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.
To Dorothy who, years before we met, brought up her wonderful children without spanking. -Murray A. Straus
For L. L. Perkins, who taught me to look past barriers and to only see possibilities -Emily M. Douglas
For my dear friend Catherine -Rose Anne Medeiros
Contents
List of Charts xiii
List of Tables xix
List of Tables in Appendix XXI
Preface xxiii
Acknowledgments xxvii
About the Authors xxxi
PART I
Prevalence and Social Causes of Spanking 1
1 The Social and Scientific Context of Research on Spanking 3
What is Spanking? 3
Spanking, Violence, andChild Abuse 5
Why Focus on Just one Narrow Aspect of Discipline? 6
Public Attitudes and Beliefs about Spanking 7
The Scientific Climate 9
Our Research on Corporal Punishment 12
The Theoretical Framework 15
Risk Factors: The Real Meaning of Social Science Results 17
Summary and Conclusions 22
2 Corporal Punishment in the United States 23
The Survey 24
How Corporal Punishment Changes as Children Grow Older 26
Other Characteristics of Children and Parents Associated With Spanking 29
Five Recent Studies 33
Summary and Conclusions 35
Implications for Parents and Professionals 38
3 Spanking in World Perspective 41
Cross-National Differences in Spanking 41
Sample and Measures 42
How Cultural Norms about Spanking were Measured 43
Spanking Worldwide 44
Support for Spanking Worldwide 47
The Experience of Spanking and Approval of Spanking 50
Summary and Conclusions 52
4 There Was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe 55
Family and Child Characteristics Associated with Spanking 56
Previous Studies 57
Confounding with Age and Birth Order 58
Sample and Measures 59
Summary and Conclusions 60
5 Approval of Violence and Spanking 63
Is Approving Violence One of the Reasons Parents Spank? 64
Sample and Measures 66
Relation of Approval of Violence to Approval of Spanking 66
Three Other Studies 70
Summary and Conclusions 74
PART II
Spanking and Child Behavior Problems 79
6 The Boomerang Effect of Spanking 81
Spanking and Behavior Problems 82
Which is Cause and Which is Effect? 83
Sample and Measures 84
Correlation of Spanking With Antisocial Behavior 87
Spanking and Change in Antisocial Behavior 87
Summary and Conclusions 89
7 Impulsive Spanking, Never Spanking, and Child Well-Being 93
Impulsive Spanking and Child Behavior Problems 94
Effects ofNeverSpanking 96
Sample and Measures 97
Prevalence of Spanking and Impulsive Spanking 99
Relation of Spanking and Impulsive Spanking To Childs Antisocial Behavior 100
Summary and Conclusions 105
8 The Child-to-Mother Bond and Delinquency 109
Does Spanking ''Teach Him a Lesson"? 110
The Child-to-Parent Bond and Delinquency 111
Spanking and the Child-to-Parent Bond 113
Hypotheses 114
Sample and Measures 114
Spanking, Bonding, and Delinquency 116
Does a Weak Child-to-Parent Bond Help Explain the Link between Spanking and Delinquency? 118
Does the Relation of Spanking to Bonding Depend on Other Variables? 120
Summary and Conclusions 121
9 Spanking and Risky Sex 124
Questions Addressed 125
Study 1: Risky Sex by High School Students 125
Study 2: Unprotected Sex by University Students 131
Summary and Conclusions 135
PART III
Spanking and Human Capital 139
10 Mental Ability 141
Processes that Could Link Spanking and Mental Ability 142
Previous Research 143
Studies Suggesting that Spanking Might Adversely Affect Mental Ability 144
Studies of Spanking and Mental Ability 145
Sample 147
Measures 147
Prevalence and Frequency of Spanking 149
Spanking and Development of Mental Ability 149
Summary and Conclusions 151
11 College Graduation 157
Sample and Measures 159
Corporal Punishment and College Graduation 162
Other Variables Related to College Graduation 163
Summary and Conclusions 164
PART IV
Spanking and Crime 167
12 What Explains the Link Between Spanking and Assaulting a Partner? 169
Spanking and Assaults on Partners 170
The Linking Processes 170
The Morality of Violence 171
J;runcated Development of Conflict-Resolution Skills 172
Depression 173
' Sample and Measures 174
Interrelation of Depression, Coriflict, and Approval of Violence 176
Relationship between Spanking and Assaulting a Partner 177
Summary and Conclusions 182
13 Assault and Injury of Dating Partners by University Students in 32 Nations 185
Assaults on Dating Partners 186
Sample and Measures 187
Differences between Men and Women and between Nations 189
Relationship between Spanking and Partner Violence 196
Summary and Conclusions 198
14 Cultural Context and the Relation of Spanking to Crime 202
Sociocultural Context Differences in the Effects of Spanking 203
Why Might Spanking have Different Effects for Black Children? 203
Sample and Measures 205
Corporal Punishment and Assault and Arrest as an Adult 208
Corporal Punishment and Family Violence 209
Corporal Punishment and Child Delinquency and Aggression 210
Systematic Review of Cultural Context Effects 210
Summary and Conclusions 213
15 Spanking High-Risk Children and Adult Crime 218
Sample and Measures 219
Prevalence of Corporal Punishment and Crime 222
Corporal Punishment and Crime as a Young Adult 223
Other Variables Related to Crime 224
Summary and Conclusions 225
16 Sexual Coercion and Sexual Assault 228
Prevalence of Sexual Coercion and Gender Differences 229
Prior Victimization and Perpetration of Sexual Coercion 230
Sample and Measures 234
Prevalence and Gender Differences in Sexual Coercion 237
Tests of the Theory 237
Summary and Conclusions 242
PART V
Social Change and Trends in Spanking 247
17 The Decline in Spanking 249
Cultural Norms on the Necessity of Spanking 250
The Seven Surveys 254
Trends in Support of Spanking 255
Trends in Spanking 260
Summary and Conclusions 265
18 Why Everyone Spanks Toddlers and What to Do About It 270
The Three Paradoxes 271
Consistency is Confounded with Spanking 275
The Myth that Spanking is Harmless 275
The Myth that Spanking Works When Other Methods Fail 276
Why Spanking is No More Effective than Other Methods in the Short Run and Less Effective in the Long Run 281
Why is Spanking Perceived as More Effective than It Is? 284
Beneficial Versus HarmfUl Side Effects 285
Summary and Conclusions 286
19 Implications for Crime and Violence in Society 292
Spanking and Violence 292
Societal-Level Evidence 294
The Cultural Spillover Theory of Violence 300 Individual-Level Evidence 301
Spanking and Juvenile Antisocial Behavior 303
Spanking and Adolescent and Adult Crime 306
Spanking and Other Adult Antisocial Behavior and Crime 307
Trends in Spanking and Implications for Crime 308
Processes Linking Spanking and Crime 310
Summary and Conclusions 310
20 Obstacles to Accepting the Evidence 312
Does the Research Really Prove that Spanking Causes Antisocial Behavior? 312
Will Ending Spanking Mean Kids Out of Control? 315
Cross-Cultural Applicability of the Harmful Effects of Spanking 317
The Ethics of Advising Parents to Never Spank 318
Why We Don't Perceive the Connection 320
\Social and Psychological Obstacles to Accepting the Evidence 321
Summary and Conclusions 322
21 A World without Spanking 324
Societal Change and Change in Spanking 325
The Prospects for Ending Spanking Worldwide 327
The Prospects for Ending Spanking in the United States 330
Will Never Spanking Result In A Nation With Kids Out Of Control? 333
Is Ending Spanking Worth the Effort? 334
Summary and Conclusions 336
References 339
Appendix 373
Author Index 401
Subjectindex 412
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
The above discussion, and Chapter 17 on trends in approval of spanking, indicate that, although there is a growing belief that spanking is not appropriate, the majority of parents and professionals continue to believe spanking is sometimes necessary. Chapters 18 and 20 in this book and "Ten Myths that Perpetuate Corporal Punishment" in Chapter 10 of Straus (2001a) discuss some of the many reasons, both common sense and technical, used to justify continuing to spank when necessary.
Our Research on Corporal Punishment
This book provides the results of empirical research on the extent to which spanking is used by different groups of parents, the causes of spanking, the effects on children, and by inference, the effects on society in the form of the rates of mental health problems and crime. These same issues were addressed in the previous book Beating the Devil Out of Them: Corporal Punishment in American Families and Its Effects on Children (Straus, 2001a). Key parts of the current book represent a major advance. The previous book was based entirely on cross-sectional studies; In the current book, three key chapters (Chapters 6, 10, and 15) report results of prospective studies. Moreover, unlike 15 years ago, in Chapter 19 we are also able to cite many prospective studies by other researchers. This is crucial because only prospective studies and experiments can determine the extent to which corporal punishment, although usually effective in the immediate situation, tends to make things worse in the long run.
One of the most unique contributions of our research are the studies that found that spanking by parents interferes with the development of mental ability among young children. It increases the probability of poor academic performance and reduces the chances of earning a college degree. Some other important characteristics of this book include:
* Several chapters report data for representative samples of U.S. children. There are also four chapters that report results from a 32-nation study. Some other chapters discuss developments in other nations, but the bulk of our analyses, discussions, and references are to spanking in the United States.
* Our approach is a multidisciplinary analysis that does not assume knowledge of any of these disciplines on the part of the reader. Our goal was a book that is understandable by any college-educated person. To accomplish this, the chapters provide the results using graphs, not tables, and the technical methodological information such as tests of significance and regression coefficients are in an appendix.
The concluding chapters take a historical, theoretical, and social policy perspective. They show that corporal punishment is decreasing and explain the reasons for the decrease in spanking. For example, they suggest an explanation for why, despite a large decrease in corporal punishment of older children, over 90% of U.S. parents continue to spank toddlers. They discuss the implications of the findings for efforts to prevent and treat mental health problems and make projections regarding the effect on society as a whole of a continued reduction in spanking. The final chapter concludes that the continued reduction in spanking is likely to result in a population with better parent-child relationships, a higher average IQ, less delinquency, fewer adult mental health and family problems, and less crime.
Except for concluding that parents should never spank, The Primordial Violence is not an advice book. But it does have important practical implications for parents. It provides scientific evidence showing the benefits of not spanking, such as less antisocial behavior and higher IQ. Parents need this information because the harmful side effects of spanking do not show up for months or even years. As a consequence, parents can't perceive these side effects. Because parents can't perceive the harmful effects, professionals need to provide that information and advise parents to never spank. As we showed earlier, very few do that. We hope that The Primordial Violence will enable child psychologists, educators, parent educators, pediatricians, sociologists, and social workers to alert parents to the risks to which spanking exposes their children and the benefits of never spanking.
Chart 1.2 Partial Theoretical Model of the Processes Linking Spanking, Child Development, and Crime (Chart shows theoretical model with refernces to chapters discussing issues.)
The Theoretical Framework
As previously noted, this book is the product of the past 15 years of research on corporal punishment at the Family Research Laboratory of the University of New Hampshire. The results from the 15 years before that were presented in / Beating the Devil Out of Them: Corporal Punishment in American Families and Its Effects on Children (Straus, 2001a). Chart 1.2 summarizes the evidence from this 30-year effort. The variables in bold type identify results in this book. The chart provides an overview of the theoretical framework that guided our research.
The central theoretical ideas in Chart 1.2 are first, that spanking has many causes, only one of which is misbehavior by the child, and second, that there are multiple direct and indirect links between spanking and antisocial behavior. These include effects on personality and cognitions, such as beliefs and attitudes about violence and mental ability. Third, there are separate blocks to indicate that these effects of spanking manifest themselves in different ways among young children, older children, and adults. The solid lines in Chart 1.2 indicate our empirical results. The dashed lines indicate the mechanisms (i.e., mediating processes), which could explain why spanking results in violence and crime. Although some of these mediating processes have been confirmed by empirical research (see, for example, Chapters 8, 9, 12, and 16), dashed lines are used because most of the mechanisms in Chart 1.2 that could explain why spanking causes violence and other crimes have not yet been confirmed by empirical research.
Some Things to Keep in Mind about Research Results
The low effect size for a single variable. It is important to keep in mind that the results summarized in Chart 1.2 identify only a few of the differences between children and adults in characteristics and experiences that could explain differences in beliefs about violence, and in violent and criminal behavior. To fully understand why some children and adults are smarter or more violent'than others, and to fully understand why some commit crimes and others do not, requires information on a vast array of characteristics and experiences. This includes innate differences as well as social experiences such as spanking (Farrington, 2011; Fergusson, Boden, Horwood, Miller, & Kennedy, 2011). Because almost all human behavior has multiple causes, no single cause, such as spanking or poverty, will explain more than a small part of the difference between people in a specific behavior. Examined separately, each of those causes will, therefore, be found to have a small effect size. (Effect size is a measure of the strength of the relationship between spanking and any adverse outcome.) The small effect size also applies to other single characteristics or experiences. Yet, as will be shown in Chapters 20, even a small effect size can make a large difference. In fact, small effect sizes, smaller than those for spanking, have been the basis for important public health and social programs such as protecting children from exposure to lead.
Tests of statistical significance. As explained previously, the details of such tests, such as the specific test used, degrees of freedom, F tests, and p values are in sections of the Appendix or the references cited in the chapter. In the chapters themselves, we use the term dependable to refer to results that have been found to be statistically significant. We have used this wording because years of experience with many students has shown that, despite having had a course in statistics, most continue to think that significant means important in the sense of a large difference or large effect, when it actually refers to the probability that the result could occur by chance. Just because a research result is statistically dependable, in the sense of being unlikely to have occurred by chance, it does not necessarily mean it is significant in that sense.
Context. It is also true that we can fully understand the effects of spanking only by taking into account many other aspects of the parent-child relationship and other aspects of the child's life circumstances. However, that perspective can be pushed too far. For example, Ross Parke, one of America's leading developmental psychologists, argues that "attempts to treat punishment as a separate variable are bound to failure. Instead, the inherent packaged nature of parental discipline renders the attempt to answer the question about the effects of corporal punishment on children a misguided one" (Parke, 2002). This is a classic false dichotomy. It is like saying it is futile to try to separate out the effects of Vitamin C because the effects depend on the whole nutritional context or futile to study the effect of reading to children because the effect depends on the inherent package nature of the parenting context. In fact, both specific parenting practices, and the broader parenting context and the social circumstances in which a family lives, need to be considered. In this book, we do focus primarily on one part of the package-spanking-but whenever the data are available, we have also controlled for how other aspects of "the parenting package" influence the effects of spanking. This includes:
Social Characteristics of the Parents and Family
* Educational level of parents
* Income, including very low income
* Racial/ethnic group
* Socioeconomic status (SES)
* Child's age
* Mother's age
* Single-parent versus two-parent families
* Number of children in the family
* Sex ofthe parent
* Age of the parent
Parenting Behavior
* Adequacy of parent's supervision of children
* Parental warmth and emotional support
* Whether parents established clear rules and expectations
* Use of other disciplinary strategies such as time-out
* Parental consistency in discipline
* Parental use of reasoning
* Parental involvement and cognitive stimulation provided by the parent
* Father presence or absence
* Psychosocial Problems of Parents
* Conflict between the parents
* Violence between the parents
* Violence in the families in which the parents grew up
* Parental alcohol abuse
* Parent attitudes approving violence
* Whether the parent also engaged in more severe violence ("physical abuse")
* Depression of parents
Child Characteristics
* Sex of the child
* Age of the child
* Child's weight at birth (a proxy for possible physical or mental limitations)
* Child's misbehavior at Time 1
* Child's cognitive ability at Time 1
* Child-to-parent bond
When the variables just listed are controlled, it means that the results on the relation of spanking to child behavior problems are in addition to the effects of the variables controlled. Or another way of putting this is that the results show that spanking makes a unique contribution, to whatever side effect was studied, that is over and above the contribution of the variables controlled.
Risk Factors: The Real Meaning of Social Science Results
"I was spanked as a child and I turned out fine, so what's the big deal?" We have heard this hundreds of times. In this section, we explain how it can be a big deal even though they turned out fine. To understand !his, readers need to be familiar with the concept of a risk factor. The term risk factor has been used in several different ways (Murray, Farrington, & Eisner, 2009). We use it to indicate the relation of an event, behavior, or characteristic to an increased probability of experiencing being spanked rather than a one-toone relationship. We refer to spanking as a risk factor for antisocial behavior and later crime to indicate that spanking is associated with an increase in the chances of crime, not to indicate that every child who has been spanked will commit crimes as an adult. If that were the case, because almost all
children in the United States and most other nations have been spanked, we should all be criminals. The next section uses the example of the relation of heavy smoking to dying of a smoking-related disease to illustrate that, even though heavy smoking is proven to cause early death, it is also a risk factor in the sense that most people who experience the cause, do not experience, the harmful effect.
Smoking and the Fallacy of Personal Experience
A well-known example of a risk-factor relationship rather than a one-to-one relationship is the research on the relationship of heavy smoking to dying o:f a smoking-related disease. The research leaves no doubt that smoking causes lung cancer and other diseases. It shows that about one third of heavy smokers die from a smoking-related disease (Matteson, Pollack, & Cullen, 1987). That is a big enough risk for governments to take steps to reduce smoking and for many people to stop smoking-both of which have happened across the United States and throughout many parts of the world. The same statistic, how6ver, also means that two thirds of heavy smokers do not die of a smokingrelated disease. As a consequence, the majority of heavy smokers may doubt the research because they can say that they have smoked all their lives and are in good health. If they are in good health, that is a correct statement. But when people say that, it is intended to imply that smoking does not cause lung cancer and other diseases, which is not correct. The correct interpretation is that the person still in good health is one of the lucky two thirds. This is because smoking is only one of the large number of things that increase or decrease the probability of developing or dying from a smoking-related disease.
The relation of smoking to disease is in the form of a dose-response: the more smoking, the greater the probability of illness. Large amounts of smoking are associated with a large increase in the probability of illness, but even small amounts are associated with a significant but smaller increase in the chances of illness. For example, even relatively small amounts of passive exposure to smoking is associated with an increased chance of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (Jordan, Cheng, Miller, & Adab, 2011). As a consequence, many jurisdictions and some nations have policies to protect people from any exposure to smoking, just as we think it should be national policy to protect children from exposure to any amount of spanking.
Other Examples of Risk-Factor Relationships
* Research on binge drinking and wife beating shows that in a given year about 20% of binge drinkers assault their partners (Kaufman Kantor & Straus, 1987). That is 3 times the percent of abstainers. But this fmding also means that 80% of binge drinkers did not attack their partner during the year covered by the study (see also Hines & Straus, 2007; Testa, Hoffman, & Leonard, 2011).
* Research on male dominance and partner violence shows that, in a given year, men in male-dominant relationships are almost 7 times more likely than men in egalitarian relationships to assault a partner (Straus, Gelles, & Steinmetz, 2006, p.194). The rate increases from 3% to 20%. Therefore, despite the seven-fold increase, the results of that study also show that 80% of the men in male-dominant relationships did not assault their partners.
* Protective factors are also in the form of a lessened probability of harm. Aspirin does prevent heart attacks, but in the form of a decreased probability of a heart attack. Many people who take aspirin have heart attacks, but fewer of them than those who should take aspirin and do not.
Examples of Risk-Factor Relationships in This Book
All the results in this book on the presumed causes or consequences of spanking are in the form of risk-factor relationships. Here are some examples:
* In the next chapter, Chart 2.3 shows that low socioeconomic status is associated with an increased probability of spanking. Those results do not mean that all low socioeconomic status parents spank more than high socioeconomic status parents. Some low socioeconomic status parents spank less than high socioeconomic status parents, and some high socioeconomic status parents spank more than low socioeconomic status parents. The results in that chapter, like all the results in this book, are what happen on average. There are always people who are above or below the average for their group, but that does not mean the average gives incorrect information.
* Chapter 4 on family size and spanking found that having more than two children is associated with an increased probability of spanking and an average increase in the frequency of spanking. Those results do not mean that all parents with three or four children spank more than those with one or two children. Those results, like all of the results presented in this book and like the results of almost all social science and most medical research, are in the form of what is true on average or what is true generally. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on whether the study investigates a potential source of harm or a potential benefit, there are always exceptions to the general trend of things. Moreover, the exceptions are usually the majority of people who experience the risk factor, as is the case with smoking. Not everyone is harmed by a risk factor and not everyone gains from a beneficial factor. The studies showing that more children in a family is associated with more spanking of each child are likely to be doubted by parents who point out that, "I have four children, and I don't spank a lot." For many parents that is correct, but the implication that the number of children makes no difference in spanking is just as incorrect as a smoker who is healthy believing that smoking makes no difference in health.
* Chapter 6 shows that spanking is associated with a subsequent increased ! probability of antisocial behavior-the very thing it was designed to correct. This does not mean that all, or even most, children who are spanked will be antisocial, just as the results on smoking do not mean that all, or even most, heavy smokers will die of a smoking-related disease.
Risk and Causation
As we noted earlier, the results of almost all social science and medical research are in the form of risk-factor relationships, that is an increased probability of a harmful (or beneficial) outcome, not a one-to-one relationship. This applies even when there is a proven causal relationship, as in the examples of smoking. Another example of a causal relationship in the form of an increased probability, rather than a one-to-one relationship, is that only a minority of children born to mothers with HIV, have HIV.
The converse is also important: There may be clear evidence that a certain event or behavior is associated with an increased probability of a harm or benefit, lfut that does not necessarily mean that the risk factor is the cause. Research shpwing that spanking is a risk factor for an adverse outcome, like everything else in science, needs to be carefully evaluated. In this case, the crucial question is whether the evidence showing that spanking is associated with an increased probability of a negative side effect also indicates that the risk factor causes the negative side effect. This question has been the subject of much discussion, which is well summarized by Murray et al. (2009). Many things are involved, but a core element in determining whether a risk factor is also a causal factor is whether the study was experimental, longitudinal, or cross-sectional.
Experiments. Experiments are the gold standard for research answering causal questions on issues such as whether spanking causes or prevents crime. An experiment on this question would involve randomly assigning half the parents to a spanking group and the other half of the parents would be assigned to a no-spanking group who would agree to never spank and instead correct misbehavior in other ways. There are no experimental studies in this book, partly because we believe it would be unethical to randomly assign parents to spank. However, those who think that spanking is sometimes necessary might also think an experimental study would be unethical, but for almost the opposite reason: because they would not want to deprive the child of what they think is sometimes necessary for the child's well-being. Nevertheless, one research group has conducted experiments (Day & Roberts, 1983; Roberts, 1988; Roberts & Powers, 1990). They randomly assigned one group of parents to spank when a child left time-out and another group to use nonviolent alternatives such as simply putting the child back in the time-out place.
They found that it took an average of about eight repetitions of putting the child back in time-out before the child would stay. What happened with the children who were spanked? It took an average of eight spankings. Thus, as we explain in more detail in Chapter 18 on why most parents resort to spanking, spanking does work but on average no better than nonviolent modes of correction, and spanking has harmful side effects that nonviolent methods of correction do not have. In this study, the side effects were that the spanked children engaged in more disruptive behavior (such as yelling and whining) before achieving compliance.
Regardless of the reason, the absence of experiments is a weakness in the evidence on the harmful effects of spanking, but it does not provide a basis for disregarding all the other evidence indicating that spanking causes harmful side effects, especially the evidence from longitudinal studies (also called prospective studies).
Longitudinal studies. In this type of research, children are followed over a period of time such as one, two, or four years. Prospective studies can provide data on change in the behavior of the spanked children compared with those not spanked. Examples are Chapter 6 on the relation of spanking to antisocial behavior by the child, Chapter 10 on the relation of spanking to the child's mental ability, and Chapter 15 on the relation of spanking to crime as an adult. We also describe prospective studies by others, especially in Chapter 19 on the link between spanking and violent societies. If other variables that are linked to spanking, and which could be the real underlying cause, are controlled, longitudinal studies provide strong, although not conclusive, evidence of a cause-and-effect relationship.
Cross-sectional studies. A cross-sectional study (also called a correlational study) simply establishes whether or not differences in a presumed cause (such as spanking) are linked to differences in the probability of a presumed effect, such as delinquency. Most of the chapters in this book describe the results of cross-sectional research. They can show that the more spanking, the greater the probability of some harmful side effect, but they cannot prove that spanking causes the increased probability of the side effect. Cross-sectional research could, however, disprove the theory that spanking has harmful side effects. This would be the case if the cross-sectional studies failed to show the hypothesized correlation between spanking and the side effect investigated. The opposite has happened. There have been more than 100 cross-sectional studies testing the · theory that spanking has harmful side effects. Gershoff's meta-analysis (Gershoff, 2002) of the results of 88 studies found that 97% were consistentwith the theory. That is, almost none failed to find that spanking is linked to a harmful side effect. That is also true of the studies that have been published since then. This is especially important because the studies since Gershoff's review include many longitudinal studies, such as MacKenzie, Nicklas, Waldfogel, and Brooks-Gunn, 2011. Longitudinal studies provide evidence of a causal relationship that is second only to random assignment experiments. It is also important to keep in mind that when we conclude, for example, that spanking causes antisocial behavior, we do not mean it is the only cause. Almost everything in human behavior has multiple causes.
Summary and Conclusions
Despite the absence of experimental data, we believe the evidence is sufficient to conclude that spanking does cause child behavior problems and crime. We base this on the longitudinal studies in this book, the longitudinal studies by others identified in Chapter 19 on the relation of spanking to antisocial • behavior and crime and the fact that almost none of the very large number of cross-sectional studies conducted over decades has failed to find the theoretically predicted link between spanking and a harmful side effect.
The idea of a risk-factor relationship is extremely important for understanding these results and for the practical implications of most social science and medical research. It explains the seeming contradiction between research and personal experience; for example, the discrepancy between research on the relation of spanking to assaulting a marital or dating partner and the fact that most people do not hit their partners. The research has consistently found that the more spanking, the greater the probability of assaulting a partner (see Chapter 12). But the personal experience of most people who were spanked is that they have pot physically assaulted their marital or dating partners. Both statements are correct.' One does not contradict the other, just as a chaotic or abusive family does not doom children to failure and a wonderfully warm and supportive family' does not guarantee success. The worst parenting only increases the probability of bad outcomes, and the best parenting only increases the probability of good outcomes for the child. Risk-factor relationships are what is presented in this book. We hope that this explanation up front provides a foundation for understanding the results in the following chapters and for understanding why we argue that spanking is, indeed, the primordial violence.
2 Corporal Punishment in the United States
As we pointed out in Chapter 1, whether parents should spank children is the subject of a huge debate among both parents and professionals concerned with children. But regardless of whether one favors or rejects spanking as a method of correcting misbehavior, parents and the professionals who advise parents need to know the extent to which spanking and other legal methods of corporal punishment are actually used. They also need to know how effective spanking is and whether there are unintended side effects. This book provides information on all those issues. This chapter addresses the following questions:
• What percent of parents use corporal punishment such as spanking, and how often do those who spank do it? • To what extent does use of corporal punishment differ depending on:
• The child's age? • Whether the child is a boy or a girl? • Whether the parent correcting the misbehavior is the mother or the father? • Whether the parent has little education or is a college graduate?• If, for. example, low-education parents do more spanking, does that mean that all children oflow"education parents are spanked a lot? Obviously not. Underneath that obvious answer is a general principle that is extremely important for properly interpreting all the research results in this book, not just this chapter. That principle is explained in Chapter 1, in the section on "Risk Factors: The Real Meaning of Social Science Results."
This chapter provides information on the questions just listed for a nationally representative sample of American children in 1995. It also provides an update on current use of corporal punishment from a national survey of American children in 2006. The next chapter and Straus (20 1 Ob) provide some of that information for other nations.
Julie H. Stewart is the coauthor of this chapter.
To understand what children experience when parents use corporal punishment, more needs to be known than just the percentage of different ages who are hit by parents. As a consequence, the chapter also provides information on:
* Six specific acts of corporal punishment that vary in severity
* The chronicity of corporal punishment, that is among those who used corporal punishment, and how often did they do it.
* The duration of corporal punishment (the number of years until corporal punishment ceases)
* The extent to which corporal punishment differs by seven characteristics of the children (such as boys versus girls) and of the families (such as low-and high-education parents)
Information on the extent to which corporal punishment differs according to these characteristics of children and families can suggest some of the social causes of corporal punishment. This can have practical value because there is a growing professional interest in helping parents shift from spanking to nonviolent forms of discipline. Such programs need to be guided by data on the extent to which spanking occurs at different ages and in different sectors of the' population. For example, if poor Black parents and parents of other races or ethnic groups with low educational attainment are more likely to approve of and use spanking (Alvy, 1987; Deater-Deckard, Bates, Dodge, & Pettit, 1996; Giles-Sims, Straus, & Sugarman, 1995; Ispa & Halgunseth, 2004; Polite, 1996), parent education intended to reduce spanking may need to take into account the culture of these groups. If, in recent years, fathers have taken on additional child care responsibilities, the additional effort needed to include fathers in parent education programs may be even more important than it was previously.
The Survey
Most of the information in this chapter was obtained from a survey of a nationally representative sample of 986 parents (333 fathers and 653 mothers) that was conducted for us by the Gallup Organization in 1995. Each parent was interviewed about one child under age 18. When there was more than one child at home, the child to be the focus of the interview was randomly selected. Additional information on the method of sampling and the characteristics of the sample is in Straus and Stewart (1999).
Some of the many methods of measuring corporal punishment are discussed in Holden and Zambarano (1992) and Straus (1998) and others have been developed since then. The instrument used for this study is the parent-child version of the Conflict Tactics Scales (Straus, Hamby, Finkelhor, Moore, & Runyan, 1998). The questions ask how often the parent did each of the following in the previous 12 months:
* Spanked on the bottom with your bare hand
* Slapped on the hand, arm, or leg
* Pinched
* Shook (for children age 3 and over only)
* Hit on the bottom with something like a belt, hairbrush, a stick, or some other hard object
* Slapped on the face, head, or ears
All six of these acts are legal forms of corporal punishment in every state in the United States, provided that they do not result in an injury that leaves a lasting mark and that they are not done so frequently and severely that the child is at high risk of injury. However, three acts were judged to carry a higher risk of injury and be less widely accepted, and will be referred to as severe corporal punishment. They are slapping a child's face or head, hitting with a belt or hard object, and pinching. Two of the six (spanked on the buttocks and slapped on the hand or leg) will be referred to as ordinary corporal punishment. Shaking a child was considered separately because of the extreme danger if done to infants. Additional information on how the Conflict Tactics Scales was used to measure corporal punishment is in Straus (1998).
Chart 2.1 Spanking Begins with Infants, Is Highest for Toddlers, and Continues into the Teen Years for Many Children. (Chart shows that CP is used most at age four or five and least at seventeen, which happens to be when they can hit back the hardest.)
In addition to the rates for the sample as a whole, we examined whether there are differences in corporal punishment for the following seven variables: fathers compared with mothers, boys compared with girls, the age of the child, the ethnic group of the child, single parents, and region. The tests of statistical significance for the differences between groups are in Straus (1999).
How Corporal Punishment Changes as Children Grow Older
A child's age is uniquely important for understanding the place of spanking because young children are spanked or hit much more often than older children. It is also important because the age at which spanking is appropriate is something that parents worry about and professionals debate. The professional debate about the age for spanking took up much of the time at a conference on spanking sponsored by the American Academy of Pediatrics that one of us attended (Friedman & Schonberg, 1996b) and had two noteworthy features. The first is that the debate was carried out within the context of what ages to recommend and what ages to avoid, rather than whether it is ever appropriate. Second, the debate took place in the absence of scientific evidence on how the age of the child influences the effects of spanking. The so-called consensus statement said that spanking should not be used with children under 2 or over 6 years of age. However, not a single member of this distinguished group presented even one study showing less harm at the ages they approved. They could not provide evidence on that issue because that research has never been done. However, the chapters on child behavior problems (Chapter 6) and mental ability (Chapter 10) contain a bit of the needed evidence on the age when corporal punishment has the greatest adverse effect. Ironically, they show that corporal punishment is just as harmful or more harmful for toddlers (the permitted age) than it is for older children (the prohibited ages). This is precisely the opposite of what the conference recommended and the opposite of what we think most parents, like professionals believe.
Returning to the issue of the prevalence of corporal punishment, Chart 2.1 gives the percentage of parents who used corporal punishment at each age, starting on the left side with infants (children under 1 year of age). The percent who spanked or slapped an infant is one of the most important results because it shows that just over one third of American parents did this. Typically this was a slap on the hand for touching something forbidden or dangerous or for repeatedly pushing food off a high chair tray, etc. One out of three is probably a minimum estimate because parents may be reluctant to tell an interviewer that they spanked or slapped an infant. Not many studies have looked into hitting infants, but the studies that have found rates that are this high or higher (Bugental, Martorell, & Barraza, 2003; Korsch, Christian, Gozzi, & Carlson, 1965; Newson & Newson, 1963; Socolar & Stein, 1995).
Chart 2.2 Parents Who Use Spanking Do It Often. (Chart shows amount of CP peaks at age two.)
After infancy, the percent of children who were spanked rises to a peak at ages 4 and 5, when 94% of parents said that they had used one or more of the six types of corporal punishment, during the previous 12 months. From there on, the rate declines steadily to age 17. However, it is important to note that as late as age 13, over 40% of parents used corporal punishment as a disciplinary technique. These rates are consistent with previous studies that have found that corporal punishment increases from infancy to age 2, stays at or above 90% for ages 3 through 5, and decreases steadily from age 6 through 17 (Bachman, 1967; Straus, 1991, 2001a; Wauchope & Straus, 1990).
Chronicity and Severity
Chronicity. Although Chart 2.1, shows the percent of children who were hit at each age, it does not indicate how often parents hit the children in this study. This is in Chart 2.2. It refers to the subsample of parents who used corporal punishment at least once during the previous year, and it gives the average number of times they used corporal punishment. The term chronicity is used to distinguish this data from data on the average frequency for all parents of · children of a given age. The average frequency for all parents would be mis- · leading because almost one half of the children age 9 to 11 and more than one half of older children would have a score of zero (no corporal punishment that year). Therefore the average frequency would turn out to be less than once a year. This is very different than the chronicity data in Chart 2.2, which shows that the chronicity, among those who do use corporal punishment, is in the 4 to 8 times a year range.
Chart 2.2 shows that spanking was most chronic by parents of 2-year-old children-the "terrible two's." They spanked an average of 18 times during the previous year. Except for what are probably random fluctuations around the trend line, the chronicity of spanking declined from there on, to an average of6 times per year by parents of 14-, 15-, and 16-year-old children. However, these chronicity figures are almost certainly large underestimates, especially for toddlers. Other studies show averages of about 3 times a week for toddlers (see Chapter 10 and Giles-Sims et al., 1995; Holden, Coleman, & Schmidt, 1995; Stattin, Janson, Klackenberg-Larsson, Magnusson, & McCord, 1995). Threeltimes a week multiplies out to about 150 times a year. The difference between the 18 times a year in Chart 2.2 and 150 or more times a year found by these other studies occurs because our study asked parents how often they did it in the past year. The problem with asking parents about the last year is that spanking children is such a routine, taken-for-granted, and unremarkable event that few parents realize how often they have done it over the course of a year. This and other problematic aspects of measuring corporal punishment, and alternative procedures, are discussed in Straus (1998). Fortunately, response categories are now available for the CTS and other instruments which avoid this large underestimate (Fauchier & Straus, 2011; Moore, Straus & Winstok, 2013).
Severity. It is important to distinguish between ordinary spanking and severe spanking such as hitting a child with a belt or paddle. As we pointed out earlier, the legality of using a belt or paddle has been confirmed by high court rulings in many states (Olson 2008). The rates of ordinary and severe corporal punishment follow a developmental pattern. The milder forms of corporal punishment, spanking and slapping, were used most often with toddlers (ages 2 to 4). The more severe and less culturally approved forms of corporal punishment were most prevalent in middle childhood. Twenty-eight percent of children ages 5 to 12 were hit with a belt, paddle, or hairbrush during the year covered by this study. Teenagers had the lowest prevalence rates, but 16% being hit with an object is still a remarkably high rate.
We believe that hitting a child on the bottom with objects such as a belt, hairbrush, or stick was extremely common as recently as the 1940s and 1950s. It is still legal in every state in the United States, providing it leaves no lasting mark on the child. Even as recently as the 1970s, two thirds of a random sample of the population of Texas believed that hitting a child with such objects is acceptable (Teske & Parker, 1983). The actual use of belts and paddles has also not disappeared by the time of this survey in 1995. Table A2.2 in the section of the Appendix for this chapter gives the percent of parents who used each of the modes of corporal punishment, including hitting a child with an object such as a belt or hairbrush for children in each of five child age categories.
We also asked about threats to spank or slap. Strictly speaking this is a form of verbal aggression, not an act of corporal punishment as previously defined. Therefore, it was not one of the items in the corporal punishment scale used to· obtain the rates in Chart 2.1 and Chart 2.2. However, we consider it a part of violent children rearing, just as threats to hit a wife or husband would be considered part of a violent relationship. The rate of such threats is greatest for children 5-8 (71 %) and then decreases, but even during the teen years, 39% of the parents reported threatening to hit (see Appendix Table A2.2).
Other Characteristics of Children and Parents Associated with Spanking
Age of Parent
Studies of three nationally representative samples of parents found that the younger the parent, the more likely they were to spank (Day, Peterson, & McCracken, 1998; Giles-Sims et al., 1995; Straus, 2001a). This relationship parallels what has been found for psychical abuse (Connelly & Straus, 1992). For this study, although there was a tendency for younger parents to be more likely to spank, the differences were not significant. However, we did find that the younger the parents, the more often they spanked. Parents age 18 to 29 used corporal punishment an average of 17.1 times during the previous 12 months. Parents age 30 to 39 did it an average of 12.6 times, and parents age 40 and over who used corporal punishment did it an average of 9.1 times during the year of the study. This difference is not the result of younger parents having younger children (who, on average, are hit more frequently) because the analysis adjusted for the age of the child.
Socioeconomic Status
Although most studies have found that the higher the socioeconomic status, the less use of spanking (Giles-Sims et al., 1995; Straus, 2001a) some have found no important difference (Erlanger, 1974). In this study, Chart 2.3 shows that, after controlling for the other seven independent variables (age and gender of the parent and the child, the ethnicity of the child, single parent and region), higher socioeconomic status parents tended to spank less.
We also found that the relation of socioeconomic status to spanking depended on the age of the parent. The finding that the higher the socioeconomic status, the lower the percentage using corporal punishment, applies only to the two older age groups (ages 30 to 39 and ages 40 and over). Among younger parents, the percentage who spanked was high regardless of socioeconomic status. This could be due to the combination of younger parents tending to have children in the toddler ages and the fact that almost everyone (over 90%) hits toddlers. However, having younger children is not likely to be the explanation for the greater use of spanking by young parents in this study because we controlled for age of the child. Perhaps the higher propensity to violence of all types by young people overrides the violence-reducing effect of high socioeconomic status.
Chart 2.3 The Higher the Socioeconomic Status, the Lower the Percent Who Used Spanking
*Adjusted for age and sex of parent and child, race of the child, single parent, and region.
There are important theoretical reasons for expecting spanking to be more prevalent among the lowest socioeconomic sectors of society. For example, low socioeconomic status parents are under greater stress and have more children, both of which are related to spanking (see Chapter 4 and Turner & Finkelhor, 1996). In addition, low socioeconomic status families tend to reside in areas ofhigh violence. As a consequence, despite the inconsistency of previous research, we expected to find, and did find, that the lower the socioeconomic statUs, the higher the percentage of parents who spanked.
Ethnic Group
Previous research on ethnic differences in spanking is also contradictory. For example, Straus (2001a) found no important difference between Blacks and Whites. Day et al. (1998) found more spanking by Black parents, but only for children age 5 to 11 years, and among younger children, only by unmarried mothers. On the other hand, many other studies such as Barkin (2007), DeaterDeckard et al. (1996), Giles-Sims et al. (1995), Ispa and Halgunseth (2004), Lee (20 11 ), and Taylor (20 1 0) found more spanking by Black parents.
For the parents in this sample, corporal punishment was used by 77% of Black parents during the previous 12 months compared with 59% of Whites. This large difference was mostly due to differences in socioeconomic status and six other sociodemographic characteristics (age of child, age of parent, single parent, gender of parent and child, and region). When these variables were controlled, the difference dropped greatly but remained statistically dependable (70% of Black parents compared with 62% of other minority parents and 60% of White parents).
It is important to keep in mind that statistical controls do not change the fact that Black parents used 30% more corporal punishment than White parents. The contribution of the statistical control is to help explain why the group difference exists. In this case, it shows that a large part of the difference is due to such characteristics as lower s9cioeconomic status, having younger children, and single parenthood. The analysis suggests that ifBlack parents did not differ from White parents on these characteristics, there would be a much smaller difference in the prevalence and chronicity of spanking. Because use of these controls reduced, but did not eliminate the difference, these results also suggest that there may be cultural explanations. There is debate over whether the approval and use of corporal punishment by Blacks is a legacy of their culture prior to enslavement, a legacy of the physical brutality to which Blacks were subjected during slavery (Alvy, 1987; Grier & Cobbs, 1968; Polite, 1996), a reflection of the violence and the "code of the streets" found in inner-city Black neighborhoods (Anderson, 1999; Brown, 1965), or some combination of these. There is also a debate about whether the harmful side effects of spanking documented in this book apply to Black children. That issue is addressed in Chapter 14.
Although these results are consistent with the evidence that more Blacks than Whites think spanking is necessary, (see Chapter 17), some of the results are not that clear and caution is needed in evaluating race and ethnic group differences. This is because, despite the higher percentage ofBlacks who approved spanking and who actually spanked, in this study, Whites who spanked did so just as often as Black parents who spanked.
Boys and Girls
Previous research indicates that boys are spanked more than girls at all ages (Day et al., 1998; Giles-Sims et al., 1995; Graziano & Namaste, 1990; Straus, 2001a). In view of the movement toward treating boys and girls more similarly, previous fmdings might not apply to this sample. However, we found ' the same tendency for parents in this nationally representative sample to hit boys more than girls (65% of boys compared with 58% of girls). There was also a difference in how often boys and girls were hit. For boys, it occurred an average of 14.3 times, compared with an average of 12.9 times for girls. However, for children age 2 to 4 there was no difference at all in the chronicity of hitting boys and girls. Perh~ps this is a ceiling effect because at those ages, over 90% of the parents spank. Finding that boys were hit more than girls is consistent with previous studies cited, and even with a study of homicides of infants (Straus, 1987). Despite a trend toward equality in methods of bringing up boys and girls, boys are still subjected to more violent child rearing.
An ironic aspect of this gender difference in socialization is that spanking is intended to produce a better behaved child, but numerous studies show that boys tend to have higher rates of misbehavior than girls. Perhaps there is an innate tendency of boys to be less compliant and this leads to more spanking of boys. Whatever the role of genetic difference between boys and girls, socialization differences are also likely to be important. For example, the studies of antisocial behavior as a child and crime later in life (Chapters 6 and 19) found that spanking tended to be counterproductive in the long run, and that the counterproductive effect was stronger for boys than for girls. Because spanking starts in infancy, it is even possible that the greater misbehavior rate of boys may reflect their higher rate of having been exposed to this form of violent socialization more than girls, starting when they were infants. Even lethal violence is directed at more infant boys than girls (Straus, 1987).
Mothers and Fathers
Mothers have been shown to spank more than fathers (Straus, 2001a). Of the mothers interviewed for this study, 64% spanked in the previous 12 months, compared with 58% of the fathers. However, parents of children age 9 to 12 were an exception. For this group, the percent who spanked was almost identical for mothers and fathers (57% of mothers and 58% offathers).
Although in this study, as in many others, more mothers than fathers spanked, mothers who spanked did not do it more often than fathers. Perhaps in some families, the father is the disciplinarian and this may explain why their rates are close to those of mothers despite spending less time with children. It also needs to be noted that the difference between mothers and fathers is only six percentage points (64% for mothers and 58% for fathers). If, for example, mothers spend twice the amount of time with children as fathers, the rate for fathers would need to be doubled to equalize the time at risk. That would raise the rate for fathers to over 100%! Although we do not have any reasonable way of statistically adjusting for time at risk, the much greater time for mothers, the small difference between mothers and fathers probably indicates a lower propensity to hit children by mothers than fathers. That interpretation is consistent with the chapter that shows that fewer mothers than fathers believe that spanking is necessary (Chapter 17). It is also consistent with research on teachers. Male and female teachers spend about the same amount of time with students, but Checks (1979) found a higher rate of corporal punishnient by male teachers. It is important to keep in mind, however, that even if this interpretation is correct, it does not necessarily mean that mothers actually hit less. It may only mean that the greater time spent with children is one of the reasons the mothers hit children more than fathers.
Single Parents
Although we found no research that directly demonstrates a relationship between single parenthood and spanking, research on physical abuse (i.e., severe physical assaults on children) shows higher rates for single parents (Bolton & MacEachron, 1987; Gelles, 1989; Giles-Sims & Finkelhor, 1984). These findings can plausibly be extended to spanking because the risk factors for spanking parallel those for physical abuse (Straus, 1990b ). On average, single parents are under greater stress and therefore may also be more likely to spank. Although this is plausible, we did not fmd a statistically significant difference between parents who were living with a partner as compared with single parents, and among those who spanked, there was no significant difference in the chronicity of spanking. If stress is a determinant of spanking, perhaps the stress ofbringing up children without the financial and supervisory contributions of a partner are counterbalanced by being freed from a stressful marriage.
Region
Research on regional differences in attitudes and norms concerning spanking has consistently shown more widespread endorsement of spanking in the South than in other regions (see Chapter 17 and Ellison & Sherkat, 1993; Flynn, 1994). These studies also found that spanking was least favored in the Northeast. In addition, Giles-Sims et al. (1995) found the same regional pattern for actual spanking. We also found the highest prevalence of spanking in the South (69%) and the lowest in the Northeast (53%). The age of the child made a difference: For the youngest and oldest children (ages 1 to 2 and 13 to 17), the lowest rates of spanking were in the West.
Although the regions differed significantly in the percentage of parents who used corporal punishment, there was not a significant difference between regions in the chronicity of spanking. So, although more Southern parents spank, those who do, do not hit more often than parents in other regions.
Five Recent Studies
There has not been a comprehensive national survey since the 1995 study described in this chapter. However, there are five more recent, although less complete, studies. Although they are more limited in scope and used different methods, they are not studies of high-risk or other special populations and can help bring the overall picture up-to-date.
The Harris Youth Report survey in 2006 asked a national sample of children age 8 and over whether they had been hit by parents that year. Thus, there is no data on toddlers, the age group when spanking is most prevalent. Nevertheless, the results are important because they show that the percentage who were hit by a parent in the previous 12 months remain as high as was found for children age 8 and over a decade earlier:
* 44% of children age 8 to 10
* 33% of children age 11 to 13
* 22% of children age 14 to 15
* 15% of children age 16 to 18
Although the 2006 survey did not include toddlers and therefore could not determine if the percentage in 2006 remained at over 90%, the rates for children age 8 and over are as high as the 1995 rates. This suggests that, had the study included toddlers, the results would have been about the same as in 1995, as has been the case since the 1950s when Sears, Maccoby, and Levin (195,7) found that 99% ofthe kindergarten children they studied were spanked at least occasionally. Similarly, Bryan and Freed (1982) found that 95% of a sample of community college students had been spanked. Numerous other studies, (e.g., Giles-Sims et al., 1995; Goodenough, 1975; Holden et al., 1995; Straus, 2001a; Wauchope & Straus, 1990) also show extremely high rates of spanking toddlers.
A study by Regalado, Sareen, Inkelas, Wissow, and Halfon (2004) of a nationally representative sample focused on infants and toddlers age 4 to 35 months. They asked the mothers whether they spanked often, sometimes, rarely, or never and found that 6% reported spanking infants between the ages of 4 and 9 months, with the rate increasing to 29% of parents with children between 10 and 18 months and 64% of parents of 19- to 35-month-old children. These percentages are also comparable with those reported earlier in this chapter.
The third more recent study is a national survey of parents in Great Britain conducted for a television documentary, I Smack and I'm Proud (Bennett, 2006). It found that 70% of parents smacked their children and would strongly resist any move to ban corporal punishment in the home. The same survey included nonparents who, along with the parents, were asked about approval or disapproval of spanking. This uncovered even greater support for spanking. Eighty percent said that they believed in smacking, while 73% said that they believed a ban would lead to a sharp deterioration in children's behavior.
A fourth recent study (Zolotor, Theodore, Runyan, Chang, & Laskey, 2011) surveyed a probability sample of 1,435 parents of children age 3 to 11 in North and South Carolina. They found that 82% of the parents of children age 3 to 5 had spanked or slapped the child with an open hand that year, 81% had spanked children age 6 to 8, and 64% had spanked children age 9 to 11. Moreover, they also found that 40% of parents of children age 3 to 5 had hit the child with a traditionally accepted object such as a hairbrush or belt. If some of those 40% were added to the percent who spanked or slapped, the rates would probably be about the same as we found in 1995. Zolotor et al. point out that, when they compared their results with those of the Gallup Survey described in this chapter and our 1975 and 1985 national surveys, they found an overall decline in the spanking and slapping of children, but that "for the youngest children, there was little change in corporal punishment" (Zolotor, 2011, p. 60). These statistics cry out for explanation. In decades when the use of spanking has been declining for older children, why do just about all American parents hit toddlers? Chapter 18 suggests a likely explanation.
Finally, a study by Erath, El-Sheikh, Hinnant, and Cummings (2011) of 251 families obtained data on spanking from both the parents and the child. The sample was from three school districts surrounding a small town in the southeastern United States. The children were in second or third grade (mean age was 8.2 years), from two-parent families, and did not have diagnoses of physical illness, attention-deficit or hyperactivity disorder, learning disability, or intellectual disability. Spanking was reported by 95% of the parents and 89% of the children. These rates are even higher than those from our 1995 national survey, perhaps because the sample is from a small city in the south.
Summary and Conclusions
Prevalence, Duration, Chronicity, and Severity of Corporal Punishment
Prevalence and duration. We found that almost all toddlers (over 90%) were hit by parents, and that for more than a third (35%) of children, spanking starts as an infant. This is a lower rate of hitting infants than found by Korsch et al. (1965), which is to be expected because the Korsch study was for a time period when spanking was more prevalent and the parents in her sample were predominantly low in education and income.
Our informal observation suggests that spanking infants is typically a slap on the hand for something such as pushing food off a tray or touching something forbidden. Although this is not a severe form of corporal punishment, the fact that over one third of a nationally representative sample of parents hit infants in any way is a startling and sad characteristic of American patterns of child rearing. Moreover, the 35% should be regarded as a minimum estimate because there is less public approval of spanking infants compared with wide approval of spanking toddlers and, therefore, a greater likelihood of nondisclosure. Even if the folk belief that the risk of psychological harm to an infant from being hit by a parent is less than the risk of psychological harm when older children are hit (which we doubt), spanking of infants poses a greater risk of physical injury for infants.
At age 12, just over half of the parents in this study were using corporal punishment. This can be interpreted as indicating that corporal punishment typically continues for 12 years. It means that, although about one half of parents stop hitting their child by age 12, corporal punishment continues beyond that age for the other half. Further, about one out of five parents of children age 16 and 17 hit them during the year of this study.
Chronicity of corporal punishment. As the chapters in Parts II, III, and IV and Chapter 19 show, at every age, the more often parents use corporal punishment, the greater the probability of subsequent behavior problems such as aggression, antisocial behavior, lower academic achievement, and crime. Because chronicity affects the risk of harmful side effects, it is fortunate that even though spanking toddlers is nearly universal in the United States and many other nations, there are large differences in how often the parents who spank do it. The chronicity estimates for toddlers in this study (for example, 18 times in the past year for 2-year-olds) are, as we noted earlier, almost certainly vast underestimates because the study used a 1-year reporting period. Studies using a 1-week reporting period, such as the chapter on spanking and college graduation rates (Chapter 11) and Giles-Sims et al. (1995), Holden et al. (1995), and Straus and Paschall (2009), find averages of 2 to 3 times a week. If two or three times a week/is multiplied by 52, it suggests a seven times higher level of chronicity. We think the underestimate occurs because spanking is such a taken-for-granted and unremarkable event that many parents do not realize how often they do it.
The same underestimate is much less likely for hitting older children because corporal punishment is not an everyday event at older ages, and when it happens, it is often more dramatic. Among teenagers in this sample, the chronicity ranged from just once that year to 35 times. On average, parents who hit teenagers did so 6.7 times (median= 4). This indicates that when parents hit a teenager, it is not usually, as some might think, an isolated event triggered by some extreme circumstance, but rather a recurring pattern of violence in the relationship of these parents with their child.
Severity. Although most corporal punishment is in the form of slapping hands or buttocks, use of traditionally approved implements such as a hairbrush, paddle, stick, or belt has by no means died out. Among the parents of children, age 5 to 12 in this study, 28% had hit their child with one of these traditionally approved objects in the previous 12 months. As noted earlier, using such implements is still legal in every state, provided there is no injury or, in some states, no mark that lasts more than about a day. At the same time, there is a growing belief that using a belt or paddle on a child's bottom is physical abuse. If use of these implements were illegal, the results of this study would lead one to conclude that, among parents of children in middle childhood, more than one quarter engaged in a criminal assault on their child during the year of this study. In addition, 10% of parents of a 1-year-old child reported shaking the child, which is an act that carries a high risk ofbrain injury for children that young.
Accuracy of estimates. The prevalence rates from this study are extremely high and comparable with other studies. However, the chronicity of spanking is much lower than is shown by studies that asked about spanking in the last week. This is because we ask our parents about the number of times in the past year that they hit toddlers, and parents can't keep track of how many times they spank in a year. On the other hand, for teenage children, our rates may be fairly accurate because those are less frequent and more dramatic events. When something dramatic happens 6 or 7 times in a year (the average for our teenagers), it is more easily remembered. But there may also be pressure to not disclose corporal punishment of older children and toddlers. The cultural norms that allow for, and in many neighborhoods require, parents to use corporal punishment (Carson, 1986; Straus, 200la; Straus & Mathur, 1996; Walsh, 2002) have changed. In 21st-century America, although legal, the use of corporal punishment against teenagers is no longer widely regarded as sometimes necessary, as is still the case with young children (see Chapter 17). Slapping and spanking infants is also not favored. So for infants and teenage children, there are cultural norms that parents may not want to admit violating by disclosing they hit children of those ages, and this may make our numbers lower bound estimates.
Putting it another way, the 1-year recall period used for this study, although it probably provides the best estimate of prevalence, it also results in a large underestimate of how often parents do it (chronicity), especially for toddlers. As suggested previously, at this age, corporal punishment tends to be such an everyday occurrence (almost literally as well as figuratively) that many parents would have to use a calculator to provide a reasonable annual estimate. The fact that many parents do not realize how often they spank was demonstrated in a pioneer study of corporal punishment that found that the frequency of spanking, as recalled during an interview, was only one sixth of the frequency as recorded in a parenting diary (Goodenough, 1975 [1931]). On the other hand, because many toddlers and most older children are not hit every week, the best estimate of prevalence probably requires data for both a 1-week and a 1-year reporting period. However, there is no need to choose the lesser of two undesirable modes of asking about corporal punishment. In designing a new instrument-the Dimensions of Discipline Inventory (Straus & Fauchier, 2011)-we developed new response categories that are sensitive to both events: those that happen only rarely and those that happen frequently.
The budget limitations of the study restricted the interviews to only one parent in each family. If the other parent had been interviewed, the prevalence rate would be higher because there are families where one parent spanks and the other does not. For the more typical situation, where both parents spank, chronicity would have been higher.
Chronicity is less variable. We examined the relation of eight child and family characteristics to spanking. Six out of the eight were found to be significantly related to the prevalence of spanking, but only three of the eight were related to the chronicity of spanking. For example, although more lowsocioeconomic parents used spanked, high-socioeconomic parents who hit their children did it just as often as low-socioeconomic parents who spanked. Moreover, among the three variables that were significantly related to the chronicity of spanking, there seemed to be less difference between categories of those variables than there was for prevalence. Research on why chronicity is relatively constant may lead to important insights about the processes underlying parental use of corporal punishment.
Implications for Parents and Professionals
Although we found differences between different groups of parents, and big differences according to the age of the child, the differences are really about the degree to which spanking is prevalent, not about whether spanking occurs or does not occur. For example, 69% of parents in the South hit their child during the previous 12 months, compared with 53% in the Northeast. It is equally or more important to read this finding as showing that over one half of parents in the low region (the Northeast) hit their child in the previous 12 months. Moreover, that is the average for children of all ages. For toddlers, the rate is 90% in the South and 74% in the Northeast. Thus, almost all children in the South experience violent child rearing, but so do three out of four children in the least viol~nt region of the United States.
The results of the research in this chapter show that spanking is a nearly universal aspect of the way young American children are brought up. The frequency and severity of spanking does decline rapidly with age, and it differs greatly from child-to-child in the severity and duration of their experiences. Despite this, almost all American children have been spanked. Unfortunately, few Americans, including few pediatricians and child psychologists, realize this because the information is not in the textbooks they have read. Even fewer explicitly recommend never spanking, that is, never hitting a child. Perhaps the lack of knowledge about the near-universal nature of hitting children by parents partly explains why so few have been alarmed by the strong evidence that, even when done by loving and supportive parents, it is associated with an increased risk of serious problems later-described in this book-such as increased aggression and crime and lower IQ. However, another part of the explanation for not being concerned about the near universality of spanking in the United States and most other nations may be the widespread belief ( documented in Chapter 17) that spanking is sometimes necessary and the belief that if it is done in moderation by loving parents, it is not harmful (see Chapter 17 and Straus, 2001e).
End or reduce spanking. On the basis of the research in this book, and about 100 other studies (Gershoff, 2002; Straus, 2001a) that have found that spanking is associated with many serious and lifelong problems, we believe that parents should never spank (i.e., never hit children as a method of correcting misbehavior). Although a number of studies used a longitudinal design from which one can infer that spanking is a cause of these problems, even the best of these have limitations. For example, no longitudinal study to date has provided data on children who were never spanked. As a consequence, the empirical evidence indicates only a need to reduce the frequency and severity of spanking. Our belief that children should never be hit represents a plausible extrapolation from the results showing that the more spanking, the greater the probability of behavior problems later in childhood and as an adult. It also reflects our antiviolence values, just as the view that it is sometimes necessary to spank represents the scientifically unproven values and beliefs of those who hold that view.
Fortunately, the issue of reduction versus total elimination of spanking does not need to be resolved for the results in this book to have important implications for parents and clinical practice. This is because the results indicate such a high prevalence and chronicity of spanking. As a consequence, even those who believe that spanking is sometimes necessary are likely to agree on the need for remedial steps. For example, the pro-spanking members of the American Academy ofPediatrics conference on discipline believe that spanking should be confined to children age 2 to 6 and that only the open hand should be used, and even this should be done only rarely (Friedman & Schonberg, 1996b). By contrast, this chapter revealed high prevalence rates for children outside the permissible ages: 35% for infants, 60% for both 1- and 10-yearolds, 44% for 13-year-olds, and 20% for 16- and 17-year-olds. In addition, for 28% of children age 5 to 12, spanking included spanking with a hairbrush, paddle, or belt. Ironically, even though those recommendations accept spanking, achieving them would be a net gain for children and for the society they will grow into.
Make information on spanking available. The extremely high frequency and frequent severity of spanking by parents applies, on average, to both mothers and fathers, to parents of all ages, to both boys and girls, to all ethnic and socioeconomic groups, and to all regions. This needs to be part of the information base of parents, researchers, and clinicians. One obvious way to accomplish this would be an increase in the space devoted to spanking in child development and child psychology textbooks from the present average of less than a page. If that were to occur, we believe the information would be perceived as so inconsistent with the standard of only rarely and only with children age 2 to 6 (Friedman & Schonberg, 1996a), that it will lead many parents to reconsider the extent to which they spank and lead many clinicians to include information about spanking in their assessment and work with clients. Perhaps in the next generation, we will get to never at any age.
The evidence that spanking is an almost universal aspect of American parental behavior (although to widely varying degrees), together with the increasingly conclusive evidence that spanking has harmful side effects, suggests that pediatricians, psychologists, social workers, and others who advise parents should address spanking in their research, clinical work, and books for parents. We recommend determining the extent to which a client uses spanking as a routine procedure and discussing the pros, cons, and alternatives with parents. There are brief and easily used tests that can make routine screening for spanking and other modes of discipline practical, for example, the short form of the Parent-Child Conflict Tactics Scales (Straus & Mattingly, 2007) and the Dimensions of Discipline Inventory (Straus & Fauchier, 2011). Along with the screening, there needs to be unambiguous advice recommending never using a child rearing practice which, when stripped of euphemisms such as "a good spanking" and "a quick swat on the behind" can be seen as a culturally approved system of physical attacks on children.
3 Spanking in World Perspective
The previous chapter showed that in the United States almost all young children experience at least some physical attacks by their parents in the name of discipline. However, the severity, frequency, and duration of this form of violence by parents vary from family to family and depends on the age of the child. This chapter shows that it also depends on the cultural context. It provides information on three questions:
* To what extent does the percent who spank young children differ in 32 nations located in all major world regions?
* To what extent are teenagers in these 32 nations hit to correct misbehavior?
* To what extent are national differences in attiWdes approving spanking linked to actual spanking?
Cross-National Differences in Spanking
We know that parents in almost all parts of the world bring up children violently by spanking (Levinson, 1989; Segall, Ember, & Ember, 1997). Just as there are large differences between parents in how often and how severely they hit their children, there are likely to be large differences between nations in how often and how severely children are typically hit. There is little evidence that has documented where the United States stands in comparison with other nations. This is because different methods have been used to obtain the information on corporal punishment in different nations. Often the information is in the form of case studies and other qualitative data that does not permit direct comparison. Although qualitative studies provide a rich understanding of the phenomenon, they do not provide information that permits comparing nations on the percentage of children who were spanked.
There is quantitative data for a few nations, but it is usually not comparable from one nation to another (Straus, 2010b). In some nations, the figures refer to acts that are considered legally and socially acceptable corporal punishment in the nation in which the data was collected, but would be considered physical abuse in other nations. In other instances, the data lump corporal punishment together with more severe violence by parents. Moreover, the wording of the questions also influences the rates, so what appear to be cross-national differences could actually be due to differences in question wording. However, a growing body of research has dealt with this issue by using a standard set of questions about corporal punishment in several nations. For example, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) conducted studies of child wellbeing in low economic development nations. In some of those nations, questions on corporal punishment from the Parent-Child Conflict Tactics Scales (Straus et al., 1998) were included, and some of the results are in the next chapter. Buss mann (20 11) obtained detailed information on trends in corporal punishment from surveys of parents in five nations in Europe, and those results are described in Chapter 17 on the decline in the use of spanking. A study by Runyan and colleagues also used the Parent-Child Conflict Tactics Scales, in six nations: Brazil, Chile, Egypt, India, Philippines, and the United States (Runyan et al., 2010). They examined parental discipline strategies used by community samples in each nation, for a total of over 14,000 mothers. They found that corporal punishment is usually used more frequently than in the United States. In fact, according to this study, the United States has among the lowest rates of corporal punishment compared with other nations. However, there were individual research sites within each nation that ranked below the averages for their own nation and the United States.
Sample and Measures
The data on spanking in this chapter are for university students in the 32 nations in the International Dating Violence Study. Nations in all major world regions are included in the sample: two nations in sub-Saharan Africa, seven in Asia, thirteen in Europe, four in Latin America, two in the Middle East, two in North America, and two in Oceania. Over 17,000 students participated in the study. A table listing the characteristics of the sample in each nation is in Chan, Straus, Brownridge, Tiwari, and Leung (2008). This table, a detailed description to the study methods, including the questionnaire, and the data itself canbe downloaded from the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research ( dx.doi.org/1 0.3 886/ICPSR29583).
One limitation of the study is that it is based on convenience samples of university students. However, there is evidence that the behavior and beliefs of these students reflects the national context in which the students lived. Analyses of the degree of correspondence between seven concepts as measured by the International Dating Violence Study and as measured by studies using representative samples found correlations that ranged from .43 to -.69 (Straus, 2009b ).
Another limitation of the study is that it included only two questions on spanking. Moreover, the validity of these questions can be questioned because it depends on the degree to which university students can report about what happened when they were children or teenagers. Despite these limitations, the results in Chapter 13, on the relation of spanking to later in life assaulting or injuring a dating partner, provides evidence suggesting that the measure has construct validity. The analysis in Chapter 13 psing these questions found that spanking is associated with an increased probability of physically assaulting a dating or marital partner later in life, even after controlling for a number of other characteristics. This result is consistent with the theory and research evidence that spanking is associated with an increased probability of antisocial and aggressive behavior, shown by:
* A huge volume of research summarized in the meta-analysis by Gershoff (2002, p. 3008)
* The many studies summarized in Chapter 19 on the relation of spanking to crime
* The results in other chapters of this book, such as the longitudinal study, which found that data from mothers about spanking in the last week was associated with a subsequent increase in the child's antisocial behavior (Chapter 6)
How Corporal Punishment Was Measured
Students in the study were asked whether they strongly disagreed, disagreed, agreed, or strongly agreed with the following statements:
* When I was less than 12 years old, I was spanked or hit a lot by my mother or father.
* When I was a teenager, I was hit a lot by my mother or father.
Instead of measuring the percent of students in each nation by the percent who answered agree or strongly agree, we used the percent of students in each nation, who did not strongly disagree. The logic behind this decision was that students who did not strongly disagree had probably experienced at least some spanking. To determine if this was appropriate, we computed the correlation of spanking measured in these two ways with 16 other variables to determine which method of scoring resulted in a stronger correlation. If the not strongly disagree method is wrong, it should have resulted in lower correlations. Instead, for every one of the 16 comparisons, the correlation was larger using the not strongly disagree method of determining the percent of students in each nation who had been spanked or slapped.
How Cultural Norms about Spanking were Measured
The International Dating Violence Study also obtained information on differences in the strength of cultural norms supporting corporal punishment in each of the nations in the study using the following two statements:
* It is sometimes necessary to discipline a child with a good, hard spanking.
* It is sometimes necessary for parents to slap a teen who talks back or is getting into trouble.
These two questions asked the students about their individual attitudes and beliefs, but the results in this chapter are for nations rather than for individual persons. The percentage for each nation is the percent of students who did not strongly disagree with the statement-the higher the percentage who did not strongly disagree, the greater the strength of cultural norms and cultural beliefs about spanking in each national setting.
It is also important to keep in mind that the percentages refer to the experiences and opinions of university students rather than the population in general. This is a limitation, but if it biases the results, it probably biases them toward indicating less support for spanking than for the rest of the population because, as shown in Chapter 2 on the prevalence of spanking in the United States and other studies in the United States, and Chapter 18 on trends in approval of spanking, more educated people tend to be less approving of spanking and are less likely to actually spank. Another limitation is that the questions on experiencing corporal punishment refer to being spanked or hit a lot by parents. This probably leads to an underestimate of the prevalence of spanking because it omits those who were spanked or hit by parents, but not a lot, and it omits those who were hit a lot as toddlers (the peak age for spanking in the United States) but is not remembered. It also introduces ambiguity in the data because we do not kbow what the stude11ts had in mind by "a lot."
Spanking Worldwide
Spanking as a Child
The first row in the column headed Total in Table 3.1 gives the median percent for all 32 national settings. After that, listed in rank order is the percent of students in each nation who were spanked or hit a lot before they were 12 years old. The highest percent was in Taiwan, where three out of four students reported that they were spanked or hit a lot before age 12. At the bottom of the list is the Netherlands, where 15% reported being hit a lot before age 12. Halfway down· the list, the bold 53.4 indicates that at the middle ranking (median) nation, over half of the students indicated that they had been spanked or hit a lot as a child. Thus, corporal punishment varied tremendously among the nations in this study.
The next two columns in Table 3.1 show the percent of boys and girls who reported being hit a lot, and the final column shows the ratio of girls to boys in being hit a lot. This final column shows that in 30 of the 32 nations in the study, a somewhat smaller percent of girls than boys were hit as a child. Taking the median of the 32 nations, the percent of girls hit a lot was 95% of the percent for boys-that is, girls were hit a lot as a child almost as much as boys. This is consistent with the results for the nationally representative sample of American children in the previous chapter and with many other studies of corporal punishment (Giles-Sims et al., 1995) that also found that more boys than girls are hit by parents, but only by a small difference.
Table 3.1 Percent Who Agree* That "When I Was Less Than 12 Years Old, I Was Spanked or Hit a Lot by My Mother or Father"
Spanking as a Teenager
The first row of Table 3.2 shows that taking all32 nations into consideration, about a third of these students were hit a lot when they were teenagers. Of course, there were important differences between nations. The Netherlands was again lowest (1 0% ). Tanzania was highest (71% ).
Table3.2 Percent Who Agree* That "When I Was a Teenager, I Was Hit a Lot by My Mother or Father"
The columns in Table 3.2 for boys and girls show that parents hit a larger percentage of boys than girls when they were teenagers. The median of the 32 nations in the first row shows that the percent of girls hit a lot as teenagers was 75% of the percent for boys hit a lot as teenagers. This is a larger difference between boys and girls than was found for hitting children under 12 a lot. Thus, the more violent child rearing experienced by boys is greatest in the teenage years.
Support for Spanking Worldwide
What could account for the fact that so many parents in so many different societies spank? One of the reasons is that there are cultural norms that define spanking as something that is correct or necessary to bring up children properly. This section examines the extent to which such norms exist in the diverse cultural settings included in the International Dating Violence Study. The section that follows tests the hypothesis that the stronger the belief in the necessity of spanking among university students, the more students who have been spanked or slapped.
Table 3.3 shows the 32 nations in rank order for believing that spanking is necessary, starting with the national setting with the most students who believed that corporal punishment is necessary. The three top nations, South Korea, Singapore, and India, are all Asian, and in all three nations, at least 90% of the students we surveyed believed that spanking is sometimes necessary. The average for students in these 32 nations was 71%, i.e., nearly three quarters of the students thought that spanking was necessary.
The worldwide belief in the necessity of spanking is shown by the fact that, in 29 of the 32 nations, more than one half of the students thought that spanking a child under 12 was sometimes necessary. Even in the national setting with the lowest percent who believed that spanking is necessary, the rate was 31%.
The far right column of Table 3.3 shows that in most of the nations, more male than female students believed that spanking is necessary. However, in most nations, the differences are not large. Thus, in general, there was strong support for spanking by women as well as men.
Table 3.4 ranks the national settings according to the percentage who approved of parents hitting a teenager. The results are not quite what was expected. Because Table 3.2 in this chapter and the results in Chapter 2 on the use of spanking in the United States show that a much smaller percent of teenagers are hit than younger children, we expected the percentage of students in each national setting who approved of hitting a teenager to be lower than the percent who approved of hitting a younger child. But Table 3.4 shows the percentage of students who approve of hitting a teenager is as high or higher. Even in the national setting that is least approving, nearly one half(43%) ofthe students thought it was sometimes necessary to hit a teenager who talked back or was in trouble.
A possible explanation is that the question about teenagers refers to a teenager "who talks back or is getting into trouble." This may provide a socially acceptable justification that could have led more students to think it is necessary. As was true of the approval of hitting younger children, despite the percentages being lower for women, very high percentages of female students approved of hitting a teenager.
Table 3.3 Percent Who Agree* that "It Is Sometimes Necessary to Discipline a Child with a Good, Hard Spanking"
Table 3.4 Percent Who Agree* that "It Is Sometimes Necessary for Parents to Slap a Teenager Who Talks Back or Is Getting into Trouble"
The Experience of Spanking and Approval of Spanking
Children dislike being hit and dislike their parents for doing it (see Chapters 7 and 8 and Straus, 2001a, p. 154; Willow & Hyder, 1998). This might lead one to think that children who were hit a lot by their parents are likely to grow up being opposed to spanking because they know firsthand that it is something they resented or even hated. Most, but not all of the research, however, shows the opposite. It shows that the more spanking a child experiences, the more likely a child is to endorse spanking and actually spank (Deater-Deckard, Lansford, Dodge, Pettit, & Bates, 2003; Graziano, Lindquist, Kunce, & Munjal, 1992). The International Dating Violence Study provided a way of investigating whether this link between experiencing spanking and favoring spanking is present in social contexts other than North America. The International Dating Violence Study allows this issue to be examined at both the individual level using the students in the study as the cases and also at the societal level using the 32 nations as the cases. The individual level data will tell us about the relationship between experiencing spanking as a child and later approval, whereas the socie~al-level analysis will tell us about the link between cultural norms that define spanking as necessary and the actual use of spanking.
Individual Experience with Spanking and AUitudes toward Spanking
Chart 3.1 shows that having been spanked as a child is associated with believing that spanking is necessary. That is, the more a student reports being spanked or hit a lot as a child, the more they agree that it is sometimes necessary to spank. This relationship exists even after controlling for the student's gender and age, and the tendency to avoid disclosing undesirable behavior as measured by the Limited Disclosure Scale of the Personal and Relationships Profile (Chan & Straus, 2008; Straus, Hamby, Boney-McCoy, & Sugarman, 2010; Straus & Mouradian, 1999).
The relationship applies to both male and female students but is stronger for the male students in this study. However, the students who experienced the most spanking (e.g., strongly agree) were slightly less approving of spanking than students who experienced one lower degree of spanking. Thus, at least for this sample, once spanking becomes very frequent or very harsh, that approval rates start to decline.
We also examined the relationship between being hit a lot as a teenager and agreeing that it was sometimes necessary to slap a teenager, and found a similar relationship. These results are consistent with the theory that being hit by parents, rather than turning children against spanking, predisposes them to approving this behavior. The modeling effect seems to override the pain of the experience. In other words, individuals, who as children experience violence at the hands of their caregivers, are likely to believe such violence is necessary to raise children and, hence, probably more likely to use violence as a child rearing tactic. However, very few people think of spanking by parents as violence and would, therefore, not agree that these results show that spanking teaches violence. From that perspective, the real question is whether people who favor spanking are also more favorable to less socially legitimate forms of violence as a husband slapping his wife. Does approval of spanking go hand-in-hand with thinking that there are occasions when it is acceptable to slap a partner and actually hitting a partner? These are issues that are addressed in the chapters on the approval of violence and spanking (Chapter 5); the link between spanking and partner violence (Chapters 12 and 13); spanking, crime, and ethnicity (Chapter 14); and the implications of spanking, crime, and violence (Chapter 19).
Chart 3.1 The More Spanking as a Child, the More Approval of Spanking as an Adult.
Cultural Norms Approving Spanking and the Use of Spanking
The questions about approval of spanking and slapping children and teenagers provide information on the attitudes of individual students. By computing the percentage of students in each national setting who approve of spanking, these questions also provide information about cultural norms concerning spanking in each nation. This let us investigate the extent to which cultural norms about spanking are related to the actual spanking. Chart 3.2 was computed for this purpose. It shows that the larger the percentage of students in a nation who were spanked, the more students who approved of corporal punishment. A similar relationship was found between being hit a lot as a teenager and agreeing that it is sometimes necessary for parents to slap a teenager.
Chart 3.2 The Stronger the Belief in a Nation that Spanking Is Necessary, the Larger the Percent of Students Who Were Spanked
AUS Australia; BEL Belgium; BRA Brazil; CAN Canada; CHE Switzerland; CHN China; DEU Germany; GBR Great Britain; GRC Greece; GTM Guatemala; HKG Hong Kong; HUN Hungary; IND India; IRN Iran; ISR Israel; JPN Japan; KOR South Korea; LTU Lithuania; MEX Mexico; MLT Malta; NLD Netherlands; NZL New Zealand; PRT Portugal; ROU Romania; RUS Russia; SGP Singapore; SWE Sweden; TWN Taiwan; TZA Tanzania; USA United States; VEN Venezuela; ZAF South Africa
Summary and Conclusions
There are large differences in national settings and within nations in the extent to which parents hit children and to which there are cultural norms that approve of parents hitting children. However, in 27 of the 32 national settings studied, more than 20% of the students surveyed were spanked or hit a lot before they were 12 years old, and in 31 of the 32 nations, more than 10% were hit a lot as teenagers. In the middle ranking national setting, more than one half of the students were hit a lot as a child and more than one quarter were hit a lot as teenagers. It is important to keep in mind that these statistics do not refer to occasionally being hit, hutto being hit a lot by parents. Moreover, because most people cannot remember much about what happened when they were toddlers, we could not ask about preschool-age children, which is when children are most likely to be hit by parents (see Chapter 2). But even without that data, it is clear that university students around the world were brought up violently.
In respect to attitudes and cultural norms, the fact that, in the middle ranking nation, nearly three out of four students believed that it is sometimes necessary to discipline a child with a good, hard spanking and that it is sometimes necessary for parents to slap a teen who talks back or is getting into trouble, indicates the presence of cultural norms that permit, and in many circumstances require, parents to hit children. The violent child rearing actually experienced by these students is consistent with the cultural norms of the societies in this study.
Chart 3.2 clearly shows that there is a link between cultural norms that assert the necessity of sometimes hitting children and actually hitting children and teenagers a lot. However, that chart does not provide evidence on which, if either, is cause and which is effect. There are at least three possible explanations. A cultural explanation argues that the norms are part of the reason so many children are hit a lot. A social-organizational explanation argues that a society where parents hit children a lot will develop social norms specifying that hitting a child who misbehaves is necessary. A social-context explanation argues that a society with a high level of violence between adults will be a society in which the violence spills over to the definition of appropriate parental and actual parent behavior to include hitting children. It is likely that all three ofthese processes take place.
Anthropologists who have studied violent and nonviolent societies agree that the presence of cultural beliefs and norms that support or require violence is part of the explanation for society-to-society differences in all forms of violence, including spanking (Montague, 1978; Segall, Ember, & Ember, 1997). The experience of the students in the International Dating Violence Study graphed in Chart 3.2 is consistent with that conclusion. It shows that nations where there is a high level of approval of spanking are also nations in which children are hit a lot. Runyan and colleagues (2010) found a similar relationship for six nations. Thus, as will be explained in the chapter on why almost all parents resort to spanking (Chapter 18), one of the steps needed to reduce the level of societal violence is to change those norms.
Changing cultural norms is not as difficult as might, at first, be imagined. In fact, cultural norms are constantly changing, especially in modem societies. Often they change in response to shifts in the organization of society. There are also many examples of successful efforts to change norms. The feminist movement, for example, has been able to change the legal system and the informal cultural norms that tolerated men hitting their wives. It is no longer a behavior that is regarded as just a family problem. It is now regarded as outrageous and intolerable, and as a crime calling for arrest and prosecution (Smithey & Straus, 2004). That change in norms, in tum, is part of the explanation for the decrease in violence against women in the United States (Smithey & Straus, 2004; Straus, 1995b; Straus & Gelles, 1986). The same thing is happening in respect to parents hitting children. Sweden, the first nation to prohibit corporal punishment by parents, has gone from a nation in which, like the United States, just about all parents hit children (Stattin et al., 1995) to one in which spanking is rare. Consistent with that, the Swedish students in this study have the_ lowest percentage of students who believe that spanking is sometimes necessary. In the United States, Chapter 17 shows that cultural support for the idea that spanking is necessary has dropped substantially in about a generation. Consistent with the change in norms, Chapter 17 also shows that fewer American parents are hitting children for purposes of correction and control, although the change is minimal for toddlers.
4 There Was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe
Like other aspects of parent behavior, spanking has multiple determinants. The cultural determinants were shown by the results in the previous chapter that suggest that one determinant of whether parents spank is the degree to which the society has cultural beliefs and norms that accept or require spanking children who misbehave. The next chapter shows that those who approve of violence in other spheres of life are more likely to approve of spanking and to spank. There are many other causes. From a psychological perspective, other determinants are such characteristics as depression (Silverstein, Augustyn, Young, & Zuckerman, 2009) and the degree to which the parent's worldview is characterized by anger and resentment (Tsang, 1995). Kim, Pears, Fisher, Connelly, and Landsverk (2010) found that maternal alcohol abuse and maternal age were related to their measure of harsh parenting, which included spanking.
There are also social organizational differences related to spanking, such as social class, race or ethnicity, neighborhood, and kinship networks. Some of these were shown in Chapter 2 on the prevalence of spanking in the United States, and they will come up in other chapters. Moreover, cultural norms expecting parents to spank a misbehaving child are more likely to be followed if the parent is part of a social network that believes that a good hard spanking is sometimes necessary (see Chapter 17 and Walsh, 2002).
The class structure of society is an important aspect of social organization that can influence whether and how often a parent will spank. But important as knowing about class difference is, that is not sufficient. It is also necessary to understand why low socioeconomic status parents spank more. Is it a difference in cultural norms or is it the stress of dealing with children in crowded households with minimal other resources, or both? This chapter addresses one aspect of that question and the following specific questions:
* Are parents with more children more likely to spank?
* If parents with more children spank more, is this because those with more children tend be lower in socioeconomic status?
Nancy L. Asdigian is the coauthor of this chapter
* Can the inconsistency between previous studies of the number of children and spanking be resolved by taking into account methodological differences between the studies?
Family and Child Characteristics Associated with Spanking
Although spanking is a pervasive child rearing technique, as we reported in Chapter 2 on the use of corporal punishment in the United States, the frequency and duration differ a great deal from family to family. These differences are partially explained by certain parental and child characteristics, such as whether the parent is dealing with a difficult child. Analyses of large representative samples (see Chapter 2 and Giles-Sims et al., 1995; Molnar, Buka, Brennan, Holton, & Earls, 2003; Straus, 2001b) reveal that spanking is more likely to occur under a number of social circumstances and social roles, including lower social classes, mothers more than fathers, younger parents, and parents who were corporally punished as adolescents. As pointed out in the previous chapter, pare9-ts who are violent to each other are more likely to spank. In a previous study, we found that this is probably a bidirectional relationship. Parents who hit eaph other are more likely to hit their children and hitting children provides role practice in using violence to correct misbehavior that can spillover to correcting the misbehavior of the other parent (Straus, 2001a, p. 105). Moreover, boys are somewhat more likely than girls to be corporally punished. Additional examples show that spanking reflects much more than the level of misbehavior by a child.
For example, a Swedish study found higher rates of spanking by single parents (Annerback, Wingren, Svedin, & Gustafsson, 2010), as did the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (Molnar et al., 2003), especially among low-education mothers (Heckman, 2008). The higher rate of spanking by single parents was also found for the single parents in the national sample described in the chapter on spanking in the United States (Chapter 2) and in the International Parenting Study. One can think of this as indicating the effect of the ratio of the amount of parental resources (number of parents) to the amount of parenting (number of children). If one less parent can mean more spanking, so can one or two additional children with the same number of parents. As a consequence, it is not implausible to expect that there is some truth to the nursery rhyme that identifies the number of children as one of the social organizational factors associated with more spanking.
This chapter considers a simple but fundamental aspect of family social organization: the number of children in the family. The relatively small attention to the effect of the number of children on spanking is somewhat surprising given its recognition in the Mother Goose nursery rhyme, "There was an old woman who lived in a shoe. She had so many children she didn't know what to do. She gave them some broth without any bread and whipped them all soundly and put them to bed."
Number of Children and Spanking
There are several reasons to expect spanking to be niore common in larger families. As the number of children in a family increases, parents have less time and energy to monitor, explain, and reason with each child and may therefore use spanking as a quick form of behavioral control. In addition, larger families place more emotional and economic burdens on parents. Parents have to devote more time to child care and may also have to spend more time working outside the home to meet the economic needs of more children. These commitments detract from the time that parents have to spend in pleasurable, stress-relieving activities with children. More children take more time and, therefore, may diminish the size and quality of personal support networks and also the quality of the marital relationship itself. Increased stress, combined with reduced social support from the marital relationship, might give rise to anger and resentment, which may in tum manifest itself in the form of punitive discipline strategies such as corporal punishment. Thus, we hypothesize that the larger the number of children, the greater the use of corporal punishment.
Previous Studies
Number of Children and Spanking
One early investigation, Elder and Bowerman (1963) found that girls from lower class families, with four or more siblings, were twice as likely as their counterparts, with only one or two siblings, to report being corporally punished by mothers or fathers. However, for girls from middle class backgrounds or for boys of any social class, the number of children was not related to corporal punishment. Using data from a large community survey, Nye, Carlson, and Gerrett (1970) found that the more children, the more spanking was used by both mothers and fathers. They also found that the more children, the less parents used discussion and explanation as a discipline strategy. Kidwell (1981) found that the number of children was related to adolescents' ratings of parental punitiveness (which included questions about actual spanking), even after controlling for the effects of family socioeconomic status, race, parental structure, and sibling spacing. A 10-year longitudinal study by Dubowitz et al. (2011) found that, among a sample of high-risk families, each additional child was associated with a 26% increase in the odds of the child being maltreated. The results of three other studies are also consistent with the Mother Goose rhyme (De Zoysa, 2005; Eamon, 2001; Xu, Tung, & Dunaway, 2000). However, there is also contradictory evidence. However, as mentioned previously, Elder and Bowerman (1963) found no relationship for middle class girls. Straus and colleagues' (2006) analysis of a large nationally representative sample of American children found somewhat more spanking among two-child than among one-child families, but no increase in spanking with additional children. Thus, the evidence on this seemingly plausible hypothesis is not entirely consistent. Because the issue of the extent to which the use of spanking grows out of factors other than the level of misbehavior of a child is so important, both for theories about why spanking occurs and for prevention efforts, there is a need for additional evidence.
Number of Children and Other Parent Behaviors
Despite the not entirely consistent evidence from studies just reviewed, the case for expecting the number of children in a family to be linked to more corporal punishment is strengthened by the results of two bodies of research on parent behavior that is consistent with the hypothesis that having more children is associated with more hitting of children.
Parent-child relationship quality. With only a few exceptions (Philliber & Graham, 1981; Richardson, Abramowitz, Asp, & Petersen, 1986), studies that examined the relationship between the number of children and the quality of parent-child relationships indicate that parents with more children engage in more authoritarian and controlling behavior. Zussman (1978), for example, found that the larger the family, the greater the tendency for parents to use power assertion techniques (physical or material sanctions, including spanking) 'to deal with typical childhood transgressions of boys. Peterson and Kunz (1975) also found that ratings of parental control were two to three times as high among middle class adolescents with six or more siblings compared with those from single-child families. In addition, Scheck and Emerick (1976) found that a larger number of children was significantly associated with less parental support, stricter disciplinary practices, and more conflicted parent-child relations, even after controlling for differences in socioeconomic status.
Number of children and maltreatment. Support for the hypothesis that'the more children, the greater the likelihood of corporal punishment is also suggested by research on physical abuse. Studies by Zuravin (1988a, 1988b, 1991; Zuravin & Greif, 1989) and Connelly (1992) found that the more children in a family, the greater the probability of physical abuse.
Confounding with Age and Birth Order
One reason for the inconsistent fmdings on the number of children and corporal punishment may be that the studies did not control for the inherent confounding of the number of children with the child's age and birth order. The confounding occurs because, (except for multiple births) as the number of children increases, their average age must also increase. The average age is important because, as shown in Chapter 2 on spanking in the United States, the use of corporal punishment decreases rapidly as children grow older. With experience, parents may also be less inclined to strike their later-born children relative to earlier-born children. Without statistically controlling for age and birth order, children from larger families may appear to be at a lower risk for corporal punishment because they are more likely to be older or later born. Thus, the failure to control for age and birth order could obscure the association between the number of children and corporal punishment. Our analyses therefore controlled for both age and birth order.
Sample and Measures
Sample
The data for this chapter were obtained from the 1985 National Family Violence Survey (Gelles & Straus, 1988; Straus, 2001a; Straus & Gelles, 1986). Because the focus of the chapter is spanking, the analys.es included only the 3,360 respondents who had one or more minor children living at home at the time of the survey. Information on one child was gathered from each household with children. If there was more than one child, a procedure was used to randomly select the child about which to gather information.
The Minor Violence scale of the original Conflict Tactics Scales (Straus, 1979) was used to obtain the information about spanking by the parent during the 12 months prior to the interview.
Number of Children and Spanking
Our first look at whether parents with more children were more likely to use corporal punishment found that parents with two children were more likely to hit them than parents with just one child. Of those who did use corporal punishment, the parents with two children also hit more often than parents with just one child. However, contrary to the hypothesis, neither the percentage who hit nor the frequency with which they did it went up with additional children beyond two. This is the same pattern we found years before (Straus et al., 2006). This time however, as explained above, we realized that children in larger families were more likely than those in smaller families to be later born and older and therefore less likely to have experienced corporal punishment during the year of the survey. In addition, the parents with more children were on average, older and lower in socioeconomic status. Because corporal punishment tends to be more common among young, lower socioeconomic parents, the effects of the number of children per se can only emerge after disentangling the overlap with the age of the child, birth order, and the age and socioeconomic of the parents. We did this using analysis of covariance (see the section of the Appendix for Chapter 4)
Prevalence of corporal punishment. There are two plot lines in Chart 4.1. The dashed line shows that, as previously mentioned, when no controls are used, having more than two children is not associated with more corporal punishment. However, the solid line in Chart 4.1 shows that, after taking into account the age of the child and other family characteristics, the more children, the greater the percent of parents who used corporal punishment.
Chart 4.1 The More Children, the More That Parents Spank
* Adjusted for parent and child age, birth order, and socioeconomic status.
Chronicity of corporal punishment. The results for chronicity of corporal punishment (the number of times the parents who use corporal punishment do so) are similar to those for prevalence. The dashed line in Chart 4.2 shows an increase in the chronicity of corporal punishment as the number of children in the family increased from one to three, followed by a decrease from three to four or more children. However, the solid line in Chart 4.2 shows that when the effects of other variables were controlled, scores on the chronicity scale increased up to three children and then leveled off in families with four or more children.
Summary and Conclusions
The.results of this study of a nationally representative sample of U.S. par~ ents found that as the number of children in the family increased from one to four or more, the percentage of parents using corporal punishment increased. Among the parents who used corporal punishment, those with more children also hit more frequently. Both the percentage hitting and the number of times the parents in this sample did it, support the hypothesis that the more children in a family, the more likely parents are to use corporal punishment. This pattern was discernible, however, only after using statistical controls to take into account the fact that children in larger families have to be older, later born, and have older parents. All three of these are characteristics associated with less use of corporal punishment and thus obscure the tendency for more children in a family to mean more corporal punishment.
These results suggest that the decrease in the number of children per family was probably one of the factors that contributed to the decline in the use of corporal punishment shown in Chapter 17. Also, the tendency for more children to be linked to more corporal punishment illustrates the way changes in family structure can reduce or increase the level of violence used to bring up children. Our concluding chapter suggests that the trend away from violent child rearing is likely to continue and even accelerate and identifies many processes that are driving this change, including fewer children per family.
The link between the number of children and corporal punishment is also theoretically important because it suggests that more corporal punishment may be one of the processes that explain why only-children tend to have a higher IQ after controlling for the socioeconomic status of the parents, and average IQ declines with the increasing number of siblings (Blake, 2011 ). The chapters in this book provide evidence that the adverse side effects of spanking, including lower mental ability (Chapter 10) delinquency, and adult crime (the chapters in Parts II and IV and Chapter 19). That is, a large number of children can lead to more use of corporal punishment, slower cognitive development, and more delinquency and crime. The concluding section of Chapter 1 on Risk Factors: The Real Meaning of Social Science Results explains how this can be true, whereas at the same time, millions of people can say that "I was spanked a lot and I graduated from college and never committed a crime."
In view of the evidence in this book and elsewhere showing that corporal punishment is linked to a wide variety of undesirable outcomes for children, the finding that more children is associated with an increased probability of the children being spanked indicates that larger families increase the risk to children, and that this is something few people perceive. Parents need to know that additional children are associated with an increased likelihood of engaging in a mode of child rearing that, in principle, is opposed by more and more parents and professionals (see Chapters 17 and 20). Moreover, this information may be especially important because we found that parents who believe that corporal punishment is not an appropriate method of discipline are less likely to use corp\)ral punishment. For toddlers, however, for the reasons explained in the chapter on why parents tends to resort to spanking (Chapter 18), not believing in corporal punishment made little difference in spanking (Straus, 2001 a, Chart 4-1 ). But perhaps if the increased risk of harmful effects were known to parents of toddlers, they would spank less.
Another theoretical contribution of this chapter is that it provides additional evidence that the causes of corporal punishment include the social organization and position of the family in society, not just the level of misbehavior of the child and the personality and child rearing skills of the parents. These social causes include the age of the parent, single- versus two-parent households, the level of violence in the neighborhood (Winstok & Straus, 2011 b), and cultural norms that permit or require parents to use corporal punishment as shown in the chapters on the approval of violence and spanking (Chapter 5), spanking and partner violence throughout the world (Chapter 13), and why parents resort to spanking (Chapter18 and in Taylor, Hamvas, & Paris, 2011).
Coping with a first child is often seen as the most stressful part of parenthood, and parent educators and pediatricians haye traditionally tended to emphasize helping parents deal with their first child, as exemplified by the What to Expect series and the ''just-in-time" newsletters that provide month-by-month information about infant and child development. Although helping parents deal with a first child is very important, the results of this study indicate that the need to help parents avoid corporal punishment may be even greater with subsequent children.
5 Approval of Violence and Spanking
As we pointed out in Chapter 2 on the prevalence of spanking in the United States, for spanking to be legally permissible, it must be for purposes of correction and control. That is, the right of parents to hit children applies only when it is for purposes of correcting misbehavior. Consistent with this, very few parents just spank a child out of the blue and for no good reason. But what is a good reason for hitting a child? The answer depends on the cultural setting and the historical era. A good reason that was common earlier in American history was to "drive out the devil" because he was believed to possess children at birth (Miller & Swanson, 1958). The religious basis for beating the devil out of them has almost ceased to exist except among some fundamentalist Protestants; however, it persists in the idea of a willful child.
Although there is abundant evidence that parents' decision to spank depends on the type and severity of children's misbehavior (Dix & Grusec, 1985; Dix, Ruble, & Zambarano, 1989; Grusec, Dix, & Mills, 1982; MacKinnon-Lewis et al., 1994; Nix et al., 1999), the same misbehavior in one family will lead to a spanking, but not in another. Some parents spank frequently, some rarely, and a few not at all. There are many reasons for the difference as shown in the two previous chapters. For example, young parents and parents with more children are more likely to hit. The many other causes of spanking, other than misbehavior by the child, is one ofthe reasons the correlation between misbehavior and spanking are typically between about .20 and .35. Correlations that size are more than enough to be confident that one of the reasons parents spank is to correct misbehavior, but not large enough to allow researchers and educators to ignore other causes. A correlation of .30, for example, when squared to obtain the coefficient of determination, shows that only 9% of the differences between parents in the use of spanking is attributable to differences in the misbehavior of their children. If spanking were the only cause or the main cause, the correlation between misbehavior and spanking would have to be much higher. A study of a nationally representative sample of mothers in Israel (Winstok & Straus, 2011 b) found that the Julie H. Stewart is the coauthor of this chapter. mothers' approval of spanking explained 2.5 times more of the differences between mothers in the use of spanking than was explained by misbehavior of the child.
Although it may be obvious that more than the child's misbehavior determines who spanks, professionals advising parents and researchers have not paid sufficient attention to this obvious fact. Efforts to end spanking are primarily focused on alternatives to spanking. Providing parents with alternatives is very important, but it is not sufficient. This is because many things other than misbehavior by the child lead to spanking. We do not know enough about why some parents spank when others do not. A few social scientists have gone beyond the belief that spanking is only a response to children's misbehavior and investigated the other social and psychological causes of spanking, mostly in the form of examining the effects of demographic variables such as age, gender, race, and education of the parents.
Because spanking is so prevalent and, as shown in this book, has so many harmful side effects, it is important to investigate other potential influences, in addition to demographic factors, to further understand why parents spank and how often they do it. There are many possibilities. This chapter is a step in that direction. It examines the relation of attitudes approving violence and the cultural norms underlying those attitudes. This book is based on the assumption that spanking is a form of violence. This chapter provides empirical data on that issue. It presents the results of our analysis of a nationally representative sample ofU.S. parents on the following questions:
* To what extent is approval of violence and actual violence in other aspects of life associated with more approval of spanking?
* To what extent is more approval of violence and actual violence in other aspects of life associated with an increased probability of parents spanking?
In addition, we present data from three other studies to determine if the following are related to an increased probability of approving of or using spanking:
* Approval of torture of suspected terrorists
* Living in a state with a high rate of homicide
* Living in a nation where a high percent of women think it is appropriate for a husband to hit his wife under certain circumstances
Is Approving Violence One of the Reasons Parents Spank?
Many people we talk to about spanking are repelled, and even angered, by the idea that approving violence has anything to do with whether parents spank their children. They may indignantly proclaim "I spank my kids once in a while when nothing else works, but I don't believe in violence and I'm not in favor of violence and I'm not violent." Americans believe they are a peaceful and nonviolent nation. As a consequence, the United States has supported a great deal of research through government and private foundation funds to understand and ultimately prevent violence. However, because of the culturally established acceptance of the necessity and acceptability of sometimes spanking, spanking is rarely considered an act of violence, and research that could end spanking is not seen as research that could help end violence.
The idea that spanking is one of the roots of adult violence is not new. In 1941 the distinguished anthropologist Ashley Montague wrote an essay "Spanking the baby may be the psychological seed of war" (Montague, 1941). Investigating that issue is only now starting to seem credible. As just noted, few Americans perceive spanking as violence. This may be one of the reasons why, despite much research on violence, there has been little on understanding the links between spanking and other forms of violence, and why some scholars reject the evidence that does exist (Baumrind, Larzelere, & Cowan, 2002; Larzelere, Cox, & Smith, 2010; Parke, 2002). Even those who do not reject the evidence are doubtful. This may be one of the reasons why, as shown in Chapter 1, child development textbooks devote little or no space to the results of research showing that spanking is associated with an increased probability of the child being physically aggressive and, later in life, having social and psychological problems such as depression and crime.
The main focus of this chapter is whether one of the root causes of spanking is approval of violence and a propensity toward violence on the part of parents. At least one study found that among college students, the greater an individual's approval of war, of violence to control prison inmates, and of violence between dating and marital partners-the greater their approval of spanking tends to be (Anderson, Benjamin, Wood, & Bonacci, 2006). This study is particularly interesting because the types of violence included in the study, and the wording of the specific questions used, often involve the perception that one party has misbehaved. Thus, it provides examples of using violence to correct misbehavior, regardless of whether that misbehavior is a child throwing food, a spouse who flirts with someone, or a country that does not respect international borders.
There is reason to believe that both approval of violence and a propensity toward violence increases the approval of spanking and may be one of the root causes of parents hitting children. The research described in this chapter, therefore, tested the following two hypotheses:
* 1. Parents who approve violence by children are more likely to also approve spanking by parents.
* 2. Parents who approve violence by children are more likely to actually spank.
If the results confirm the hypotheses, that parents who approve of other types of violence (in this case violence by children in the form offistfights) are more likely to approve of spanking and more likely to actually spank than other parents, it suggests that the approval of hitting children is partly a manifestation of a more general approval of violence for socially desirable ends. It also suggests another reason why helping parents avoid hitting children requires more than teaching nonviolent modes of correcting misbehavior.
Sample and Measures
The data for the main part of this chapter were obtained by interviews with a nationally representative sample of 986 parents that was conducted for us in 1995 by the Gallup Organization. Information on the method of sampling and the characteristics of the sample is in Chapter 2. We were able to supplement the results with analyses of data from four other studies. These are described in the sections on the results from those studies.
The following variables were analyzed for the main part of this chapter.
Approval of violence. Approval of violence was measured by a question first used by the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence (Baker & Ball, 1969; Owens & Straus, 1975). We asked the parents about the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with the statement that "When a boy is grdwing up, it is important for him to have a few fistfights."
Attitudes approving spanking. Attitudes approving spanking were assessed by asking the parents the extent to which they agreed with three questions:
* (1) "It is sometimes necessary to discipline a child with a good, hard spanking,"
* (2) "It is OK for parents to slap their teenage children who talk back to them,"
* and (3) "Parents who spare the rod, spoil the child."
Spanking. Spanking in the previous 12 months was measured by the ParentChild Conflict Tactics Scales (Straus et al., 1998) and also used for Chapter 2.
The analysis of the relationship between violent attitudes and spanking took into account five other variables that are known to be associated with spanking: the age of the parent and child, gender of the parent, the racial and ethnic group of the child, and region of the country.
Relation of Approval of Violence to Approval of Spanking
Percent Who Approve Violence and Spanking
To identify parents who approved of violence, we asked the parents whether they agreed or disagreed that "It is important for boys to have a few fistfights." Seventeen percent of the parents strongly disagreed, 62% disagreed, 20% agreed, and 1% strongly agreed. Because only 1% strongly agreed, we combined them with those who chose the agree response and, from here on, used three categories: strongly disagreed, disagreed, and agreed.
The questions on the approval of spanking showed that 50% agreed that "A good hard spanking is sometimes necessary," 19% agreed that "It is okay to slap a teenager who talks back," and 40% agreed that "sparing the rod means spoiling the child" (see Appendix Table A4.1 for details).
Charts 5.1, 5.2, and 5.3 show that the more the parents in this sample approved of boys fist fighting, the more likely they were to approve of spanking. The specific results in each chart are:
* Chart 5.1 shows that only a small percent of parents who disagreed that boys need to get in fistfights believed that a good, hard spanking was sometimes necessary; but among parents who agreed that when a boy is growing up, it is important for him to have a few fistfights, 80% believed that a good, hard spanking is sometimes necessary.
* Chart 5.2 shows that the more a parent approves of boys getting into fistfights, the more likely they are to believe it is OK to slap a teenager who talks back.
* Chart 5.3 shows that parents, who believe that when a boy is growing up, it is important for him to have a few fistfights, are 2 times more likely than other parents to agree that sparing the rod spoils the child.
The results in these three charts show that parents who approve of violence have much higher rates of approving of spanking than other parents, but that does not answer the question of whether parents who believe that fistfights are good for boys actually hit their children more.
Chart 5.1 Parents Who Believe Fighting Is _Good for Boys Are More Likely to Believe Spanking Is Sometimes Necessary
Chart 5.2 Parents Who Believe Fist Fighting Is Good for Boys Are More Likely to Believe It's OK for Parents to Slap Teenagers
Chart 5.3 Parents Who Believe Fist Fighting Is Good for Boys Are More Likely to Agree with "Spare the Rod, Spoil the Child"
Chart 5.4 Parents Who Believe Fist Fighting Is Good for Boys Are More Likely to Spank
Chart 5.4 provides that information. It shows that the more a parent approves of violence (as measured by believing that it is good for boys to get into a few fistfights ), the more likely the parent is to use spanking. Eighty percent of the parents, who agree that it is important for boys to fight, spanked, compared with only about one half that percentage of parents who disapprove of boys fighting.
Other Child and Family Characteristics Related to the Approval of Spanking
The idea that parents who approve of violence are more likely to spank is part of a general theoretical perspective that holds that the degree of misbehavior of children is only part of the explanation for differences in the use of spanking, and perhaps only a minor part of the explanation. The data for these parents permitted us to investigate five of the multitude of other factors that affect whether parents approve of hitting children (see Straus, 2010b, and Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, and 18 for additional discussion of the causes of spanking).
Age of child Twenty-nine percent of parents of infants (children up to age 1) agreed that it is sometimes necessary to spank compared with 62% of parents of teenagers (age 13 to 17). This is consistent with the percent who actually spanked shown in Chapter 2 on spanking in the United States.
Fathers and mothers. More fathers approved of spanking than mothers. This reflects the fact that men condone and use violence more than women as evidenced by the much higher violent crime rate for men. Men in the United States commit murder at a rate that is around 9 times higher than the rate for women (Bureau ofJustice Statistics, 2001).
Race or ethnic group. Whites approved of parents slapping a teenager who talks back less often than other groups.
Age of parent. Younger parents are more accepting of spanking: 55% of younger parents (age 18 to 29), compared with 42% of parents over age 40, agree that it is sometimes necessary to spank. This is not surprising as they are more likely to have younger children or toddlers, the group most commonly spanked for misbehavior.
Region. Consistent with previous research (Ellison & Sherkat, 1993; Flynn, 1994) al)d the study in Chapter 17 on the decline in the approval of corporal punishment, the South stands out as the region where the most people approye of spanking. Seventy percent of Southern parents agreed that a good, 'hard spanking is sometimes necessary, compared with 32% parents from the Northeast. There was also a large difference between the South (58%) and the Northeast (26%) in the percent who believed that parents who spare the rod, will spoil the child. This is consistent with research by Cohen and Nisbett. They analyzed data from three surveys and found that Southern White males endorse violence when it is used for self-protection, to defend one's honor, and to socialize children. In one study, they gave respondents two different scenarios: one in which their son was being bullied and another in which their son was being beaten up in front of a crowd. In both situations, Southern respondents were more likely to say that their son "should take a stand and fight the other boy" than individuals from other regions of the country.
Three Other Studies
As we were working on this chapter, four other studies that could throw additionallight on the issue of the links between violence in other spheres of life and spanking came to our attention.
Torture and Spanking
The results of a national by the Scripps Survey Center at Ohio University became available (Stempel, 2006). This is a study of a nationally representative sample of 1,031 adults selected by random digit dialing. The completion rate was 70%.
The survey was, in part, prompted by the national anguish over the invasion of Iraq and the steps taken to combat terrorism. It included the following question: "Do you think the United States is sometimes justified in using torture to get information from a suspected terrorist, or is torture never justified?" Overall, 37.8% of the participants in the survey believed torture is sometimes justified, 51% that it is never justified, and 10% said they did not know or gave some other answer.
The survey also happened to include the following question on spanking children: "Do you think spanking is sometimes necessary to maintain discipline with children or do you think spanking is not necessary?" Overall, 73% of the participants agreed that spanking is sometimes necessary. At this point, the crucial question is not the overall rate of approval of spanking because it is clear that Americans approve of spanking. Instead, the point of interest is an additional test of the theory that social norms concerning violence, and other violent tendencies, are factors that help explain why some people approve of spanking and others do not, and why some do it to correct misbehavior that other parents correct nonviolently.
Chart 5.5 shows strong support for this theory. To be more specific, participants in the Scripps survey study who said that torture was sometimes justified were about one third more likely to believe that spanking was necessary than those who said torture was never justified. The underlying factor seems to be willingness to inflict physical pain to achieve socially desirable ends. We · believe that most such people would probably insist that they do not approve of violence (Blumenthal, Kahn, Andrew, & Head, 1972). Why don't they see a contradiction between disapproving of violence and believing that torture is sometimes justified and that spanking is sometimes necessary? We suggest that it is because, for such individuals, violence is restricted to physical attacks that are not morally and socially justified. Therefore, in their view, torture for national security and hitting children for bad behavior do not constitute violence because these are morally and socially desirable ends. This probably also explains the view of a leading political scientist and human rights advocate who said, "we need to be careful that the concept of rights is not overstretched. When the prohibition against torture in the European Convention on Human Rights is extended to include spanking, the idea of 'human rights' has been transformed and trivialized. No matter what one's view is of child rearing norms, domestic discipline and torture are not meaningfully categorized together" (Pinto-Duschinsky, 2011 ). The evidence just presented suggests that they do go together.
Chart 5.5 Americans Who Believe that Torture Is Sometimes Necessary Are More Likely to Believe Spanking Is Necessary (Chart not in this copy)
Homicide and Spanking
Molnar and colleagues (2003) analyzed the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods data on 8,782 study participants in 343 neighborhoods. Controlling for other neighborhood characteristics, such as, concentrated poverty and the age and sex of the child, they found that the higher the neighborhood homicide rate, the more physically aggressive the parenting.
We tested the same theory using the 50 U.S. states as the societal units. The level of violence in each state was measured by the 2006 Uniform Crime reports data on homicides per 100,000 population (Federal Bureau oflnvestigation, 2007). The data on spanking are from a 2005 national survey (SurveyUSA, 2005). Attitudes toward spanking were measured by a survey that asked a representative sample in each state, "Do you think it is OK to spank a child?" For the United States as a whole, 72% said they thought it was OK. The percent varied from state to state with Alabama at the top (87%) and Vermont at the bottom (62%). Chart 5.6 shows that the higher the level of violence in a state (as indicated by homicides), the higher the percent of a state's population who believed that spanking is OK.
Violence between Parents and Spanking
UNICEF (The United Nations Children's Fund) is conducting ongoing studies of child well-being in many nations (www.childinfo.org/mics.html). Large and representative samples of mothers, of children age 2 to 14, were interviewed in each nation. Eighteen of the nations participating in this effort asked the mothers about the use of spanking and also about whether they would approve of a husband hitting his wife under five circumstances such as neglecting the children or burning his food (Fluke, Casillas, Capa, Chen, & Wulczyn, 2010). The percent who approved a husband hitting his wife in one or more of the five circumstances ranged from 7% in Bosnia and Herzegovina to 76% in Ghana (the average was 35%). The percent who had used spanking in the last month ranged from 45% in Bosnia and Herzegovina to 88% in Jamaica (the average was 66%). These data enabled us to compute the correlation between approving a husband hitting his wife and hitting a child in the past month. We found that the higher the percent in a nation who believed husbands were justified in hitting a wife, in one or more of the five circumstances, the higher the percent who had hit their child in the past month. (The correlation is .30 if the raw data is used and .46 if the percentages are first converted into low, low middle, high middle, and high quarters to smooth out irregularities in the data.)
Chart 5. 6 The Higher the Homicide Rate, the Higher the Percent of the State Population Who Approve of Spanking*
*Analysis controlled for Below poverty, Black, College-educated, and Metro resident. X andY axes are for centered variables. (Chart not in this copy)
Thus, our analyses using data from four very different studies (the Gallup survey of U.S. parents, a Scripps Survey Center, homicide rates and SurveyUSA data on the 50 U.S. states, and the UNICEF study of 18 economically developing nations) all show that the more other types of violence, the more approval of spanking and use of spanking. The data from the Gallup survey from 1995 may seem dated, but the studies described in Chapters 2 and 17 on the use of spanking show that almost all parents continue to hit toddlers and almost three quarters of the population continue to believe that spanking is sometimes necessary. Thus, the findings in this chapter are relevant and timely today.
Summary and Conclusions
We found clear evidence, from several independent sources of data, that suggests that one of the factors that influences whether parents approve of and use spanking is whether they approve of other forms of violence. The greater the approval of violence, the more approval of spanking and the more likely parents were to actually spank. Because these results are based on crosssectional data, it is equally plausible to interpret the results as showing that when parents hit children, it makes them more favorable to other kinds of violence such as boys punching other boys. Probably there are causal influences in both directions. Regardless of which causes which, the results in this chapter are consistent with the cultural spillover theory of violence (Archer & Gartner, 1984; Baron & Straus, 1988, 1989). This theory argues that the use of violence in one sphere of life tends to increase the probability of violence in other spheres oflife. Moreover, the spillover from one sphere oflife to another applies to the effect of using violence for socially legitimate purposes and for criminal purposes.
Socially legitimate violence, such as executing criminals and waging war on an enemy nation, tends to legitimize other kinds of violence including criminal violence such as assault, rape, and murder (Bailey, 1998) The link between spanking and approval of violence is also shown by data from the General Social Survey (McClure, 2002). McClure found that people who approved of executing criminals and those who owned a gun were more likely than others to approve of spanking by parents.
The spillover from the socially legitimate use of violence to discipline children to the criminal violence of hitting a spouse or dating partners is illustrated in Chapters 12 and 13. Chapter 12 shows this relationship for individual persons, and Chapter 13 shows that nations where spanking is prevalent tend to be nations with higher rates of violence toward dating partners. Thus, at both the individual and the societal level, experiencing spanking as a child, which is legitimate violence, is associated with an increased probability later in life of hitting a marital or dating partner, which is criminal violence.
Criminal Violence and Spanking
The link between belief in the death penalty or gun ownership and spanking partly reflects the fact that both are culturally defined as legitimate. However, the level of criminal violence in a society is also related to spanking, as shown in the sections of this chapter showing that the higher the homicide rate of a state, the higher the percent who approve of spanking.
Another study that found a link between criminal violence and spanking was conducted by Zhang and Anderson (2010) using a sample of lowincome single mothers. Community violence was measured by whether the mothers had witnessed or been a victim of violence. They found that mothers who experienced moderate and high levels of community violence were 2.1 times and 2.4 times more likely to use spanking than mothers with no exposure to violence.
Winstok and Straus (2011b) studied a large and nationally representative sample of mothers in Israel and found that, after controlling for socioeconomic status and other variables, the more violent the study participants perceived their neighborhood, the more frequent was their use of spanking.
Another type of criminal violence that is associated with spanking is physical assaults between the parents (Annerback et al., 2010; Fergusson & Horwood, 1998; Silverstein et al., 2009; Straus, 2001a). Chart 5.7 graphs the link between interparental violence and spanking. Not surprisingly, parents who hit each other are more likely to hit their children. Straus (2001a) has suggested that it also works the other way-that each time a parent hits a child, it is role practice in violence. This not as big a leap as it might seem. Contrary to the patriarchal-dominance theory about the causes of violence between married couples, in most of the world, including nations with male-dominant cultures, about the same percent of women as men hit their partner (see Chapter 13 and Straus, 2008b). What is most relevant in this context is that the predominant cause of hitting a partner, by both men and women, is to correct what is perceived as a persistent, unacceptable behavior by the partner. The misbehavior ranges from not taking out the trash to infidelity (Ansara & Hindin, 2009; Bookwala, Frieze, Smith, & Ryan, 1992; Capaldi, Kim, & Shortt, 2007; Carrado, George, Loxam, Jones, & Templar, 1996; Cascardi & Vivian, 1995; Fiebert & Gonzalez, 1997; Foshee, Linder, MacDougall, & Bangdiwala, 2001; Harned, 2001; Hettrich & O'Leary, 2007). Just as parents hit children to correct a persistent misbehavior, so do marital and dating partners hit to correct misbehavior. Or put another way, spanking by parents is part of a larger pattern of violence in society.
Chart 5. 7 The More Violence between Parents, the Larger the Percent Who Spanked* (Chart not available in this copy)
*Data from Fergusson and Horwood (1998, Table 4).
The same conclusion can be drawn from the study of university students in 32 countries who participated in the International Dating Violence Study. At universities where a large percent of the students believed that spanking was necessary, a large .percent also approved of a husband slapping his wife (Chapter 13). A similar, but even stronger, relationship was found between cultural norms permitting a husband to "make her do it" when a wife does not want to have sex and spanking. Nations where a high percentage believed that spanking was necessary tended to be nations where a large percentage of students believed it was acceptable for husbands to "make her do it" (r = .70).
Conclusion
Somewhat ironically, the results showing that spanking is partly an expression of a more general pattern of violence in society leads us to conclude that this link is a basis for optimism about ending violent parenting. This is because there has been a long-term and historical decrease in interpersonal violence (Eisner, 2001; Elias, 1978; Straus, 2001a, Chapters 11 and 21), including physical abuse of children and wife beating (Straus & Gelles, 1986). The question on approval of boys getting into fistfights is an example of that trend. When this question was answered by another nationally representative sample in 1968, 70% agreed. By 1995 when the parents for this chapter were interviewed, only 21% favored boys getting into fistfights. Part of the difference may be because the 1968 sample included all adults, whereas this sample included only adults who were parents. N;evertheless, a substantial part of the decrease from 70% to 21% probably represents a change in cultural norms about acceptable violence. Because this centuries-long trend is likely to continue, that alone suggests there will be a further decline in the still widespread pattern of parents hitting children.
Finally, the results in this chapter suggest that efforts to help parents avoid hitting children will be aided by capitalizing on the historical trend toward less approval of, and less actual, interpersonal violence. This can be done by unequivocally declaring that spanking is violence and is not an acceptable method of discipline by parents. Sweden did that in 1979. By 2011, a total of29 nations had banned spanking by parents, and both the United Nations (Pinheiro, 2006) and the European Union (Council of Europe, 2005) have called on all member nations to prohibit all spanking by parents.
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.
The Primordial Violence 2014-1
The Primordial Violence 2014-2
The Primordial Violence 2014-3
The Primordial Violence 2014-4
Corporal Punishment by Parents and Associated Child Behaviors and Experiences: A Meta-Analytic and Theoretical Review Elizabeth Thompson Gershoff Columbia University 2002
APA: The case against spanking By Brendan L. Smith April 2012, Vol 43, No. 4
Anthropologist Finds Psychological Seed of War in Baby Spanking 01/05/1941 Dr. Montague Francis Ashley-Montagu
Bum rap: Antispanking activists need to take a time-out and let parents use their instincts 06/21/1998
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