Do Your Spank Your Kids?
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Fuse/Thinkstock(DALLAS) — Spanking obviously has a direct impact on a child’s bottom, but a new study finds it does little to ensure a kid won’t misbehave shortly after the whacks are delivered.
In a study published online recently in the Journal of Family Psychology, researchers recorded audio of families soon after they returned home from work and daycare and discovered that spanking is fairly common.
Out of 33 families, the researchers discovered 41 incidents of spanking or hitting children in 15 different families over a six-night period. The study also found that the whacks didn’t seem to resolve problems. Despite being spanked, about 75 percent of the children were misbehaving again within 10 minutes of the incidents.
Lead study author George Holden, a professor of psychology at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas, says he designed the study to focus on evening behavior because he has often heard mothers refer to early evening as the “hell hour” or the “suicide hour.”
“It’s a very difficult time, trying to pull dinner together and deal with the kids, and I thought it would be likely to elicit anger,” Holden said.
Although a cause-and-effect connection between spanking and behavioral problems was not shown, the study suggests that hitting kids is not an effective way to teach them or promote parent-child relationships, Holden said.
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