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Looking through my old columns, I can confirm
that I haven’t written about spanking for over four years. That’s partly
because with children aged 14 and 15 it’s not an issue for us, but memories of
the figurative flogging I took from readers probably has something to do with
it. To the ferociously nonviolent, it’s a touchy subject.
To me the only thing that made sense in the 1997
University of New Hampshire study I wrote of was this definition: “The
use of physical force with the intention of causing a child to experience pain,
but not injury, for the purpose of correction or control of the child’s behavior.”
Like many similar reports, the study pegged spanking to
increased violent and anti-social behavior
in children.
New research at University of California, Berkeley,
of all places, begs to differ. “We found no evidence for unique detrimental
effects of normative physical punishment,” co-author Diana Baumrind told the
American Psychological Association last month. “I am not an advocate of
spanking, but a blanket injunction against its use is not warranted by the
evidence. It is reliance on physical punishment, not whether or not it is used
at all, that is associated with harm to the child.”
If writers were required to be an expert on everything they write
of, most could retire in about a week. However I just happen to have a little
personal experience with spanking. Millions of we baby boomers had our seats
dusted off in the interest of the greater good from time to time, and I have yet
to meet one who thought it did more harm than good.
The problem, I suspect, is that we live at a time when
6-year-olds are suspended for sexual harassment if they kiss a classmate and
students violate drug policies by taking a Midol. We’ve either lost the ability
to tell the difference between spanking and beating, gotten too lazy to try, or
too politically correct to care.
The anti-spanking research I’ve
read seems to count on this, along with the fact that some folks swallow what
they see in the media a mite easily. For instance, after quoting a particularly
obtuse statement from the American Civil Liberties Union last year I identified
the offending spokesman as a representative of “the Bizarro Planet chapter” of
the ACLU. I then explained that the Bizarro Planet was a mythical world in
Superman comics where everything meant the opposite of what it said, and copped
that the man was really from Texas. Honest to goodness, I received an indignant
reply from the ACLU denying they had a Bizarro Planet office.
The University of New Hampshire
study, swallowed whole by the press, turned out to consist solely of interviews
of mothers. Researchers based their conclusions on
two chats with each mom and the number of
spankings given in a one-week period by her only. They never actually met the
children.
The Berkeley project seems to have included
actual research. The study made a distinction between spanking and abuse – bold
in itself these days – and additionally weeded out “red zone” parents, who are
overly severe and impulsive but not legally abusive.
They found no significant differences in
behavior between children spanked seldom or moderately and those punished only
verbally. Interestingly, researchers “found correlations (to adjustment
problems) just as high, and sometimes higher, for total verbal punishment and
harm to the child, as for total physical punishment and harm.”
Most stable, loving parents can figure out a
proper mix of discipline on their own, by the seat of their pants (sorry)
without the help of experts. I suppose everyone has to make a living, but
except in clear-cut cases of abuse we should stow the specialists and leave
parenting to parents.
© 1997- 2002 Brent Morrison
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