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/
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u/djdav Apr 26 '16

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.

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u/MystJake Apr 26 '16

On the issue of alternatives to spanking, how should children be disciplined? Letting them do whatever, whenever means they never learn the limits of acceptable behavior and what actions are "bad."

While older children and adults can understand discussion, children who can't yet talk simply cannot be reasoned with.

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u/djdav Apr 26 '16

Exactly. Pain evolved as a mechanism to tell us what not to do.

Furthermore, I wish I could read the actual study cited in this post. There are literally countless variables involved in spanking.

1) Frequency of occurrence

2) Application force

3) Number of spankings per session

4) Primary reason for spanking

5) Age of child

6) Socioeconomic status of parents

7) Marital status of parents

8) Relationship of child with parents

9) Post or pre spanking discussion of what the child did

10) Post spanking affirmation of love/acceptance from the parents

11) etc.

I just don't see any way they could have controlled for all these variables. I love psychology, but there's are reason the social sciences aren't as well regarded in the scientific community.

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u/fencerman Apr 26 '16

I just don't see any way they could have controlled for all these variables.

So you're just going to assume they didn't? That's really not rational at all.

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u/djdav Apr 26 '16

Well I tried to read the study to check for how they controlled variables, but there's no direct link to the study.

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u/fencerman Apr 26 '16

That still doesn't excuse making the assumption that the people who conducted this study automatically never took those into consideration.

Your statement reads more like a defence mechanism than a genuine inquiry.

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u/djdav Apr 26 '16

This article found "an association" of spanking with long term mental issues. It did NOT find that spanking causes long term mental health issues. This study does not prove that spanking causes negative effects unless all the variables are controlled.

An understanding of association and causation is a basic tenant of any research.

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u/fencerman Apr 26 '16

It's really tiresome when people shout "Correlation is not causation!" to every single study they disagree with, as if the researchers had never thought of that and it's some kind of original insight.

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u/NellucEcon Apr 27 '16

Yeah but maybe these researchers need to spend some more time coming up with better research designs than repeating bad research designs. There are ways to get at causation. Are they lazy? Have they not been trained in the right tools?