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In this article, the author begins the introduction by explaining corporal punishment. The author then discusses a study conducted by researchers at Idaho State University and describes how the outcome of the spank condition and the no-spank condition did not differ and that spanking is not necessary. The author then transitions to the long-term goals of parents who spank their children, it shows that spanking is no better than a less harsh punishment to achieve their long-term goal for the child. The author then talks about how corporal punishment may have an effect on the child's behavior and that they may start to act aggressive, and anti-social. The author starts to explain the unintended effects of corporal punishment, like the child may not fully develop because of getting spanked, that there are many negative effects of spanking, and that it does more harm than good. The author then goes on to explain the effects of spanking children who are in school and how many states have banned corporal punishments in schools. The author shows the negative and positive effects of corporal punishments in statistics an example of one is aggression (27/27). The author concluded that corporal punishment is no better than other methods of gaining immediate or long-term compliance, that corporal is not predictive of any intended positive outcomes for children and is very predictive of a range of negative unintended consequences like physical injury.

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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2021 Aug 25.

Published in final edited form as: Law Contemp Probl. 2010 Spring;73(2):31-56.

I. Introduction

The use of corporal punishment to discipline children remains one of the last holdouts of old-fashioned childrearing in the United States. Gone are the days of administering cod-liver oil to prevent rickets, spreading alcohol on babies' gums to dull teething pain, or even putting children to sleep on their stomachs to prevent choking on fluids-practices that have been repeated by generations of dutiful parents across centuries. The modern age of child-rearing experts has ushered in a new set of parenting techniques thought to promote optimal child development, including teaching children to use signs from American Sign Language to communicate before they are able to verbalize words, protecting children in fancy (and expensive) car seats that were unheard of even twenty years ago, and using time-out as a preferred means of discipline.

As a result of this long history, corporal punishment has a strong intergenerational tradition in the United States. Parents, after all, learn most of their lessons about how to be a parent from their own parents. It is thus not surprising that adults' support for corporal punishment is significantly related to whether they believe their own parents were supportive of the practice and whether they themselves were physically punished as children. Indeed, children and adolescents who are spanked themselves tend to be more supportive of corporal punishment than children who have not been spanked.

Although religious affiliation may explain why some parents continue to use corporal punishment as a means of discipline, a large and growing body of research has challenged the long-held assumption that spanking is a good, and perhaps even a necessary, way to make children better behaved. Despite popular parenting books that encourage parents to try nonphysical means of discipline, practices such as spanking continue throughout the country. Either the conclusions from research are not reaching parents, or they are actively rejecting them and siding with the strong tradition of corporal punishment outlined above.

This article summarizes the current state of knowledge about both the intended and unintended effects of corporal punishment on children. This knowledge base is built upon hundreds of research studies in the fields of psychology, medicine, sociology, social work, and education, each detailing the potential effects corporal punishment may have on children. It also relies heavily on the results of two empirical research syntheses, known as meta-analyses, which have summarized the research linking corporal punishment to specific child outcomes by statistically combining existing data to discern the average strength of the findings.

For this article, the term corporal punishment signifies noninjurious, openhanded hitting with the intention of modifying child behavior. The terms corporal punishment and physical punishment are synonymous: "physical punishment" is more commonly used among parents in the United States; "corporal punishment" is commonly used internationally and is used in the United States by teachers, principals, and policymakers. Parents tend to use a number of euphemisms to refer to punishment that involves striking their child, including "spank," "smack," "slap," "pop," "beat," "paddle," "punch," "whup" or "whip," and "hit." "Spanking" is the term used most commonly in the United States and typically refers to hitting a child on his or her buttocks with an open hand, although some parents may include hitting with objects in their definition of spanking. Throughout this article, "corporal punishment" refers not to the broader array of striking, however designated by parents, but specifically to spanking as so defined here and as administered by parents in the United States. Unless specified otherwise, the findings discussed below are direct associations between amount of corporal punishment and the child outcome in question and do not include controls for child or family demographic characteristics.

II. Intended Effects of Corporal Punishment

Parents have short- or long-term goals when they use corporal punishment to correct their child's misbehavior. Their short-term goal is typically to get the child to stop engaging in the unacceptable behavior-to get the child to comply. Yet other short-term goals might include getting the child's attention or quickly communicating to the child that the parent is in charge. Parents also have a variety of long-term goals in using corporal punishment, key among which are reducing the likelihood that the child will repeat the undesirable behavior and increasing the likelihood that the child will behave in socially acceptable ways. Parents report that they are most likely to use corporal punishment when their child's misbehavior involved engaging in unsafe behaviors, such as playing with matches, hurting someone else, as by hitting a sibling or a parent, or violating social norms, such as stealing money. Parents' key goals in using corporal punishment thus appear to be to increase their children's immediate and long-term compliance and to decrease their children's aggressive and antisocial behavior.

A. Short-Term Compliance

To know if corporal punishment is effective in the short term, we observe children's behavior immediately after punishment to see if their behavior changes as a result. Although corporal punishment is extremely prevalent, those parents who do use it do so rarely, for example, only eighteen times per year by parents of two-year-old children. Thus it is not feasible to observe families at home and wait to view an instance of corporal punishment. Rather, the best way to observe whether corporal punishment induces compliance is by observing children in a laboratory under controlled conditions. Current human-subjects-protection committees likely would never allow a study that randomly assigned parents to spank or hit their children. But in the 1980s, before today's stricter guidelines were put in place, a research team at Idaho State University conducted several studies with young children who were referred to psychological clinics for defiance and conduct problems. Parents and children were randomly assigned to a spank or no-spank condition. Parents were told to issue a series of commands to their child; when the child did not comply, the parent was instructed to have the child sit in a time-out chair. Parents under the spank condition were told to spank their child if he or she got up from a timeout chair, called the "parent-release condition." Parents under the no-spank condition were told to use a different technique if their child got up from the time-out chair, typically putting the child in a small time-out room with a barrier to prevent the child from getting out, known as the "barrier-enforcement condition." In other words, these studies examined whether spanking was an effective means of securing child compliance after the child had already defied the parent once and whether it was better than alternative methods.

In the first of four studies, the researchers found spanking in the "parent-release" condition to be significantly more effective at enforcing compliance to the time-out chair than just allowing the child to get up from the chair when they were ready to comply, known as the "child-release condition." In the second study, however, spanking was compared with the barrier-enforcement condition, and both techniques were found to be equally effective at securing the child's compliance. The researchers concluded, "There was no support for the necessity of the physical punishment ...components during initial training." A few paragraphs later, they went further in their conclusion:

Despite the limitations of barrier enforced time-outs for pre-school children, further research is certainly justified. Spanking young children for escape from a time-out chair is an aversive experience for child, mother, and therapist alike. If procedural difficulties could be overcome, substituting barrier enforcement procedures for physical punishment would be appealing.

A third study by this same research team again found no differences between spank and barrier-enforcement conditions, although both were better than the child-release condition. The authors did counsel against universally recommending spanking, particularly for parents with a history of physically abusing their children: "Finally, referred parents who have previously abused their children should be taught the Barrier procedure. No matter how carefully one might train the Spank procedure, it could be discriminative of more intense physical punishment. Since the Barrier procedure is usually effective, it is recommended for parents from such populations." This quote raises the question-if the barrier-enforcement condition is equally effective and does not carry the risk of escalation into physical injury for the child, why not recommend barrier enforcement of time-outs for everyone?

Finally, in the fourth study, spanking was again found to be no more effective than the barrier-enforcement strategy. The author concluded, "[P]hysical punishment was not an important component of compliance-training procedures." The author clearly had reservations about recommending physical punishment to parents and clinicians and went on to list the negative unintended consequences of physical punishment: "Unfortunately, physical punishment, which is often used to enforce chair timeouts, models aggression, may provoke aggressive child reactions ... clearly distresses the child (e.g., the effect on timeout disruption), and appears less acceptable to parents than room timeouts ...." To summarize across these studies, although corporal punishment was effective at getting children to comply in the laboratory situation, it was not significantly better at doing so than the barrier-enforcement time-out strategy. Citing risks for harm to children, the researchers express reservations about corporal punishment while noting its effectiveness.

How do we square these two sets of findings? It is indeed possible for both things to be true: When corporal punishment is compared with no back-up discipline, it is effective in securing compliance; yet when it is compared with a barrier time-out back-up, a spanking back-up is no more effective than the time-out method. Corporal punishment is thus better than doing nothing, but it is not better than alternative means of discipline that do not carry the risks of physical injury to the child or of increasing child aggression.

B. Long-Term Compliance

Taken together, these results indicate that corporal punishment is not better than other discipline methods at promoting long-term compliance or moral internalization (that is, the child's internalizing positive moral values), and in fact may be worse by decreasing these positive behaviors, thus having an effect on child behavior that is opposite of what parents intended.

C. Reduced Long-Term Aggressive and Antisocial Behavior

Most of this research is not longitudinal or experimental in nature, and thus it is difficult to know definitively whether corporal punishment causes children to be more aggressive and antisocial, or whether aggressive and antisocial children elicit more corporal punishment from their parents. One approach to isolating the parent-to-child effect is to include initial levels of children's aggressive or antisocial behaviors in statistical models with longitudinal data in order to account for their co-occurrence with corporal punishment. Such a statistical design allows researchers to examine whether early corporal punishment predicts an increase or decrease in children's later problem behaviors, once their level of early problem behaviors has been taken into account. Longitudinal studies using such a design have found that both initial levels of, and changes in, corporal punishment over the course of childhood continue to predict increases in children's aggressive or antisocial behavior even controlling for initial levels of such behaviors (as well as for social-demographic characteristics such as race, gender, or family socioeconomic status).

D. Summary of Intended Effects

Parents' goals in using corporal punishment, as in using any form of discipline, are to put an end to inappropriate or undesirable behavior and to promote positive and acceptable behavior in both the short and long terms. The research summarized above indicates that there is very little evidence that corporal punishment is more effective than other techniques in securing immediate child compliance. By contrast, a consistent body of evidence reveals that more corporal punishment by parents is associated with less long-term compliance and pro-social behavior and with more aggression and antisocial behavior. Taken together, these studies demonstrate that corporal punishment does not have the effects parents intend when using it and in fact has the reverse effect of increasing undesirable behaviors.

III. Unintended Effects of Corporal Punishment

The previous section summarized research on the child behaviors parents intend to affect by using corporal punishment. What many parents, and the public, are not aware of is that corporal punishment has been associated with a range of undesirable effects on children's development that were not at all what parents intended.

A. Physical Injury and Abuse

The act of corporal punishment involves delivering a certain amount of momentary pain, but typically not lasting pain or injury, to the child. Although most parents would not otherwise intentionally cause their child to experience pain, from animal research we know that it is the very pain of corporal punishment that functions as the punisher, and it is this pain that makes children less likely to engage in that same behavior in order to avoid the pain in the future. Because corporal punishment involves physical force applied to a child to the point that he or she experiences pain, and because parents are larger and stronger than children, there is always the potential for injury, even by well-intentioned parents.

Interviews with physically abusive parents about the abusive events for which they were referred to child-protective services expose a startling and compelling theme: Nearly two-thirds of the abusive incidents began as acts of corporal punishment meant to correct a child's misbehavior. The authors of a review of 830 substantiated cases of abuse observed that "no factor was so universal, so ubiquitous, as some identifiable behavior on the part of the child which precipitated the parent-child interactional sequence culminating in abuse." A review of physical-abuse cases in the 2003 Canadian Incidence Study of Child Maltreatment revealed that seventy-five percent of these substantiated cases were intended by the parents to be corporal punishment. Similarly, an older review of maltreatment cases in the United States found that sixty-three percent of the incidents of physical abuse developed out of intentional corporal punishment. A study of abusive parents in Mexico found that these were more likely than a group of comparison nonabusive parents to use conventional corporal punishment (for example, spanking or slapping) and to use more-severe methods (for example, kicking, biting, or burning), which suggests that more-frequent and more-severe use of corporal punishment makes physical abuse of children significantly more likely.

What these findings make clear is that most physical abuse is not inflicted by a sadistic parent whose behaviors are not contingent on the child's behaviors; rather, most physically abusive events begin as corporal punishment intended to discipline a child but that escalate to the point of injury. These findings are also consistent with theories of physical abuse proposing that abuse occurs when some trigger, such as a parent's emotional state or stress level, causes what was intended to be corporal punishment to escalate to unintended levels of intensity.

Empirical research has found that parents' risk for abusing their children increases significantly the more frequently they corporally punish their child. A meta-analysis of ten studies found a strong association between use of corporal punishment and risk for physical abuse. This finding has been replicated in several studies since. A study of English and Welsh families found that parents who used corporal punishment were two and one-half times more likely to physically abuse their children than parents who did not use corporal punishment, while a study in Québec found that parents who spanked were at seven times greater risk of abusing their children (as by punching or kicking). In a study of toddlers in the United States, the more parents used nonabusive corporal punishment (for example, spanking and slapping), the more likely they were to engage in abusive behaviors (for example, beating the child up or punching them with a fist). A large regional survey in the southeastern United States found that parents who had spanked their children were twice as likely as parents who had not spanked their children to engage in severe and potentially injurious behaviors (for example, beating, burning, kicking); parents who used an object to spank their child were almost nine times as likely as those who did not to engage in potentially abusive behaviors. These assaults by parents have dire consequences: parents who spanked their child in the month before they were interviewed were 2.3 times as likely as those who had not spanked to report their child had been injured in the first year of life so badly that he or she required medical attention.

The repeated finding that corporal punishment increases the risk for physical abuse is consistent with the notion of a continuum of violence against children that ranges from minor to severe. In contrast to the few researchers who have argued against such a continuum, the evidence that corporal punishment and physical abuse are not distinct and are in fact variations of the same action toward a child is indisputable. Indeed, an attempt to differentiate instances of corporal punishment from substantiated cases of physical abuse in Canada found no child-level or contextual factors distinguished between noninjurious and injurious assaults.

Beyond the world of academia, the continuum of violence against children is clearly and authoritatively codified in state laws on child maltreatment. The potential for corporal punishment to escalate into injurious behavior that constitutes physical abuse is recognized in the language of child-maltreatment legislation in several states. For example, a Nevada statute states explicitly, "Excessive corporal punishment may constitute abuse or neglect. Excessive corporal punishment may result in physical or mental injury constituting abuse or neglect of a child under the provisions of this chapter." An Ohio statute related to the endangerment and abuse of children forbids an adult to "[a]dminister corporal punishment or other physical disciplinary measure, or physically restrain the child in a cruel manner or for a prolonged period, which punishment, discipline, or restraint is excessive under the circumstances and creates a substantial risk of serious physical harm to the child." Both Nevada and Ohio recognize that corporal punishment, even that begun with the intent to discipline a child, can become abusive if it is "excessive." Thus, parents who spank too long or too hard can be found to have abused their child regardless of their intention that it be discipline.

The conclusion to be drawn from the research, interviews with abusive parents, and state definitions of abuse is clear: connections between corporal punishment and physical abuse are recognized both empirically and legally.

B. Mental-Health Problems

Parents who administer corporal punishment are unlikely to be thinking that they might be undermining their children's mental health. Yet a series of research studies has found that, despite parents' conscious intentions, this is indeed the case. One summary of the literature found that use of corporal punishment by parents was associated with more mental-health problems in all twelve studies examined. In particular, the more frequently or severely children are spanked or hit, the more likely they are to have symptoms of depression or anxiety, both at the time they are corporally punished and in the future. This finding has been documented in countries as disparate as Hungary, Jamaica, Mongolia, Norway, and the United States.

One explanation for these findings is that corporal punishment increases stress in the short-term-stress that, if repeated and accumulated over time, can lead to the development of mental-health problems. The process begins early: the more often mothers reported spanking or slapping their one-year-old children, the more their children had elevated levels of the stress hormone cortisol in reaction to an anxiety-provoking interaction involving their mothers. The association of corporal punishment with stress continues into adolescence, with ten- to sixteen-year-olds reporting more psychological distress the more frequently they report being corporally punished.

C. Eroded Quality of Children's Relationships with Their Parents

D. Reduced Cognitive Ability

Researchers have recently begun to turn their attention beyond children's social development to their cognitive development as another domain potentially affected by corporal punishment. Although the reasoning behind a potential connection has not been well articulated, a small but growing number of studies have documented links between the frequency with which parents use corporal punishment and impairments in children's cognitive abilities. A study of middle-school-aged children found that those who were physically punished by their parents scored significantly lower on a brief measure of IQ than children who were not, with children whose parents physically punished them frequently exhibiting the lowest levels of IQ. In a similar finding with younger children, one-year-olds whose parents relied on corporal punishment had significantly lower scores on a standardized test of mental abilities than did children whose parents used corporal punishment rarely or never. A measure of harsh punishment that combined corporal punishment with yelling predicted lower IQ scores among girls in a low-income sample. In a study in the United Kingdom, the school achievement of early elementary-school children was negatively associated with parents' use of corporal punishment, whereas a U.S. study of five-year-olds found that corporal punishment predicted lower levels of language comprehension but was not significantly associated with nonverbal reasoning.

Notably, though, a significant association between corporal punishment and children's cognitive abilities has not always been replicated across studies. In studies of math and reading achievement, grade-point average, and intelligence, corporal punishment was not significantly related to children's cognitive ability. More research is needed to help explain the inconsistent findings to date, but they do suggest that concern about effects on children's cognitive abilities may be well placed.

E. Increased Adult Aggression and Antisocial Behavior

F. Summary of Unintended Effects

Clearly, not every child who is spanked or slapped will develop all, or indeed any, of these negative outcomes. However, as the rather daunting litany of unintended negative effects summarized above makes abundantly clear, corporal punishment puts children at risk for both short- and long-term negative effects. When paired with the findings summarized above-that corporal punishment is no more effective than other techniques at achieving immediate compliance, and is in fact more likely to increase the negative child behaviors that parents intend to decrease by using corporal punishment-the risks far outweigh any benefits. Put plainly, corporal punishment of children does more harm than good.

IV. Effects of Corporal Punishment on Children in Schools

Although children in the United States receive much more corporal punishment from their parents than from their teachers and principals, the number of children receiving corporal punishment at school is nontrivial, particularly given high rates in some states. According to the office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education, a total of 223,190 school children were corporally punished by school personnel during the 2006 through 2007 school year. Among states that allow corporal punishment in schools, prevalence rates range from 0% in Wyoming to 7.5% of all schoolchildren in Mississippi (38,131 out of 508,397 students).

Given that almost a quarter-million children per year are corporally punished in schools, it is particularly surprising that there is no peer-reviewed empirical research on the impacts of school-administered corporal punishment on children. This lack of empirical evidence has not stopped school personnel and policymakers from arguing that school corporal punishment improves student behavior and achievement. In a recent example, an elementary school principal in Calhoun Hills, South Carolina, attributed his school's improvements in achievement to his having reinstituted paddling misbehaving students with a two-foot long wooden paddle, not to his use of rewards and praise mentioned elsewhere in the article.

The policy debate about school corporal punishment has largely been one of opinions and similar anecdotal evidence. For example, a social scientist who was serving as a parent on a school task-force about corporal punishment documented such a debate within an Ohio school district in which principals' anecdotal reports took precedence over research evidence. This reliance on personal experience over empirical data is in part a function of the dearth of information about school corporal punishment in this country.

Corporal punishment in schools remains constitutional in the United States based on the 1977 Ingraham v. Wright Supreme Court decision that the Eighth Amendment does not apply to corporal punishment administered by school personnel, although the Court's interpretation of this Amendment as restricted to prisoners has been challenged as an overly narrow reading that is not consistent with the previous English and American laws upon which it was based. Despite the Court's ruling that school corporal punishment is constitutional, thirty states and the District of Columbia have passed laws to ban the practice from public schools; two of these states (Iowa and New Jersey) also have banned corporal punishment from private schools. The majority of Americans are not in favor of corporal punishment in schools: two national polls in 2002 and 2005 found that 72% and 77% of American adults, respectively, said they did not think teachers should be allowed to spank children in school. There are movements to ban school corporal punishment in the remaining states that continue to permit it; in 2007 alone, bills to ban school corporal punishment were introduced in the legislatures of North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas. Although the bills sparked debate in their respective states, the North Carolina bill failed and the Texas bill was not brought up for a vote. In July 2009, Ohio became the thirtieth state to ban corporal punishment from public schools after the governor included a ban in the state's biennial budget bill.

Unlike corporal punishment in homes, in which parents typically spank children with a bare hand, corporal punishment in schools is typically administered with objects such as large wooden paddles. The use of such an instrument-which would be considered a weapon if wielded by one adult against another adult-by its very nature includes a substantial risk for harm and injury to a child. Indeed, in Ingraham, in which the Court asserted students have "little need for the protection of the Eighth Amendment" and so permitted corporal punishment in schools to continue, the Court acknowledged that paddling may have caused the injuries suffered by two junior-high-school children in that case, including a subdural hematoma requiring medical attention. That the same injuries inflicted via parental punishment would necessitate a child's being removed from her home by the state but would not be considered evidence of child abuse when administered as punishment by a state school administrator is indeed troubling.

V. Strength of the Research

Hundreds of studies have plumbed the relation between parents' use of corporal punishment and children's development. The studies reviewed in the previous two sections have looked both at the intended and positive potential outcomes of corporal punishment as well as at its unintended and negative potential outcomes. The conclusion was that, even when researchers had set out to link corporal punishment with positive and desirable outcomes, results have consistently shown that corporal punishment appears not to be successful in achieving these aims. In the most comprehensive meta-analysis published to date, the separate analyses of eleven different outcomes overwhelmingly found negative associations with corporal punishment (number of studies out of the total that found negative impacts follows each outcome in parentheses): immediate compliance (2/5), moral internalization (13/15), aggression (27/27), delinquent and antisocial behavior (12/13), quality of the parent-child relationship (13/13), child mental-health problems (12/12), physical abuse of the child (10/10), adult aggression (4/4), adult criminal and antisocial behavior (4/5), adult mental-health problems (8/8), and adult abuse of one's own child or spouse (5/5). In total, 110 out of the 117 effect sizes (94%) found that corporal punishment was associated with an undesirable outcome.

The bulk of the criticism of the empirical research on corporal punishment comes from two researchers, Diana Baumrind and Robert Larzelere. Although these two authors are both prolific and vociferous, their opinions should not be mistaken for the views of the mainstream researchers in the fields of psychology, medicine, or education. They find fault with the research showing negative outcomes of corporal punishment and point to studies that fail to find statistically significant negative outcomes. But they are equally unable to cite a body of research showing positive long-term outcomes of corporal punishment, for such a body of research does not exist. Despite the lack of empirical evidence for their position, these authors criticized the Gershoff meta-analysis cited above and concluded that, even though negative outcomes were associated with corporal punishment in ninety-four percent of the studies, the research to date did "not justify a blanket injunction against mild to moderate disciplinary spanking." Elsewhere, Larzelere has argued that the research cannot be trusted because it is based primarily on correlational data. Such an assertion indicates that the author will never be convinced by the available data because it is impossible to study parents' use of everyday spanking in an experimental fashion. Although randomized studies with treatment and control groups are the "gold standard" of the basic and medical sciences, children cannot be randomly assigned to parents in experimental designs, nor, since the 1980s, have institutional review boards approved studies that randomly assign parents to spank or not spank their own children. However, parenting researchers work diligently to make up for the lack of experimental designs by creating carefully selected and representative samples of families and by employing a range of new statistical methods that make better estimates of causal parameters from observational data.

How does the statistical evidence against spanking compare with that against cigarette smoking? The average correlation between smoking and lung cancer is .40, which is a moderately large effect in the standards of research. The average correlation between spanking and physical abuse of children is .33, and that between spanking and heightened child aggression is .18. The correlation between spanking and immediate compliance is actually higher than that for smoking and lung cancer, namely .49, but this result is overly influenced by one study that found a very strong relationship but only compared eight children who were spanked with eight who were not spanked.

One other charge typically leveled against the research on corporal punishment is that it ignores cultural differences in the acceptance of corporal punishment and that such differences may mean it has differential effects on children. Some have argued that corporal punishment will have fewer negative effects on children in cultures in which corporal punishment is normative, in part because children accept its use as expected and thus do not react as negatively when they experience it. To date, the majority of research looking into culture as a moderator of the potentially negative effects of corporal punishment has focused on families' race or ethnicity as a marker of their culture. Several of these studies have indeed found that some cultural groups, such as African Americans, spank their children more often, and others have indeed found that spanking is associated with less-aggressive behavior in African American children than in European American children. Yet a growing number of studies using large, nationally representative samples have failed to find race-ethnic differences and instead have found that corporal punishment predicts increases in children's aggressive and antisocial behaviors equally across African American, Hispanic American, European American, and Asian American race-ethnic groups. Parenting experts and prominent figures within the African American community in particular have challenged the notion that their culture all but requires parents to spank their children and have encouraged African American parents to rely on positive disciplinary techniques rather than on physical means of correction.

Although the debate over intranational cultural differences has largely occurred only within the United States, research from other countries has consistently found negative outcomes associated with corporal punishment. In a multinational study of six countries-namely China, India, Italy, Kenya, Philippines, and Thailand-more-frequent use of corporal punishment was associated with more child aggression across all six countries. The study noted modest moderation of these associations by mothers' and children's perceptions of the norms in their communities, but corporal punishment remained associated with more child aggression even in countries with high norms. Of the studies associating corporal punishment with more child aggression and antisocial behavior in countries throughout Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, one conducted in Mongolia found corporal punishment to predict more behavior problems and depression among adolescents; their findings led the authors to conclude,

The findings suggest that similar forces may be at work in the development of pathology in non-Western settings.... Our findings raise questions regarding the cultural relativity of behavior. Despite beliefs by certain cultural and religious groups that corporal punishment is an acceptable tool to discipline a child, this study suggests that even in a culture where spanking and slapping by parents and teachers is considered acceptable, it may still have damaging effects on child mental illness.

Such studies finding negative outcomes associated with corporal punishment around the world appear to undermine, and indeed to challenge, the notion that the practice is "good" for children in certain cultures, even in ones with a history of violence.

VI. Conclusion: The Role of Social Science Research in Policy and Law on Corporal Punishment

In an ideal world, policymaking would always be informed by scientific research and be evidence-based. But it is disingenuous to think that just because scientific research suggests something to be so that policymakers will accept the conclusions of the research and craft new policies based on it-policy is often not consistent with research findings. Compounding the general suspicion of scientific research in political circles is the fact that scientists are typically loathe to get their feet wet in the muddy waters of policymaking, particularly for such a hot-button issue as parents' use of corporal punishment.

In contrast to those in the United States, legislative bodies around the world have not been deterred by the controversial nature of corporal punishment. Beginning with Sweden's ban in 1979, the last thirty years have seen a total of twenty-nine countries ban outright the practice of corporal punishment of children by parents, teachers, or any other adult in those countries. Half of these bans have been enacted in the last five years by countries beyond northern and central Europe, including Costa Rica, Kenya, New Zealand, Uruguay, and Venezuela. Most, if not all, of these bans have been hotly debated in the respective lawmaking bodies of these countries. Notably, the extant bans have been inspired largely by concern for children's human rights to protection from harm and have often proceeded without a majority of public support. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is the main treaty cited as providing protection for children from violence; the Committee on the Rights of the Child has unambiguously stated that the treaty's Article 19 includes protection from corporal punishment. The United States is one of only two countries that have not ratified the treaty; the other is Somalia.

The research evidence has led many leading professional organizations to call for a ban on corporal punishment in schools, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Bar Association, the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, the National Association of Elementary School Principals, the National Association of Social Workers, and Prevent Child Abuse America. Fewer such organizations have called for an outright ban of corporal punishment in American homes, although prominent professional organizations including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association have endorsed a recent report summarizing the research to date and recommending parents avoid its use.

It is ironic that research that has been conducted primarily in the United States is informing legal and policy changes in other countries before it has any impact here. Those who continue to argue that there is not enough evidence to support a "blanket injunction against ... spanking" do so in the face of a large and consistent body of research from countries around the world that leads to two clear conclusions. First, corporal punishment is no better than other methods of discipline at gaining immediate or long-term child compliance. Second, corporal punishment is not predictive of any intended positive outcomes for children and, in contrast, is significantly predictive of a range of negative, unintended consequences, with the demonstrated risk for physical injury being the most concerning. On balance, the risk for harm from corporal punishment far outweighs any short-term good. It is discouraging that such a strong and compelling body of research evidence has not been sufficient to warrant policy change in this country, even though the federal government has accepted responsibility for protecting children from harm and abuse. Despite this evidence and the waning use of corporal punishment in the United States, a majority of parents continue to use it at some point with their children. If reducing corporal punishment becomes a policy and public health goal in this country, meeting such a goal will require education campaigns targeted at both parents and professionals. As countries such as Sweden have demonstrated, public opinion about corporal punishment lags behind legislation banning the practice, and indeed it is the passage of legislation that can begin or sustain attitude change against corporal punishment. Education campaigns on the harms of and alternatives to corporal punishment are clearly needed here in the United States, but it may take a legal ban to spur dramatic change in Americans' attitudes about and use of corporal punishment.

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MORE HARM THAN GOOD: A SUMMARY OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH ON THE INTENDED AND UNINTENDED EFFECTS OF CORPORAL PUNISHMENT ON CHILDREN

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Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2021 Aug 25. Published in final edited form as: Law Contemp Probl. 2010 Spring;73(2):31-56. The use of corporal punishment to discipline children remains one of the last holdouts of old-fashioned childrearing in the United States.

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The author starts off the article by giving us a glimpse of what the topic of the article is going to be. The author then gives us a quote from a professor from Harvard University stating " We know that spanking is not effective and can be harmful for children's development and increases the chance of mental health issues. With these new findings, we also know it can have potential impact on brain development, changing biology, and leading to lasting consequences." They then go into a study called "Corporal Punishment and Elevated Response to Threat in Children" and tell us how this study found that children that have been spanked have higher response levels in environments of threat than kids who have not been spanked, and saying that spanking can altar children's brain function in similar ways of maltreatment. The author then gives us more detail of the study and tells us how children who were spanked had similar brain responses to more threatening experiences like sexual abuse, and that they had higher responses to things that most people would consider non-threatening. The next topic on the article starts off with a quote that says "Preschool aged children - and even adults- [ who have been spanked] are more likely to develop anxiety or depression disorders or have more difficulties engaging positively in schools and skills of regulation, which we know are necessary to be successful in educational settings." The author then goes to tell us how spanking in some schools is still common then tells three ways to completely stop spanking.

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In this article the author firstly talks about inappropriate discipline methods like physically hitting a child, yelling or belittling a child, humiliating them, depriving them of food or drinks, etc. They then go on to give us tips of how to positively correct a child's behavior, including how to calm yourself down. The author then goes into how someone might fail to report something that they may have seen and how to go about reporting that.

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Most early childhood education and care professionals are well-equipped to guide children's behaviour in a positive and constructive manner. This is a core aspect of our training and something we must demonstrate a deep understanding of to earn our early education credentials.

Understanding what constitutes 'inappropriate discipline' (as referenced in QA5 of the NQF), along with the legal obligations to report it, is also crucial for ensuring the delivery of high-quality early education and care, and for safeguarding the well-being of all children in ECEC spaces.

What is inappropriate discipline?

The word discipline comes from the Latin word disciplina, which means instruction or training. In its true sense, discipline is about guiding and teaching children how to understand boundaries, self-regulate, and learn the consequences of their actions in a constructive and supportive way. It focuses on helping children develop the skills they need to manage their behaviour and emotions, rather than punishing them for mistakes.
Inappropriate discipline contradicts the essence of what true discipline should be. Instead of guiding or teaching, inappropriate discipline imposes fear or negative consequences, which can have long-lasting effects on a child's emotional and social development.
Inappropriate discipline may involve physical punishment, humiliation, unreasonable restraint, or other harmful practices.

The Australian Children's Education & Care Quality Authority (ACECQA) provides a fact sheet detailing examples of inappropriate discipline which include:

hitting, pushing, slapping, pinching or biting a child

force-feeding a child

yelling at or belittling a child

humiliating a child

physically dragging a child

locking children away (or isolating them)

depriving a child of food or drink

unreasonable restraining of a child (this may include restraint in a high chair)

excluding children from events

consistently moving children to the office or other space away from the play areas

moving children to another room as punishment

verbally or physically threatening a child

(Source: ACECQA)

Tips for appropriate behaviour guidance

Behaviour is a powerful form of communication for children, especially since young children may still be developing the verbal skills to express their emotions or needs.

When a child displays behaviours that others find challenging, it is essential for educators to look beyond the surface and understand what the child is trying to communicate.

Behaviour might reflect unmet needs, such as frustration, anxiety, or feeling overwhelmed, and it often signals that something is happening to or for the child. When educators see behaviour as communication, they can foster positive relationships and help children navigate their emotions, ultimately supporting their social and emotional development in a meaningful way (and one that is not linked to punishment).

Here are some tips: (download the tip sheet here)

Regulate your own emotions: It's challenging to co-regulate with children when you are feeling dysregulated yourself. Take time to understand what triggers your emotional responses and work on managing these. It's okay to step back and let someone else take the lead if you're not in the right headspace to help. Return when you're ready to provide the support the child needs.

Understand the 'why': Instead of focusing solely on the behaviour, try to understand the underlying reasons for it. Avoid labeling children negatively, as behaviour is learned and can be unlearned or redirected.

Provide support while cooling down: It's unrealistic to expect children to manage their emotions on their own. Simply telling them to 'calm down' is not effective-imagine how you'd feel in a stressful situation if someone said that to you. Stay close to the child so that they know you're in that space and ready for them when they're ready. Get to know the child and what they need in those moments.

Empower children with options: Giving children the ability to make decisions fosters independence and supports their growing autonomy. When children feel like they have control over certain aspects of their day, such as choosing between activities, deciding what to wear, or selecting their snack, it reduces feelings of powerlessness and frustration.

Recognise neurodiversity and different learning styles: Keep in mind that certain behaviours might be particularly challenging for neurodivergent children, and some children in your care may be undiagnosed.

A highly active child may struggle to sit still during group time. In such cases, consider offering alternatives, like splitting the group so some children can listen to the story while others play nearby. If the whole group prefers to play, ensure your story time is engaging and relevant enough to capture their attention, so that they feel naturally drawn in.

Move away from reward-based systems: These can suggest that only children who display 'desirable' behaviours are worthy of recognition. Instead, focus on intrinsic motivation, encouraging all children to feel valued for their unique contributions.

Focus on role modelling the behaviours you wish to see: Children learn by watching how behaviours are demonstrated and applied in real-life situations.

Be explicit in teaching about behaviour: Engage in conversations with children about behaviour and its effects on others, helping them understand that their actions can impact the feelings of those around them. This can be achieved through storytelling, role-playing, or using puppets to model real-life situations.

Support children in identifying and naming their feelings: Helping children understand and label their emotions is crucial for emotional development. Encourage them to talk about how they feel, and offer the language and tools they need to express themselves effectively. This can reduce frustration and build stronger emotional resilience.

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A quick overview of the legal obligations surrounding this topic

Misunderstandings about what constitutes acceptable and unacceptable behaviour guidance strategies can lead to breaches of legal requirements, such as Section 166 of the National Law 'Offence to use inappropriate discipline'.

Some approved providers may be unaware of their notification and reporting obligations. Similarly, a lack of understanding of child protection policies and procedures, or their reporting responsibilities, can lead to serious oversights.

Lack of awareness of the role of the approved provider in regard to notifications to the regulatory authority, as outlined in R175 (d) and (e), can result in failure to report serious incidents. R175(d) mandates reporting any incident where the approved provider reasonably believes that physical or sexual abuse of a child or children has occurred or is occurring while under the care of the service. R175(e) further extends this to include allegations of such abuse. These requirements exclude allegations already notified under section 174(2)(b) of the National Law. Additionally, approved providers must be mindful of their role as a head of entity under the Reportable Conduct Scheme.

Some examples of how this can play out in services include:

Educators witnessing another team member's interactions with children that breach Section 166 regarding inappropriate discipline but feeling too fearful to report it.

Poor understanding of what constitutes reportable conduct, leading to a failure to act on or report harmful practices.

Insufficient induction processes for new educators, resulting in a lack of awareness of legal requirements and child protection policies.

The Education and Care Services National Law Act 201 0 requires early childhood education and care services to prioritise children's safety and well-being.

Similarly, the Education and Care Services National Regulations (2011) require early childhood education and care services to maintain a safe and supportive environment for all children through clear policies and procedures (R168) and provide child positive guidance and encouragement toward acceptable behaviour ( R155).

These include promoting a culture of child safety, enforcing a code of conduct for staff, ensuring respectful and supportive interactions with children. The regulations also mandate that services have a system for handling complaints, especially those involving allegations of harmful behaviour It enforces that to be able to achieve this, all team members must have an awareness of child protection law (R84).

Reporting inappropriate discipline

Ethical dilemmas and fears of reporting are often the reasons educators hesitate to report inappropriate discipline. These barriers can stem from relationships with colleagues, power dynamics, or a lack of understanding about what constitutes inappropriate discipline.

To create a more open and supportive culture, it is essential to:

Foster a culture of safety and protection within the service.

Reinforce the importance of child protection policies and procedures.

Provide clear guidance on how to report inappropriate discipline.

Offer emotional support to educators who may fear the consequences of reporting (this could be through an external service such as an Employee Assistance Program or EAP.

A robust induction process and clear codes of conduct are vital in ensuring that all educators are aware of their legal and ethical obligations from the outset. Continually reinforcing the importance of child-focused relationships and child-safe environments can support educators in making the right decisions when it comes to behaviour guidance.

Conclusion

Understanding what constitutes inappropriate discipline is not just an ethical concern-it is a legal requirement. Educators, teachers, nominated supervisors and approved providers have a responsibility to safeguard the children in their care/service, and this includes incorporating appropriate behaviour guidance strategies.

By fostering a culture of safety, providing ongoing training, and supporting educators in their roles, early education services can ensure that all children are protected from harm and given the opportunity to thrive.

Further resources relating to this topic:

Dr Kaylene Henderson - Discipline vs punishment (video via Facebook)

ACECQA - Inappropriate discipline (pdf)

Office of the Children's Guardian - Reportable Conduct Scheme

CELA - Behaviour guidance tip sheets

CELA professional development relating to this topic
FIND OUT MORE
About Aline

CELA RTO manager and child protection specialist

Aline is an education sector professional with over 17 years of experience working across different sector levels; from early childhood to middle years, high school and vocational education. Aline has a background in art education and has worked with welfare projects to support closing the gap of access to the arts in low socioeconomic areas in South America.

Aline has extensive experience in vocational training and has held roles such as trainer and assessor, work placement coordinator and RTO operations manager for independent and not-for-profit Registered Training Organisations.

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How to recognise inappropriate discipline plus tips for positive behaviour guidance

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Amplify! ensures that you stay informed about issues that impact you and your service, in a language that makes sense.

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The author starts off the article by telling us how physical discipline does not improve a child's behavior, and only teaches the child not to do the bad behavior in front of their parents. They also tell us that hitting a child does not help at all and gives them emotional, behavioral, and academic problems over time. They then go on to tell us some reasons why parents spank their children, like the parent may not know another way to discipline the child, because that was the way that they were disciplined too. They then give us alternatives for discipline like redirecting the child's attention so that do not act out.

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APA adopted a new policy about the ineffectiveness and dangers of physical discipline against children to raise awareness among parents, caregivers and mental health professionals.

The Resolution on Physical Discipline of Children By Parents, adopted by APA's Council of Representatives in February, relies on strong and sophisticated longitudinal research that finds physical discipline does not improve behavior and can lead to emotional, behavioral and academic problems over time, even after race, gender and family socioeconomic status have been statistically controlled.

To start, the research finds that hitting children does not teach them about responsibility, conscience development and self-control. "Hitting children does not teach them right from wrong," says Elizabeth Gershoff, PhD, an expert on the effects of corporal punishment on children who provided research for the resolution. "Spanking gets their attention, but they have not internalized why they should do the right thing in the future. They may behave when the adult is there but do whatever they want at other times."

In addition, children learn from watching their parents. Parents who use physical discipline may be teaching their child to resolve conflicts with physical aggression. Researchers found that spanking can elevate a child's aggression levels as well as diminish the quality of the parent-child relationship. Other studies have documented that physical discipline can escalate into abuse.

The purpose of this resolution is to promote effective forms of discipline for parents that don't contribute to antisocial behaviors, aggression and trust issues. "Children do not need pain to learn," says Gershoff, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, "We don't allow aggression among adults. It's a sad double standard that we don't give children the same protection against violence."

Better discipline models

Upward of 80 percent of mothers spank their children between kindergarten and third grade, according to a large study conducted by Gershoff ( Child Development, May/June 2012).

Most parents raise children the way they were raised and have not been exposed to other models of discipline, says APA President Rosie Phillips Davis, PhD. "I don't think most people know how to discipline without spanking. We don't teach people to do it differently; alternatives seem time-consuming," she says.

The APA resolution presents effective alternatives that draw broadly on respectful communication, collaborative conflict resolution and parental modeling. Specifically, these approaches could include conveying anxiety about a dangerous action, taking away privileges or using praise to shape behavior.

Sometimes, simply ignoring the behavior and not engaging in a fight is the best tactic, says Christina Rodriguez, PhD, an associate professor at The University of Alabama at Birmingham and chair of the APA Committee on Children, Youth and Families, who led the resolution effort. "Parents need to learn what they should or shouldn't respond to."

Parents of 3- to 5- year-olds are the most likely to spank. So, what about a preschooler who can't be reasoned with? Rodriguez advises parents to think strategically and plan ahead. If your child is prone to act out while you get groceries, bring snacks and toys to redirect the child or choose a time to shop when the child isn't sleepy, she suggests.

Calling a time-out for certain behaviors can be effective but it is often misused as a stand-alone strategy, Gershoff observes. "Looking at a wall for five minutes won't teach a child how to behave."

Rather, parents need to give children guidance about what to do differently, what is known as "time out from positive reinforcement (TOPR)." This technique makes time-out an opportunity to regroup and think about how to do better next time.

A new study in American Psychologist offers guidelines in using TOPR to maximize the development of the child's self-regulation skills while avoiding any weakening of the parent-child attachment bond from the time out ( American Psychologist, Feb. 25, 2019).

Give parents the facts

The APA resolution is clear that any perceived short-term benefits from physical discipline do not outweigh the potential detriments. By adopting the resolution, APA joins a number of professional and public health organizations in recommending that parents reject all physical discipline. The resolution also directs APA to support funding for research in the United States and other countries related to why parents turn to physical discipline.

Davis wants to see more training programs on parental discipline for psychologists. Currently, more than 75 APA members are collaborating to create a toolkit to facilitate conversations in the community about disciplining children. Multiple modules are being developed for parents, colleges, civic organizations and places of worship that will include frequently asked questions. APA also offers the ACT Raising Safe Kids Program to teach positive parenting skills.

Rodriguez hopes the resolution will prompt psychologists to guide parents toward healthier discipline practices than were used in the past. Now that we know the risks of not wearing seatbelts, most parents make sure children buckle up, she comments. "Why is it not the same for rejecting physical discipline when the risks are known?"

Some psychologists feel that it's not their place to tell parents how to discipline their children, Rodriguez says. "But it is long past opinion that physical discipline makes things worse," she says. "It is incumbent on psychologists to take the opportunity to discuss the facts and share what we know. If mental health professionals don't take this on, then who?"

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Physical discipline is harmful and ineffective

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A new APA resolution cites evidence that physical punishment such as spanking can cause lasting harm for children.

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In this article, the author starts off the topic by giving us the definition of what physical punishment is. They then go on to tell us about how widely physical punishment is used by giving us some percentages. They move on to tell us how physical punishment effects a child, like how it effect a child's cognitive abilities, their brain development, and their behavior. They go more in depth about the long term effects by saying how in the future they might become more aggressive, and that physical punishment can lead to abuse.

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What does the evidence tell us about physical punishment of children?

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This short article describes the effects of physical punishment on children and the evidence available.

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My final thoughts on corporal punishment, and what I have learned from these articles is that corporal punishment is not a good option in any way. I have learned that spanking children can effect their brain development. Spanking is not better than any other discipline form. Corporal punishment can also cause a rift in the parent-child relationship, and also can lead to abuse. Corporal punishment should not be okay to use in school either, because it is not helping the child learn at all and in my opinion is taking away from the child's learning time. Everything that I have learned from these five articles is that their are so much better ways to discipline a child and that their is no reason a person should resort to physical discipline to teach a child a lesson.