DEBUNKING SPANKING WITH ALTERNATIVES
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Debunking Spanking and Providing Alternative Punishments for Parents
Jaycie Self
Southern Utah University
Abstract
While the practice of spanking has been considered a long-standing norm whose use spans throughout much of recorded history, in more recent times spanking children for misbehavior has actually come to be recognized as a potentially harmful form of disciplining. It is not uncommon for the unfavorable effects of spanking to be seen in children in physical, emotional, and even psychological terms. Childhood developmental studies continue to produce results which clearly demonstrate that the use of physical violence as an attempt to modify misbehavior in children can have the adverse effects not only on the parent/child relationship, but also on the children themselves; the development of their personal coping methods, situational awareness, maturity levels, and even how they interact with peers and other adults can face severe repercussions. It has thus been suggested that replacing negative punishments such as spanking with alternative positive disciplining practices will be far more effective on children now, and far less detrimental to their continued growth and coping skills in the future.
Debunking Spanking and Providing Alternative Punishments for Parents
Spanking has been around since at least the time of Ancient Greece, probably even longer. Straus (1994) says, ‘‘[spanking] is 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’’ (p. 4). It is thought that spanking of children came about during the Victorian era in Europe, during a time when it was felt that children “were to be seen and not heard.” This way of thinking is not only archaic and outdated, but current research is showing more and more that spanking leads to more inappropriate behavior from children. The effects of spanking will be discussed herein, especially as far as externalizing and internalizing behaviors are concerned. An externalizing behavior is an inappropriate behavior that can include aggression, noncompliant, or defiant behavior as defined by parents or authority figures. Conversely, an internalizing behavior manifests as withdrawal, disinterest, and other internal behaviors such as overeating and negativity.
Spanking has been under scrutiny for several decades, with researching advocating both for and against the practice. However, research has shown negative effects often occur in the long term, spanning much further than immediately after the spanking occurs. Spanking is an outdated practice that is not only ineffective, but is also shown to be emotionally damaging to children and adolescents.
Predictors of Spanking
Understandably, there are many indicators of how likely parents are to spank their children. Day, Peterson, and McCracken (1998) found several predictors of spanking including marital status and age of parents, income, and temperaments of the children. Single mothers are more likely to spank their children, which is likely due to the extra stress that comes from raising children on their own. In addition, the younger parents were when they had their children correlated directly to how much their children were spanked; younger parents spanked their children more than parents who were older when they had their children. Income directly reflected the frequency with which parents spank their children across the board. Low-income families had much higher rates of spanking than those of higher socioeconomic status. The more income rose, the less the prevalence of spanking in each group. Similarly, the prevalence of spanking was decreased over each year as income grew, wherein parents who had children when they were young were less likely to spank their subsequent children as their income and age increased.
Some predictors, on the other hand, seemed more unexpected. These predictors were much more subtle. According to Berlin, Ispa, Fine, Malone, Brooks-Gunn, Brady-Smith, & Bai, (2009), maternal depression, child fussiness, and the gender of the child also played a role in the likelihood of children being spanked. Mothers who were depressed during their child’s first year were more likely to spank their children, not only while they were depressed, but throughout the entirety of their children’s childhood. It was also found that child fussiness, which was often interpreted by the parents as their child misbehaving, indicated higher levels of spanking infants and toddlers. Interestingly, male children were also spanked and verbally punished more than female children in all categories and over all age groups studied. The commonality of spanking among younger and low-income families in particular indicate that these parents are reacting to their stresses, which are being projected onto their children through spanking and verbal frustration.
Why Spanking Doesn’t Work
One primary reason why spanking is ineffective is that it does not adhere to the conditions that psychological behaviorists say must be present in order for a punishment to be effective. According to Hineline & Rosales-Ruiz (2012), in order for a punishment to be effective, it, “[must] be immediate, consistent, and delivered after every instance of the targeted behavior” (p. 489).
The early experiences of children determine the coping mechanisms they will employ later later in life, and psychologically speaking there is a reason why spanking is not an effective form of discipline; in psychology, there are four types of reinforcement: positive, negative, positive punishment, and negative punishment (Bohlin, Durwin, & Reese-Weber, 2008).
Positive reinforcement is when behavior is rewarded or praised. If a child puts his toys away and receives a treat, it is likely that the child will put his toys away in the future. Negative reinforcement is when something negative is taken away in order to increase appropriate behavior. For example, parents often nags at their teenager to keep their bedroom clean. Conscious of this nagging, the teenager cleans their room and the nagging stops. This encourages appropriate behavior by removing the nagging. Positive punishment is when a behavior is met with an undesirable consequence, like spanking. The punishment is disliked and so in order to avoid being spanked, the behavior ceases. Negative punishment is when something is removed in order to stop behavior. For example, if a child throws a tantrum in order to receive attention from a parent and the parent reacts, the child will continue to throw tantrums. If the parent doesn’t react or pay attention at all, the child will quickly quiet down after realizing that their screams do not result in the attention of their parent.
Spanking is an ineffective punishment because it doesn’t provide any information to children about what constitutes good behavior. When children are spanked after misbehaving, they do not learn that their behavior is inappropriate. Instead, they feel fear, anger, and sadness when they are spanked (Dobbs, Smith, & Taylor, 2006), which in turn prevents them from being able to internalize the disciplinary messages they receive from parents (Grusec & Goodnow, 1994). Additionally, the fear felt towards parents after being spanked caused children to withdraw emotionally. This implies that not only are children not learning the difference between good and bad behavior, they’re also left to feel distrusting of the people who they should be able to trust unconditionally.
Rather than parents addressing the behavior that leads to spanking and then explaining to a child the why their behavior is wrong, children merely learn that certain behaviors result in being spanked. According to Grusec & Goodnow (1994), children learn appropriate behaviors through more complex methods than which of their behaviors trigger punishments. Further, for a child to be successfully socialized, they must be able to internalize the reasons behind are appropriate and acceptable behaviors rather than only knowing which behaviors will elicit punishment.
When parents act hastily and spank their children, they discredit themselves by acting aggressively. Children are told from a young age that hitting isn’t nice, yet when parents spank their children, the hypocrisy does not go unnoticed; children are far more apt to become bitter and are likely to display more externalizing behaviors as a result. Beyond the irony of parents acting aggressively to reduce aggression in their children, spanking doesn’t reduce aggression in children. There are at least 27 relevant studies pertaining to spanking, and in each case, spanking was associated with more – not less – aggressive behavior from children (Gershoff, 2002). This debunks the idea that spanking itself will lead to better behavior from children. While it may immediately stop the behavior that caused the parent to spank their child, it will ultimately result in worse behavior in the future.
Externalized behaviors increase over time when children are spanked, making it a fruitless form of punishment. In a research study done by Lansford, Wager, Bates, Pettit, and Dodge (2012), several forms of spanking and the resulting externalization of children were analyzed. It was initially thought that children who were spanked would have a higher rate of externalizing behaviors, and that children who were not spanked would not exhibit these traits with the same prevalence. In the study, the majority of mothers admitted to spanking their children at least once a month. The children who were spanked and showed more externalizing behaviors were then spanked more often as time progressed. This suggests that externalizing behaviors not only result in more or harsher spanking over time, but also confirms that spanking does not work as an effective punishment for children.
Spanking is particularly unsuccessful when children are from broken homes. In a non-structured study of children’s fear done by England (1946), children were given paper and pencil and were asked to draw important experiences from their lives. Of the resulting drawings, 27.4% of the experiences were interpreted as fear experiences, of which the top three fears were falling, sickness, and being spanked respectively. The study’s sample included children who were labelled as normal, mentally retarded, institutionalized non-delinquents (children from broken homes), and sex delinquents. The most staggering percentage of drawings that represented fearful experiences were from the institutionalized non-delinquent group, of which 55% of the drawings related to fearful events in their lives. Children from broken homes, known as the institutionalized non-delinquents in the study, were affected more by fearful events than other children.
Spanking alone does not teach children why their behavior was wrong or what they should do instead. In reality, children learn that they need to behave when there is a chance that they will be physically punished, but when that threat disappears, children have no reason or motivation to act appropriately (Hoffman, 1983). By providing children with positive discipline for misbehaving rather than spanking, children learn how to distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate behavior, which in turn leads to less need for spanking.
Spanking infants and toddlers is particularly futile. According to Berlin, Ispa, Fine, Malone, Brooks-Gunn, Brady-Smith, & Bai (2009), “During toddlerhood, children may simply be too immature to make meaning of the experience of being spanked beyond its immediate negativity, regardless of mothers’ responsiveness” (p. 1417). This suggests that spanking extremely young children serves no purpose at all. Because toddlers are unable to find meaning in the experience, spanking serves as nothing more than a behavior to model.
Parents are the first models of behavior for their children, so it’s logical that their actions should be appropriate in nature. Infants and toddlers learn best through observational learning, which includes watching and imitating those around them (Bandura, 1986). When parents spank an infant, rather than learning that their behavior is undesirable to the parent, the behavior will be worsened when the infant imitates the parent and hits them back. Most parents, misunderstanding that the child didn’t find any meaning behind the initial spanking will grow frustrated at the child and spank them harder. Ultimately, this compounds the behavioral problems rather than resolving the original behavior issue by creating distrust with the child and modeling inappropriate behavior.
Toddlers in particular are especially hard for parents to handle, thus making them increasingly difficult to discipline. In one study, it was found that approximately one-third of 1-year-olds and half of 2-year-olds had been spanked in the past week (Berlin, et al., 2009). Not only was spanking prevalent in that age group, but there was an increase in verbal punishment of children at age 2, which decreased at age 3. One possible explanation for the increase in verbal punishment of toddlers may reflect mothers’ frustration with the autonomy and independency-seeking behavior that is typical of 2-year-olds, whereas the decline in verbal punishment at age 3 may reflect the response of these mothers to the increase in verbal comprehension, self-regulation, and compliance that typically comes around age 3.
The cascading effect that spanking has on children proves that spanking doesn’t lead to fewer occurrences of bad behavior, but actually increases them. In order to determine how children are affected by spanking, a study by Gromoske & Maguire-Jack (2012) analyzed how often children were spanked at ages 1, 3, and 5. Children who were spanked at age 1 were more likely to exhibit externalizing behaviors at age three, which turned into internalize behaviors at age 5. The behavior of parents and children were also shown to be reactive to one another; this often results in children exhibiting even more externalizing behavior, which in turn causes parents to spank children more frequently. Because it is harder to measure the internalizing behaviors of preschool age children, such measurements aren’t reliable indicators of future internalizing behaviors. Spanking is more detrimental to young children because of the cascading effect that it has on behavior over time, as is illustrated by spanking leading to increasingly worse behavior.
Alternative Positive Discipline Methods
Positive discipline encourages appropriate behavior by assuring children that they belong. The desire to belong is one of the most basic emotions that exist within each individual; it is not only a basic need, but can also be an extremely important motivator to several human behaviors. Children’s perceived support and belonging not only contribute to resiliency, but also reduce the negative effects of stress. Children with at least one positive role model perform better in school, and are far more likely to use their social and familial supports. In short, the early social experiences of children determine their coping mechanisms later in life (Nelsen and Gfroerer, 2013). When children are disciplined in the positive ways discussed, they feel secure and are more likely to act appropriate because they’ve been taught the why behind what makes behaviors appropriate or unacceptable. When children are approached from the mentality of belonging in a community, they behave more appropriately.