Millennials and Generation X parents appear to be spanking their children less than previous generations, according to a research letter published Monday in the medical journal JAMA Pediatrics.
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“This article is truly impressive … and corresponds to our view that there has been a generational shift,” said child abuse pediatrician Dr. Robert Sege, lead author of the American Academy of Pediatrics policy statement on punishment. bodily.
“Younger people tend not to hit their children,” said Sege, who was not involved in the new study. “As we have become aware of the issues of domestic violence and intimate partner violence, there has been a growing rejection of any form of domestic violence, including spanking.”
Large sample of parents
The new analysis used data from the Monitoring the Future study, a national survey of 25 consecutive groups of high school graduates between 1993 and 2017. Each group was reevaluated 17 years later, at about age 35. The study excluded childless or older children and focused on parents with at least one biological child, adoptive child, or stepson ages 2 to 12 living at home part-time or full-time.
About 50% of parents reported spanking a child in 1993; For 2017, that number dropped to 35%. While that’s great news, that number is still too high by standards set by the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2018.
The group of pediatricians suggests that adults caring for children use “healthy forms of discipline,” such as positive reinforcement of appropriate behaviors, set limits and set expectations, and do not use spanking, hitting, slapping, threatening, name calling, humiliating or shame.
“Parents should never hit their child and never use verbal abuse that humiliates or embarrasses them,” said Sege, who heads the Tufts University Center for Community Medicine in Boston.
Pandemic stress
Schools, after-school programs, and daycare centers are often the “canary in the mine” reporters of possible domestic violence.
Required by law to report signs of abuse, such as bruises, cuts, broken bones, and emotional cues, the society has relied on mandatory reporters such as teachers and child care workers to alert authorities and trigger investigations. (Doctors, nurses, and police are also mandatory reporters.)
The pandemic has closed many of those avenues of complaint, leaving child advocates in the dark about what might be happening at home. A preliminary study during the first six weeks of the pandemic, conducted by the University of Oregon Rapid Assessment of the Impact of the Pandemic on Development, or RAPID, found an immediate increase in both caregiver stress and emotional and behavioral problems in children.
Since then, emotional and mental difficulties seem to have decreased for children and their parents, according to the survey, with key exceptions: stress indicators in low-income and single-parent households continued to increase as the weeks passed; Often the impact was more difficult for people of color.
To discover what’s happening across the country, the American Academy of Pediatrics and Child Abuse Prevention will begin a longitudinal study in August of how parents across the country are coping.
“We plan to really take an in-depth look at what positive experiences children are receiving? What are their adverse experiences and how do parenting practices change during all this?” Sege said.
“All of us who care about children are very concerned about what happens if fringe benefits, unemployment benefits and all of those things no longer exist,” he added. “The extent to which families can cope has been because they have financial support, they are not being evicted. They can put food on their tables.”
Spanking increases violence in children
Experts say making sure Americans don’t go back to corporal punishment is key. An increasing amount of research shows that the end results of corporal punishment may not be positive.
“The point of disciplining a child is to teach the child self-regulation when mom and dad are not around,” said Sege. “Spanking doesn’t do that.”
A meta-analysis of 75 studies on spanking found that it contributed to aggression, mental health and social esteem problems, and antisocial behavior in children, which were carried into adulthood.
Other studies have found that boys who are corporally punished also experience academic problems in schools and cognitive deficits and are more likely to be violent towards women later in life.
“What you see is a positive correlation between spanking and higher levels of behavior problems. If it was effective, you should see the opposite,” Rebecca Ryan, a developmental psychologist and associate professor at Georgetown University, told CNN in a previous interview.
Data from around the world supports that view.
Young people are less violent where corporal punishment is prohibited, according to a 2018 analysis of data from 88 countries, territories and states of the protectorate.
“Societies that have these bans appear to be safer places for children to grow up,” study lead author Frank Elgar, an associate professor at the Institute for Health and Social Policy at McGill University in Montreal, said in a previous interview.
Many argue that corporal punishment is required, Sege said, “to teach a child the right thing from the wrong thing, and if we don’t use corporal punishment, the kids will go crazy.”
If that was correct, Sege said, “the international result would be expected to be more violence among youth once a country prohibits corporal punishment. That is not what the evidence says here.”
“When parents and schools model violence, it tends to increase children’s willingness to fight, to become physically violent,” he said.
“I hope studies like these convince spanking people and that no other punishment is necessary to raise well-educated children.”
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