needed to use spanking to make sure their children do not end up in the electric chair. This book is testimony to the irony of those beliefs. Spanking does usually work in the immediate situation, but as shown by the studies in Part II (Spanking and Child Behavior Problems), Part IV (Spanking and Crime), and in Chapter 19 (on spanking and crime), spanking increases the probability of antisocial behavior, delinquency, and crime later in 'life. Probability is emphasized in the previous sentence to indicate that the link between spanking and antisocial behavior is not in the form of a one-to-one relationship. Rather, as explained later in this chapter, it is in the form of a risk-factor relationship.
Part of the relationship between spanking and crime probably occurs because spanking is part of a culture of violence. For example, in Chapter 5, which addresses spanking and crime, Chart 5.6 shows that the U.S. states with a population that has the strongest commitment to spanking are also the states with the highest homicide rate. Spanking does not directly cause murder, but it provides the behavioral model that characterizes almost three quarters of murders in the United States-use of physical attacks to correct or punish the person attacked. The chapters in Part IV give the results of studies that have found direct links between corporal punishment and adult violence and other crime, including a longitudinal study that followed up children to find whether spanking resulted in less or more crime years later when they were young adults.
The national surveys we analyze in Chapter 17 show that the percent of the U.S. population who believe that spanking is sometimes necessary has dropped from 94% in 1968 to about 70% in 2010. Seventy percent is still a lot. But, the culture is changing. Most Americans now probably also think spanking is something to be avoided when possible. Fewer are spanking older children and teenagers. The 70% who think it is sometimes necessary are probably thinking about toddlers, which is why the next chapter shows over 90% of parents continue to spank toddlers, even though somewhat less often than previously.
The research in this book and the other research found that even in the short run spanking does not work better than nonviolent modes of correction, and in the long run spanking makes the child's behavior worse more often than it makes it better. We believe that this research is one of the causes of the decrease in spanking described in Part V. However, the concluding chapter suggests that the main driving forces for the decrease in spanking are, and will continue to be, changes in the organization of society and changes in values that are not directly about corporal punishment. This includes the century's long expansion of the scope of human rights to include not only people of all races and ethnicities, social classes, and women, but also children. The Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNICEF, 1997), which has been ratified by all United Nations members except Somalia and the United States, is one manifestation of that change. Our concluding chapter discusses the change in human rights explanations of the decrease in spanking, and it is analyzed in more detail by Smith and Durrant (2011) and Newell (2011).
We believe that even though the shift away from corporal punishment is mainly the result of social evolution, research has made an important contribution. The results presented in this book from the past 15 years of research by members of the Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire concerning spanking provide part of the needed scientific evidence. This research, along with research by others, found that, on average, children whose parents correct their behavior without spanking are better behaved, have better relations with their parents, and are smarter and less likely to be delinquent. As adults, they are less likely to suffer from mental health and family problems and are less likely to commit crime.
The Scientific Climate
The opinions of professionals concerned with child development such as pediatricians, developmental psychologists, family life/parenting educators, and social workers generally parallel the views of the general public, even though some professional organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics and the National Association of Social Workers have taken a stand against spanking. There is both a growing belief that spanking has harmful side effects and should be avoided and, at the same time, a continuing belief that spanking is sometimes necessary. We suggest these contradictory beliefs coexist because the United States and many other nations are in a period of cultural change in respect to spanking. This paradoxical contradiction is part of the explanation offered in Chapter 18 on why nearly everyone resorts to spanking and for the continued high rate of hitting toddlers as compared with the large decreases in the percent of parents who hit school-age children and teenagers.
The commitment to the folk beliefs that spanking is sometimes necessary and is harmless if done in moderation shows up in surveys of child development by child abuse professionals and in the content of child development and child psychiatry textbooks. A study of 237 clinical child psychologists (Schenck, Lyman, & Bodin, 2000) found that, although they were generally opposed to corporal punishment, two thirds considered it ethical to advise using corporal punishment under some circumstances. A study of 380 lawyers and physicians, who were members of a national professional listserv concerned with child abuse, found that 90% of the lawyers and 70% of the physicians believed there are occasions when it is OK to spank a 6- to 1 0-year-old child (Burgess, Block, & Runyan, 2010). A study by Knox and Brouwer (2008) of 98 medical professionals, residents, mental health professionals, child development specialists, 1 and early childhood service coordinators may seem to contradict the Schenck · and Burgess studies. Knox and Brouwer found that approximately one third had recommended spanking at least once in the past year to parents of children age 5 years or younger. This is far from the two thirds and 70% found by the Schenck et al. (2000) and the Burgess et al. (2010) studies. However, it does not necessarily contradict the studies showing much higher rates of approval of spanking by human service professionals because those who had not advised spanking in the past year may not have encountered a situation for which they felt the misbehavior was persistent enough to advise spanking. In addition, they were not asked if they believed that spanking was sometimes necessary. If they had been asked that, we believe that most of those who had not advised spanking would have agreed it is sometimes necessary. Moreover, that one third of child care professionals had actually advised spanking is itself important.
Another indication that U.S. professionals concerned with children continue to oelieve that spanking is sometimes necessary and harmless when done by loving parents is the minimal, and sometimes zero, coverage of spanking in child development textbooks. At the 2009 conference of the Society for Research in Child Development, one of us examined the child development textbooks with a 2009 or 2010 copyright at the first five publisher's booths. There were 10 such books. The number of pages on spanking in these 10 books ranged from 0 to 2.5, with a mean of 1.5 pages. This is remarkably little coverage for something which, as shown in Chapter 2 is experienced by over 90% of children in the United States and many other nations. In addition, none even mentioned the meta-analysis by Gershoff (2002) that analyzed 88 studies of the effects of spanking and found 93% agreement with spanking showing harmful side effects. None advised readers to never spank. Nevertheless, even the tiny average of 1.5 pages on spanking is more than triple the mean number of pages in child development textbooks published in previous decades (Straus & Stewart, 1999).
The risks associated with spanking are also given little attention or ignored in child psychiatry textbooks (Douglas and Straus, 2007) and in discussions of of steps to prevent physical abuse of children. Special-topic issues of the two leading journals on child abuse do not mention the research showing that at least two thirds of cases of physical abuse confirmed by child protective services began as spanking and then escalated into physical abuse (Straus, 2000; Straus, 2008a). The two-volume compendium on Violence against Women and Children edited by White, Koss, and Kazdin (2011) has nothing on spanking as a risk factor for child abuse or anything else.
An important indicator of the continuing belief that spanking is sometimes necessary comes from a careful reading of the policy statement of the American Academy of Pediatrics published in 1998 and reaffirmed in 2004 (American Academy of Pediatrics, 1998). The policy statement defines spanking as "striking a child with an open hand on the buttocks or extremities." It reviews the evidence on the effects of spanking and concludes that "Corporal punishment is of limited effectiveness and has potentially deleterious side effects. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that parents be encouraged and assisted in the development of methods other than spanking for managing undesired behavior." However, it then says that "other forms of physical punishment than spanking ... are unacceptable ... and ... should never be used." This is, in effect a denial of the previous statement because the only thing that should never be used is other forms of corporal punishment. Thus, it permits "striking a child with an open hand on the buttocks or extremities" in the very document that says it is of limited effectiveness and has potentially deleterious side effects.
That policy statement was more than a decade ago. Have things changed? We believe they have changed but not enough to put never-spanking very high on the agenda of pediatricians. This is illustrated by the American Academy of Pediatrics, Committee on Early Childhood, Adoption, and Dependent Care, and Section on Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics. Neither the policy statement on "Early Childhood Adversity, Toxic Stress, and the Role of the Pediatrician: Translating Developmental Science into Lifelong Health" (Gamer et al., 2012) nor the technical report on which it was based (Shonkoff et al., 20 12) mention spanking, despite the research showing that spanking adversely affects brain development and IQ (see Chapter 10) and increases the probability of antisocial behavior and many other child behavior problems, as shown by the studies in this book and the meta-analysis by Gershoff (2002).
Despite the continuing belief among parents and professionals in the United States concerned with children in the necessity of sometimes spanking, as noted previously, there is also a growing concern with the harmful side effects of spanking and a growing amount of research on spanking. Chart 1.1, which we created on the basis of a search of studies in the Social Science Citation Index, shows that the annual number of journal articles on corporal punishment is growing rapidly. We tabulated articles on spanking, corporal punishment, etc. in the Social Science Citation Index from 1900 to 2010. Chart 1.1 shows that almost nothing was published in the period 1900 to 1929, slightly more in the period 1930 to 1969, and an exponential growth since 1970. Just over 100 articles were published in 2010.
Another indication of the growing recognition of the harmful side effects of spanking is the Report on Physical Punishment in the United States: What Research Tells Us about Its Effects on Children (Gershoff, 2008). It documents the harmful side effects of spanking and it has been endorsed by over 70 organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Nevertheless, the American Psychological Association has not endorsed the statement. On the other hand, a similar Canadian report (Dhrrant, Ensom, & Coalition on Physical Punishment of Children and Youth, 2004) has been adopted by the Canadian Psychological Association and adopted the conclusions of the Canadian Joint Statement as its official position statement, and more than 400 Canadian organizations have endorsed the statement.
Chart 1.1 Exponential Growth in Articles on Spanking (Chart shows dramatic growth from 1975 to 1990 that increases even more until 2010
In the final months of his life Professor Straus handed out free copies of this book and took other actions to indicate that he wanted to make it available, presumably because he recognized that his work could help teach how to reduce violence if made available freely. Therefore I'm posting the rest of the book in four parts. This copy does not include the charts, for now, but the description in the text is as informative, if not more informative than the actual charts.
The Primordial Violence 2014-1
The Primordial Violence 2014-2
The Primordial Violence 2014-3
The Primordial Violence 2014-4
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