ListenShould you ever spank your kids?
Pediatricians say no,
but parents still do
Dr. Maria McColgan has a message for parents: Stop spanking your children.
And to those who insist they were spanked as youngsters and turned out just fine, the pediatrician says this: “Think about how much better you could have turned out if you weren’t.”
An adviser to Prevent Child Abuse Pennsylvania, McColgan cites research that shows spanking causes long-term harm to children. She wants parents to think about the kind of parents they want to be. She thinks parents, once they know how harmful spanking can be, will want to stop doing it.
But she and other child advocates opposed to physical punishment are swimming against a powerful current: the entrenched belief in America that there’s nothing wrong with spanking children.
No sparing the rod
Corporal punishment has been banned in 37 countries. Its use in schools is banned in 31 American states, including Pennsylvania. But spanking is often employed by American parents. In a Harris Poll last year, 81 percent of Americans said it’s sometimes appropriate for parents to spank their kids.
In a 2012 survey, 77 percent of men and 65 percent of women agreed that a child sometimes needs “a good, hard spanking,” according to Child Trends Data Bank.
In Lancaster County, spanking is common.
The Amish spank their very young children; so, too, do many fundamentalist Christians, who point to the verse in Proverbs that says a loving parent doesn’t spare the rod. “Spanking is what makes Amish children so nice,” says one mother in Donald B. Kraybill’s book, “The Riddle of Amish Culture,” a study of Lancaster County’s Amish community.
No marks allowed
Earlier this year, a Kansas lawmaker introduced a bill that would have given parents more latitude in administering physical punishment.
The bill would have allowed “up to 10 forceful applications in succession of a bare, open-hand palm against the clothed buttocks of a child.” It also would have allowed “reasonable physical force” to restrain a child during a spanking, “acknowledging that redness or bruising may occur on the tender skin of a child as a result.” That bill died in committee, according to The Wichita Eagle.
Now, in Kansas, as in Pennsylvania, parents generally are permitted to spank their children as long as they don’t cause bodily injury or leave any marks.
Aggressive behavior
The American Academy of Pediatrics is strongly opposed to spanking. Spanking was linked to mental illness in a study published in the journal Pediatrics in August 2012. That study found that “harsh physical punishment” was associated with “increased odds of mood disorders, anxiety disorders, alcohol and drug abuse, and several personality disorders.”
Dr. McColgan is the medical director of the child protection program at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children in Philadelphia. Spanking may work to immediately stop a child’s misbehavior, she said, but research has shown it leads to aggressive behavior in kids.
McColgan spoke recently at the One with Courage Children’s Summit, which was organized by the Lancaster County Children’s Alliance and Lancaster General Health’s Nurse-Family Partnership. She quoted an unknown writer who observed that if an adult hits another adult, it’s assault; if he hits an animal, it’s cruelty; if he hits a child, it’s called discipline.
‘Lifelong effect’
As a teaching strategy, physical punishment is ineffective, McColgan maintained.
As she noted at the One with Courage Summit, a brain’s first priority is survival. When pain is being inflicted on a child, the child’s brain simply won’t absorb any lesson a parent is seeking to impart by hitting that child.
“If you hit Johnny for taking away his sister’s toys, what is Johnny going to do when he goes to school and someone takes away his toys?” McColgan asked. Physical punishment, she said, doesn’t teach children how to behave. It “just teaches that violence is OK, that hitting is OK.”
And if it’s harsh and frequent, it’s a “toxic stressor” that can cause a child’s brain to develop differently, McColgan said. “We know that these things happening to children at a young age have a lifelong effect,” she said.
Spanking infants
Still, parents are spanking even very young children.
A University of Michigan study published this year found that 30 percent of 1-year-old children had been spanked at least once in the previous month.
Dr. Cathy Hoshauer said no lessons are taught when a parent spanks an infant. Hoshauer is a pediatrician with LGH Physicians Roseville Pediatrics. She conducts forensic medical evaluations for the Lancaster County Children’s Alliance, a children’s advocacy center.
In the critical first years of life, Hoshauer said, “If you’re being injured by someone who’s supposed to love you, how does that affect you?”
One study provided the answer: Young children who were spanked by their mothers were more prone to acting out; if spanked frequently by their fathers, they scored lower on vocabulary tests.
If parents want to gauge what's appropriate, Hoshauer said, they should apply the “neighbor” test. Would it be OK if your neighbor hits your 6-month-old on the bottom? Or your 3-year-old with a paddle? “If you wouldn’t want your neighbor slapping your 10-year-old son across the face, you should not,” she said.
Abuse survey
Only 17 percent – fewer than 1 in 5 – Pennsylvania adults thinks child abuse and neglect are "very serious" problems, according to a recent survey conducted by Franklin & Marshall’s Center for Opinion Research for the Pennsylvania Family Support Alliance.
People may not have a clear idea of just what constitutes abuse, child advocates say. Some adults think the term applies only to extreme cases in which a child’s bones are broken, or he is left bleeding, said Crystal Natan, executive director of Lancaster County Children & Youth Social Service Agency.
Until last December, Pennsylvania law defined child abuse as “serious” injury inflicted on a child.
The law now defines abuse as an "act or failure to act” that causes a child “bodily injury.”
The line between permissible corporal punishment and what might be perceived as child abuse is “very fine,” Natan said, adding, “I think it’s an easy line to cross.” Even if a father feels he’s in control, and isn’t spanking in anger, he’s likely to be much bigger and stronger than the child being disciplined so he can “easily bruise and harm a child,” Natan said. “It’s very easy for parents to possibly overstep.”
If the spanking “reaches a threshold where the child has bruising” or some other injury, and that injury is reported, Children & Youth is mandated to investigate, she said. “Do parents want to run that risk?” Natan asked. “Do they want to run the risk of the physical and emotional impact it would have on the child? I would not want to take that risk.”
Repercussions
An occasional swat to a child’s bottom is not going to be considered abuse, experts say.
But parents who use belts or switches or other implements in corporal punishment, and parents who spank their children frequently, are more likely to be abusive, research has shown. Abusive parents often were “mistreated as children,” Natan said, noting that for every person who says he was beaten as a kid and turned out fine, there’s “someone else out there who hasn’t done OK.”
One Lancaster woman, whose name is being withheld to protect her privacy, said she was often beaten with a shoe by her father when she was a child. There are “a lot of emotional repercussions when you get older,” she said. “It has an effect on your relationships.” She said that a man can’t even raise his voice to her now, or “I freak out.”
Now the mother of two young children, she said she does “everything I can” to avoid using any form of physical punishment, including spanking.
Differing views
John Greenway, an Elizabethtown father of three children ages 2 to 6, said he usually threatens to spank, but rarely does it.
“I won’t say that I don’t,” he said. “It depends on the circumstances.” Spanking shouldn’t ever be used to hurt a child, he said.
His wife, Lynn, said spanking is reserved for dangerous behavior; “sassy” behavior doesn’t qualify. Greenway said “sitting still lessons” are more commonly employed in their home. Requiring a child to sit on a chair for one minute per year of his age generally is “enough,” he said.
Rich Miller of Maytown has three kids, ages 5 months to 4 years. “We actually do not spank,” he said, noting that he thinks timeouts are a much more effective disciplinary method. “The spanking thing, I think, is a parent being frustrated.”
Suzanne Cassidy
1 June 2014
