The goal was to examine the association between the use of corporal punishment (CP) against 3-year-old children and subsequent aggressive behavior among those children.
Respondents (N = 2461) participated in the Fragile Families and Child Well-being Study (1998–2005), a population-based, birth cohort study of children born in 20 large US cities. Maternal reports of CP, children's aggressive behaviors at 3 and 5 years of age, and a host of key demographic features and potential confounding factors, including maternal child physical maltreatment, psychological maltreatment, and neglect, intimate partner aggression victimization, stress, depression, substance use, and consideration of abortion, were assessed.
Frequent use of CP (ie, mother's use of spanking more than twice in the previous month) when the child was 3 years of age was associated with increased risk for higher levels of child aggression when the child was 5 years of age (adjusted odds ratio: 1.49 [95% confidence interval: 1.2–1.8]; P < .0001), even with controlling for the child's level of aggression at age 3 and the aforementioned potential confounding factors and key demographic features.
Despite American Academy of Pediatrics recommendations to the contrary, most parents in the United States approve of and have used CP as a form of child discipline. The current findings suggest that even minor forms of CP, such as spanking, increase risk for increased child aggressive behavior. Importantly, these findings cannot be attributed to possible confounding effects of a host of other maternal parenting risk factors.
Comments
Flawed study design
If I am reading the study results correctly, the authors have concluded that there is a moderate increase in aggression in White kids but a statistically insignificant correlation between spanking and aggression in Black and Hispanic kids. This curious/anomalous difference in outcomes according to race/ethnicity is very important for evaluating the study because it can be explained by -- and therefore points to -- the evident introduction of “observer bias” into the measurement of whether the kids who were studied were really spanked or not. Specifically, the authors have relied on the mothers to observe and report on whether spanking took place or not, rather than independently ascertaining when spanking did or did not take place. This is a significant flaw in study design since one could expect that some mothers would under-report (i.e. lie about) spanking. Importantly, this under-reporting could be expected to differ according to the socio-economic status and social values of the mothers since spanking has become unaccepable to educated parents who are familiar with the psychological literature, and remains acceptable to those parents who are less likely to be influenced by the opinions of parenting experts. So, given the flawed research protocol that was employed and the particular observor bias that was introduced, one should expect that the results would be different for families with different socio-economic status and social values -- and that is exactly what seems to have resulted.
Given this flaw in study design one must question the validity of the conclusions of the study. For example, it may turn out that the many more of the kids who are not aggressive today and whose parents say they were not spanked, actually were spanked, and that there really is no correlation between spanking and aggression. Or it may turn out that the correlation is actually stronger between spanking and later aggression than the authors have conluded. There is no way of knowing which (if either) is the case.
Ironically, what the study does validly illustrate is that 54.4 % of parents are willing to admit to spanking their kids in the last month. If some parents under-reported, the real figure may be even higher. So the one genuine result that comes out of this study is that the vast majority of parents regularly spank their kids (ages 3-5) and that a majority of kids (ages 3-5) in the U.S. are likely being spanked on average more than a dozen times a year.
Conflict of Interest:
None declared