POV: Parents Shouldn’t Spank
It’s harmful and there are better ways to discipline
Photo courtesy of Flickr contributor Brunurb
The indictment of Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson in September on charges of child abuse has prompted a heated public debate about the role of physical punishment in child rearing. Rather than trying to find the line between spanking and abuse, however, we should be talking about how parents teach their children right from wrong—without hitting them.
As pediatricians, we understand that parents love their children and know that they need to teach them how to act in the world. Across cultures, parents share universal goals of raising healthy, compassionate, productive children into adulthood. Discipline—the practice of teaching children good behavior and preparing them for independence—is an essential component of parenting.
The American Academy of Pediatrics strongly urges parents not to use physical force with their children, based on the known short- and long-term harms that physical punishment can cause. In addition to the risk of “crossing the line” and causing significant injury, children who experience physical punishment often show aggressive behaviors in childhood and have more mental and physical health problems when they grow up. We instead recommend a more effective discipline approach that focuses on building a strong parent-child relationship, rewarding good behavior, and using non-physical punishments to address unwanted behaviors, such as “time outs” or removal of privileges.
Despite the known harms, the use of physical punishment is still a common practice in the United States. Spanking in school is still expressly permitted in 19 states, predominately in the South. While there are regional and cultural differences in the use of physical punishment, recent polls demonstrate that up to 80 percent of black and 70 percent of white Americans continue to support the use of child physical punishment.
In a study conducted with Boston mothers, we found that parents who used physical punishment overwhelmingly described it as an approach that they felt would best keep their children out of serious trouble down the road. In this context, some explicitly viewed alternative parenting approaches as weak and worried they would exacerbate their children’s bad behavior. The parents we talked to were motivated by serious fears about their children’s long-term well-being—they would be kicked out of school, injured in community or police violence, arrested or incarcerated when they were older—unless their parents “cracked down” on certain behaviors early. These fears are significant and are based in real disparities that exist in our city and in the United States at large. Racial and ethnic minority children, as well as those who live in poverty, are more likely to be suspended or expelled, exposed to violence, and incarcerated later in life, compared to their white, wealthier peers. At the same time, the truth is that physical punishment is far less effective and more harmful than other discipline approaches.
In talking with parents, we often find that corporal punishment is used when parents are worried, exasperated, and feel out of control. As parents, we completely understand the feeling! However, understandable as it is, corporal punishment may be particularly dangerous. For some parents, their own frustration may leave them to cause more harm to their children than they anticipated. Our goal in educating parents is to help them both avoid this feeling of exasperation and to have the tools for themselves and their children to handle their own feelings in a constructive way. We have found that when parents use alternatives to physical punishment, their children are often better behaved, sneak around less, and are less likely to drive their parents to distraction.
In our work, we strive to elicit parents’ specific dreams and fears about their children’s future, as no one is more intent on promoting their children’s well-being than their parents. Starting from this point of respect and commonality, it is easy to begin sharing information about effective parenting, as well as what science has shown about the long-term impact of physical punishment. These effective strategies are not so complicated: young children crave their parents’ attention. Simply by noticing their children’s good behavior, parents can catch them being good and in so doing, gently teach their children how to behave. As children grow older, more explicit conversations about behavior, coupled with discipline strategies that focus on teaching the children the natural consequences of their behavior, become effective.
This can be especially difficult for parents who experienced corporal punishment or abuse as children themselves. For them, as Adrian Peterson himself noted, corporal punishment may seem normal; child physical abuse (harmful as it is) may seem like an unfortunate consequence of doing the right thing. Rather than trying to find the line between corporal punishment and abuse, we can decide as a society that adults have no business hitting children. We can do better.
Caroline Kistin is an assistant professor of pediatrics at BU School of Medicine and a pediatrician at Boston Medical Center. Robert Sege is a professor of pediatrics at MED and a senior fellow with the Center for the Study of Social Policy in Washington, DC.
“POV” is an opinion page that provides timely commentaries from students, faculty, and staff on a variety of issues: on-campus, local, state, national, or international. Anyone interested in submitting a piece, which should be about 700 words long, should contact Rich Barlow at barlowr@bu.edu. BU Today reserves the right to reject or edit submissions. The views expressed are solely those of the author and are not intended to represent the views of Boston University.
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