Spanking may appear at first sight, a gesture of correction quite innocuous. That said, spanking has been the subject of a very controversial debate in recent years. This kind of corporal punishment has negative effects on the psychological and social development of a child.
Traditional educational beliefs tend to assert that spankings do not really have harmful consequences, that they have on the contrary an educational virtue and serve to reframe a child in the right direction. However, the spankings are far from harmless, they are even harmful although their harmful consequences tend to be minimized
Spanking, a reproduction of what we experienced as a child?
A study conducted by the University of Texas Medical Branch and published in the Journal of Pediatrics, surveyed approximately 800 adults and found that most adults who behave violently in relationships have themselves undergone this kind of treatment that is spanking, by their parents.
"Regardless of whether someone was abused or not, spanking alone was predictive of dating violence," said Jeff Temple, lead author of the Psychiatry Professor study in the medical branch of the University of Toronto. Texas. "When a parent tries to make children behave better by hitting them, this parent tells them that hitting people who are smaller and weaker is an acceptable way to get what they want. wants ".
On the other hand, some irritated or tense parents come to hit their child in the hope of regaining control of the situation. However, spanking, shaking or even pinching a child are not effective forms of discipline. No study has actually shown that there were positive effects related to corporal punishment, quite the contrary.
Studies show the side effects of spanking
Education through educational violence and especially spanking, does not educate a child but creates emotional blockages because he is forced to cut his emotions and he records this violence as a good and healthy relationship.
Dr. Murray Strauss, an international sociologist and founder of the field of family violence research, has spent a major part of his career studying spanking and corporal punishment. For him, spanking was unquestionably associated with a subsequent aggression accumulated in children and a reduced heat between them and their parents, among other negative side effects.
He also conducted a joint study with Mallie Paschall, senior scientist at the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation on the Link between Spanking and IQ, which clearly showed after sampling of 806 older children 2-4 years and 704 children aged 5 to 9 for 4 years, the IQ of children aged 2 to 4 who had never been spanked was five percentage points higher than that of same age group being spanked. Children aged 5 to 9 who were not spanked scored 2.8 points higher four years later, compared to the same age group who received it.
In any case, the more spankings, the slower the development of the child's mental capacity.
Another expert study at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Michigan published in the Journal of Family Psychology reveals that children who have been spanked are more likely to challenge their parents and have antisocial behavior, mental health problems as well as cognitive difficulties. According to Grogan-Kaylor, co-author of the study, "The result of it is that spanking increases the likelihood of a wide variety of adverse outcomes for children. Spanking therefore triggers the opposite of what parents usually want to provoke. "
In conclusion, spanking is in no way a positive and constructive educational process for children, but rather an open door to psychic and emotional dysfunction.
