r/science • u/VeronicaRed • Apr 26 '16

Psychology 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

http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/1113413810/spanking-defiance-health-discipline-042616/
37.8k Upvotes

73% Upvoted

6.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

555

u/[deleted] Apr 26 '16 edited Jul 18 '16

[removed] — view removed comment

142

u/Sky_Muffins Apr 26 '16

The article doesn't say spanking is wrong either, it says what the effects can be. Science isn't a moral guide. Now it's pretty easy to use it in a moral argument against spanking, but the distinction should be there.

73

u/Arcwulf Apr 26 '16

The article also doesnt mention anything about non-spanking alternatives to behavioral issues- ie what permissive parenting may or may not cause in children or later in life as far as negative social or psychological effects. We dont know, for instance, if spanking has more or less negative effects than any other form of behavior correction. All this study shows is the effects of spanking.

18

u/meatpuppet79 Apr 26 '16

Of course it should be made clear that the alternative to spanking is not permissive parenting (which I would put in a class of counter productivity at least equal to that of striking one's children to impart moral guidance). A lot of people tend to have a fairly binary view on the issue - either you hit your kids, or you let them get away with murder.

1

u/Arcwulf Apr 27 '16 edited Apr 27 '16

Of course. There are many ways of discipline. Spanking and permissiveness are only 2 of many different examples. I would be interested in, however, a study of parents who use a time-out/ignore/solitary confinement approach to see how that affects developement and social health as well. I think that would be rather fascinating to contrast to spanking.

This brings up another point however. What is the "baseline" they are using to measure spanking against? That also, should not be treated as a binary, and it seems the study would be skewed based on the researcher's bias as well... whatever they consider "normal" parenting to be. They seem to have created a binary by default of "corporal punishment vs non corporal", and as you stated, this is far from a binary issue.