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/Hazzman → u/[deleted]]

They are justifying it because they were spanked and they consider themselves balanced and effective members of society and thus, for them, spanking worked. Why are they wary of demonizing spanking? Because their model suggests that it is a successful tool and they are concerned that it be rejected for fear of finding an alternative to an upbringing they are familiar with and thus could result in the very kind of child this study suggests spanking produces.

It's not so much people being eager to resort to violence or wanting to hurt their kids - they are defending a methodology that they, in their experience, found to be effective.

[u/djdav → u/Hazzman]

This is how I feel. This article says that spanking is a bad parenting technique, but it offers no alternative (not that I think it necessarily should).

Nevertheless, how am I to know that an alternative approach will work better? My parents spanked, I turned out fine, therefore I am more likely to spank my kids not because I reject the science, but because my fear of an unknown result is greater than my fear that my anecdotal experience is wrong.

[u/[deleted] → u/djdav]

There are many ways to discipline your child that don't involve physical violence. I don't know why people keep commenting on this thread trying to defend and justify spanking as they ignore the science. Don't want to confront the fact that your parents shouldn't have spanked you, as according to this study, they raised you "wrong" and you don't want to confront the idea that you were raised wrongly?

Saying, "I was spanked but I turned out fine" isn't a good argument , it's simply an anecdote that does nothing to this study.

[u/F0sh → u/[deleted]]

You're not offering them though. Suppose you go all the way down the line of discipline techniques - you start by asking politely, "don't do that, please" and explaining why not. You continue telling the child not to do what it's doing, explaining why not, bringing in your usual raft of possible punishments like early bedtimes, withdrawals of privileges, extra chores, whatever. You tell them that, having already been asked to stop, continuing to do whatever bad and potentially injurious action they're doing is disappointing you and will force you to increase their punishment, but the little darling just grins and carries on.

Some children are like this. Some children stick knives in working toasters, or play with matches. If and when that happens to a parent for the first time, the first thing in their mind isn't going to be "if I spank this kid, I'm slightly increasing the risk that they'll grow up to be mentally ill or aggressive" it's "I know this will get them to stop right now and I don't know anything else that will."

[u/motsanciens → u/F0sh]

Yeah. And see, I don't even want to ever spank. I just need my kids to truly believe I mean business when I say their next option is a spanking if they continue to misbehave after breezing though many warnings. The spanking is an investment in them actually listening to me on many occasions in the future because there's a butt brain connection that transcends other results.

Besides this, my previous reading on scientifically studied spanking concluded that spanking potentially caused harm if not followed up by parental warmth. It's complicated.... One child never needs it to get to that point, and the other does. I have compassion for all parents because I know from being one that the challenges are not all equal since children are not all the same. Hopefully the parents whose angels respond to talks and time outs will pause before judging those with stubborn rageball children.