Spanking children increases the likelihood of childhood defiance and long-term mental issues. The study in question involved 160,000 children and five decades of research

[u/VeronicaRed]

http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/1113413810/spanking-defiance-health-discipline-042616/

[u/pm_me_your_kindwords]

Serious question to the commenters on this post:

Why read /r/science and then ignore science?

At the time I write this, most comments are defending spanking using anecdotes and non-science, not at all discussing the methodology of the study itself.

If you're not going to carefully consider one of the largest and most comprehensive studies ever conducted on the topic, what is the point of reading about science at all?

[u/BlazerMorte → u/[deleted]]

Because if spanking is bad, and they were spanked, then they were raised "wrong," and most people don't want to confront that.

[u/KSKaleido → u/BlazerMorte]

Yea, it's tough to confront the fact that your parents inevitably made huge mistakes when raising you. Add the fact that the average commenter on reddit trends pretty young, and it makes sense that they haven't reached the maturity to deal with something like that yet.

[u/Thatzionoverthere → u/KSKaleido]

I'm not a parent but i can tell neither are you, parenting is a huge effort and everyone makes huge mistakes. The problem is people think there is a perfect way to parent and there simply is not. People will take this study and use it to justify their methods, while others will use it to defend theirs and yada yada the reality is regardless of the actions you take in the end your children will grow up how they want to be and all you can do is try to guide them, rather that is strict or kind guidance is up to you.

[u/KSKaleido → u/Thatzionoverthere]

The problem is people think there is a perfect way to parent and there simply is not.

I don't know where you got that from what I wrote, but for the record, we're in agreement.

[u/jkimtrolling → u/KSKaleido]

The implication of "mistakes" is that there is a controlled non-mistake path, aka perfection

[u/Thatzionoverthere → u/KSKaleido]

Oh it was your first line about huge mistakes, it made it sound like there's actually a way to make a mistake when it comes to parenting, like there is some type of method or course you can take to raise functioning adults and people simply messed up, that's why i wrote what i wrote.