Spanking harms children
Thank you to Division 37 members Elizabeth Gershoff, PhD, Cindy Miller-Perrin, PhD, Christina Rodriguez, PhD, and Mel Schneiderman, PhD for cultivating these resources.
Key facts
- There is no scientific evidence that spanking improves children’s behavior.
- There is consistent and strong evidence that spanking makes children’s behavior worse and increases the risk of a range of harms, including more mental health problems and poor school performance.
- The harms of spanking are universal: they have been replicated in countries all around the world, including low- and middle-income countries, and have been found consistently across race and ethnic groups within the United States.
- Although we cannot randomly assign children to experiments to test the impacts of spanking, numerous studies have used methods to approximate experiments that lend confidence to the conclusion that spanking causes harm to children.
- There is strong evidence that a number of interventions to change spanking-related parent attitudes and behaviors are effective.
Relevant resources
Gershoff, E. T., Goodman, G. S., Miller-Perrin, C. L., Holden, G. W., Jackson, Y., & Kazdin, A. E. (2018). The strength of the causal evidence against physical punishment of children and its implications for parents, psychologists, and policymakers. American Psychologist, 73(5), 626-638. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8194004/opens in new window
Gershoff, L., & Lee, S. (Eds.). (2020). Effective approaches to reducing physical punishment and teaching disciplinary alternatives: A guide for clinicians, practitioners, and policymakers. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Heilmann, A., Mehay, A., Watt, R. G., Kelly, Y., Durrant, J. E., van Turnhout, J., & Gershoff, E. T. (2021). Physical punishment and child outcomes: A narrative review of prospective studies. The Lancet, 398(10297), 355-364. https://www.thelancet.com/article/S0140-6736(21)00582-1/fulltextopens in new window
*Perrin, R., & Miller-Perrin, C., Bayston, L., & Song, J. (2023). Changing Physical Punishment Attitudes Using the Alternative Biblical Interpretation Intervention (ABII) Among First Generation Korean Protestants. International Journal on Child Maltreatment: Research, Policy and Practice, 6(1), 13-33.
Rodriguez, C. M., Lee, S. J., & Ward, K. P. (2021). Underlying mechanisms for racial disparities in parent-child physical and psychological aggression and child abuse risk. Child Abuse & Neglect, 17, 105089. doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2021.105089opens in new window
Date created: July 2024