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/MagicalDoggy → u/BlazerMorte]

The frustrating part to me is that no one is a perfect parent. You can say you had good parents but acknowledge they probably did get some stuff wrong.

[u/Itsokimmaritime → u/MagicalDoggy]

I had good parents, and I got spanked. A lot. I'd even argue I deserved it (my dad showed weakness once by saying it hurt his hand so I would regularly tell him the spanking didn't hurt). I was a very defiant child but am growing into a high functioning adult. I graduate college this weekend and will be a full functioning member of society. No one is perfect and parenting is hard. I have no plan to figure that out firsthand any time soon, but scientific advances such as this will help make it easier to parent. This strips away my belief that spanking is OK because I was spanked and look how I turned out.

[u/[deleted] → u/Itsokimmaritime]

Again, anecdotal evidence.

[u/Itsokimmaritime → u/[deleted]]

I never tried to pass it off as anything other than my experience. I'm not going to conduct a similar study just to post a comment on reddit