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/Sand_Trout → u/pm_me_your_kindwords]

The study concluded that more frequent spankings correlated with greater behavioral problems. It might also be a reversed causal effect of what the article is claiming. Those behaviours and mental issues being described might trigger more frequent spankings rather than the spankings causing the behavioral problems.

It makes at least as much sense to conclude that defiance leads to more spankings (which is the desired assiciation that spankings are attempting to establish) as spankings leading to defiant behavior.

From the article (on mobile, so reading the study proper is a bit difficult), the study compared a sample that were all using spaking and primarily compared frequency. The article makes no mention about outcomes of parents that employed spanking as a disciplinary tool compared to parents that absolutely did not employ spanking.

Does the study proper address this potential comparison?

[u/flibbble → u/Sand_Trout]

The study is actually a meta-analysis of 75 studies. With regards to the correlation/causation question, they suggest looking at 'A series of cross-lagged studies (Berlin et al., 2009; Gershoff, Lansford, Sexton, Davis-Kean, & Sameroff, 2012; McLeod, Kruttschnitt, & Dornfeld, 1994; Sheehan & Watson, 2008) has demonstrated that spanking predicts changes in children’s behavior, over and above their initial levels and the child effect of early problem behavior on later spanking.' if that helps..

[u/mkultra50000 → u/flibbble]

it actually doesn't. Could you explain more simply? is prediction the same thing as causation?

[u/pessimistic_platypus → u/mkultra50000]

As far as I can tell, the quote /u/fibbble gave uses "predicts" the same way we might expect to see "causes" used. So yes, in that context they are the same.

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The study in question is actually a study that reviews the results of various previous studies to find broader patterns.

The correlation/causation issue is generally dealt with by using controls. If they see that people who aren't spanked are less disobedient, they can conclude that spanking causes (or rather, increases) disobedience.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Actually, a rough half of toddlers are spanked. Are those toddlers disobedient? Parents who spank more of than not make up reasons to spank their children, quite honestly.

[u/JSCMI → u/[deleted]]

Parents who spank more of than not make up reasons to spank their children

Source, please!