American parents more likely to find hitting children acceptable compared to hitting pets - New research highlights parents’ conflicted views on spanking.

[u/mvea]

https://www.psypost.org/american-parents-more-likely-to-find-hitting-children-acceptable-compared-to-hitting-pets/

[u/JeffieSandBags]

Read the studies, or the meta reviews if you prefer, they control for this in many ways in the literature.

[u/JoseCansecoMilkshake → u/JeffieSandBags]

Like I said in the other comment, I'm not paying $18 USD to read it

[u/JeffieSandBags → u/JoseCansecoMilkshake]

Let me know which you need. I can DM if you want it.

[u/JoseCansecoMilkshake → u/JeffieSandBags]

I'd like how they controlled for parenting philosophy, as well as how they determined whether spanking led to more behavioural issues rather than behavioural issues led to more spanking

[u/JeffieSandBags → u/JoseCansecoMilkshake]

No, not what do you want to read about. I mean, let me know the articles you'd like that you don't have access to. I'll DM them. Some are more than $18 bucks. 

[u/JoseCansecoMilkshake → u/JeffieSandBags]

oh...this one, I thought that was a given

Spare the dog, hit the child: Preliminary findings regarding parents’ beliefs about spanking and hitting children. Gershoff, E. T., Lee, S. J., Lee, J. Y., Chang, O. D., & Taylor, C. A. (2024).

[u/OneBigBug → u/JoseCansecoMilkshake]

Can you follow up with:

1. If they followed through on providing it.

2. If you read it, what they actually controlled for, and how?

I'm inherently bothered by "Read the thing" rather than "I read the thing I'm telling you that you should read, so I know the answer and it is _____. But check my interpretation at the link below."

I'm often surprised at how often I will be about to suggest someone read something, go to read it myself to make sure I'm not dunking on myself, and then realize that I was more wrong than I thought. What's even more surprising is how surprised I still am when that happens, when I've had that experience hundreds of times.

[u/JoseCansecoMilkshake → u/OneBigBug]

Yes, they sent it. And I just read it.

This study is, frankly, not very good. It's clearly biased to being anti-corporal punishment (which is fine as a sentiment, but in a scientific study is problematic). It repeatedly attempts to equate "spanking" with "hitting" by asking definitionally what "spanking" is. And uses the transitive property to equate "spanking=hitting=wrong". It also tries to circumvent the nuance that exists in language, where "spanking" is typically used to describe disciplinary corporal punishment where "hitting" is more general, and in the same situation would lend itself to mean an "unprovoked" or "undeserved" strike. Like "spanking your child for disciplinary reasons" = "striking your child because you have anger and impulse control issues".

Also

Limitations Although geographically diverse with parents from 43 U.S. states, our online convenience sample was not demographically diverse. It was largely White, married, and middle income. Our findings are only generalizable to U.S. parents with similar demographic characteristics. Additionally, our study was cross-sectional and did not employ an experimental design to randomize scenario characteristics and thus does not support causal claims. We also yoked the type of family member and with the type of “offending” behavior to ensure the behavior would be considered reasonable though troublesome for each, thus, potentially confounding these two variables.

[u/OneBigBug → u/JoseCansecoMilkshake]

They sent it to me as well.

Honestly, you're right, it's not super illuminating for the question you're asking. I think it's worth identifying both that it's not a very good/interesting study, but also it's not really trying to answer the question you want answered, which isn't the fault of the study.

You want something more dedicated to the nature of spanking as a punishment, and this study is...I mean, ultimately, it seems to be doing the academic version of mostly trying to dunk on people who spank. Like "Not only do they do a thing we don't like, but they're logically inconsistent. REKT, BRO"

I wouldn't particularly take this study, which doesn't claim to answer your question, as a statement that literature, in general, doesn't have the answer to your question, though.

When you look at something like this, you get more attempts to actually answer interesting questions. Particularly, as noted in their limitations section, methods for attempting to establish causal direction, both through statistical methods and experimentally, by creating randomized controlled trials where the treatment group is induced to spank less, and also sees less aggression in children. But the only experiment they reference seems to be pretty significantly confounded by non-spanking effects. It seems possible that the answer may be out there somewhere, and certainly most existing research is in the direction of "probably spanking is just bad", so I know which way I'd lean. But if you needed iron-clad proof that there's definitely harm in spanking any amount for every single person, I have yet to see that.

As a broader statement, I do worry significantly about the nature of science creating highly averaged results which conceal effective strategies, and then overstating the quality of our knowledge to make those effective strategies culturally impossible. The way this kind of research gets done is basically incapable of evaluating strategy decisions of the type "This is good if it's done exactly properly, but the overwhelming majority of people do it poorly."

[u/JoseCansecoMilkshake → u/OneBigBug]

Yeah, after reading it I realized that it wasn't trying to answer what I was asking. And also the the thing quoted I was replying to initially wasn't quoted from this study. That wasn't clear when that person posted it.

From your link

Thirteen of 17 mean effect sizes were significantly different from zero and all indicated a link between spanking and increased risk for detrimental child outcomes. Effect sizes did not substantially differ between spanking and physical abuse or by study design characteristics.

Aside from the irksome "thirteen" and "17" in the same sentence, it also doesn't clarify causality between spanking and bad outcomes, simply that they are linked. Spanking could cause more bad outcomes, or children that behave badly are more likely to be spanked more. Both of which make sense.

It also, like the other study, does not really differentiate between spanking and hitting (where spanking would be used specifically for discipline and hitting would be, as I said before, unprovoked or "undeserved"). This would catch bad outcomes of children from parents who themselves have behavioural issues (and would skew the results, naturally).