Posted on 02/29/2008 12:48:16 AM PST by guitarist
Spanking Raises Chances of Risky, Deviant Sexual Behavior
Review found physical punishment of kids linked to unprotected, masochistic sex as adults
By Amanda Gardner Posted 2/28/08
THURSDAY, Feb. 28 (HealthDay News) -- Researchers have uncovered another damaging consequence of spanking: risky sexual behaviors, or even sexual deviancy, when the child grows up.
"This adds one more harmful side effect to spanking," said Murray Straus, a spanking expert who was expected to present the findings of four studies at the American Psychological Association's Summit on Violence and Abuse in Relationships in Bethesda, Md., on Thursday. Related News
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"I think that it's pretty powerful," said Elizabeth Gershoff, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan's School of Social Work. "It's across several studies and across different forms of either risky or deviant sexual behavior."
Straus, who was the author of all four studies, hopes the findings will raise awareness among child development experts.
"My hope is to convince my colleagues that they ought to put this in their textbooks," said Straus, co-director of the Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire, in Durham. "It's amazing. Something experienced by all American kids gets an average of half a page in child development textbooks, and not a single one comes to the conclusion that parents should never spank."
Even the revered Dr. Spock, who was anti-spanking, never came right out and advised parents outright not to do it, he added. Instead, Spock advised "avoiding it if you can."
A meta-analysis of spanking studies conducted by Gershoff found 93 percent agreement among studies that spanking can lead to such problems as delinquent and anti-social behavior in childhood along with aggression, criminal and anti-social behavior and spousal or child abuse as an adult.
"There's probably nothing else in child development that has 93 percent agreement in results," Straus said.
Five percent of people who have never been spanked hit their partners, versus 25 percent of those who were spanked frequently.
However, some 90 percent of U.S. parents spank toddlers, according to Straus.
The review being presented at the meeting are the first to look at the relationship of spanking to sexual behavior.
They found that spanking and other corporal punishment is associated with an increased probability of verbally and physically coercing a dating partner to have sex; risky sex such as premarital sex without using a condom; and masochistic sex such as spanking during sex.
There is a "dose response" at work here. "The more parents spank, the higher the probability of harmful side effects," Straus noted.
Of course, there's a similar dose response for smokers. But if someone reaches the age of 65 without developing lung cancer, it doesn't mean that smoking isn't harmful. It means the person was one of the lucky ones.
It's the same with spanking, Straus said. "If a person says, 'I was spanked, and I don't have any interest in bondage and discipline sex, that's correct, but it's not because spanking is OK, it's because they're one of the lucky ones."
And spanking a child once may be like picking up that first cigarette. "The trouble is, if you have a 2-year-old, you pretty soon decide you can't avoid it. The recidivism rate for whatever 'crime' you correct a 2-year-old for is about 50 percent in two hours."
"I've been researching corporal punishment for 30 years and, in the course of that time, the evidence has accumulated that it doesn't work any better than non-corporal punishment but has harmful side effects. I have come to the conclusion that parents should never, ever spank because, although it does work, it's no better than non-hitting methods that don't have harmful side effects. If there was an FDA for spanking, they'd say use an alternative that doesn't have harmful side effects."
-These psychologists and shrinks don't distinguish between beating your kid in anger and lovingly disciplining him (with spanks of medium force, and without parental rage). I would guess most parents mostly do the latter. Those who do the former, we would agree, are bound to have a psychopath on their hands when their kid grows up. I'm sure if you could divide the spankers into these two groups, you would easily see that the careful spankers get much BETTER results than the non-spankers. And the "flying into a rage" beaters get the worst results of the lot.
-The whole idea of measuring social phenomena with "scientific" studies is a bit ludicrous. The BEST they can do is suggest a link. They don't prove a link. Do the authors of these studies not understand the difference between causation and correlation? Maybe the 10% of people who never spank have (supposedly) better kids because they are richer, or better educated--and turn out better kids due to these factors. Maybe their kids would turn out even better if they did spank them occasionally for willful disobedience, or some of the spanked kids would have turned out even worse if they had not been spanked.
Sheesh! We know the non-spanking secularists want to take our kids away from us or throw us in jail for spanking them. Can't we just throw them in jail for professional malpractice instead for foisting bogus articles like this on the public??
Have at it!! Guitarist.
I'm not against parental discipline but let's be honest--how many kids, when being spanked, think "Mommy/Daddy LOVES me!" ?
I bet Barney Frank was spanked a lot. And when he was a kid, also. (rimshot)
Not too long ago, I read how terrible it was to tickle you child.
You left out the Barf Alert.
But he does know HIS behavior has consequence and that I love him and demand GOOD behavior.
... said Murray Straus, a spanking expert ...
ha ha
I don't have kids but work with kids with mental, emotional and drug issues. While I don't believe health workers like myself should have the right to discipline kids--we don't, thankfully--I do believe parents have that right.
At the same time, I think it's foolish to deny that in some cases, parents go too far. There's just too much history.
In the case of this study, I don't think it's ridiculous to believe that SOME children are affected by even lesser amounts of physical discipline, and am bemused by those who apparently think all kids react the same way to the same discipline. That makes no sense. I've gone through things in my youth that I rarely even think about; kids I see have gone through far less and are deeply disturbed by it. Many kids have gone through far MORE than I did--by leaps and bounds--and have come out perfectly OK.
The troubling truth is that kids aren't robots. That's why parenting is such a hard job, and why we don't have hard and fast rules for bringing up kids.
On one had we have these people telling us that there is no such thing as deviant sexual bahavior. On the other, we have them telling us that spanking us can lead us to it. Well...
All I can say from my experience growing up is that:
1) Spanking worked and worked well. And it was generally the un-disciplined, un-spanked peers of mine who ended up going down the wrong path, particularly when we were of the same socioeconomic status.
2) No such deviance on my part.
3) I will spank my children, the anti-spanking crowd screetching as they may.
He’s way more sensitive than my son, and the parenting background difference is night and day: never left mommy’s arms, sleeping in parent’s bed, fed by hand, not potty trained, etc.
ROFLMAO
I think as long as they are warned that a spanking is coming for certain behaviors, and then the spanking is given as punishment instead of some sort of revenge, then the child will learn boundaries. How you regulate parents that are out of their freakin minds is beyond me, but not allowing corporal punishment gets you the brats we have today.
Dang, where's my wife? I'll get the belt...
"He that spareth his rod hateth his son; but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes (early and while young)." Proverbs 13;24.
Failure to discipline is child abuse, loving "chastening" to which you are referring is an expression of genuine love to protect the child from danger (the stove is hot) and to protect them from evil (violence against your sibling is evil -a form of the impulse to murder).
God, who created the womb, forms the child in it, Psalm 139, and explained child rearing by Solomon knows infinitely more about it. The people with the highest "self esteem" are prison inmates.
If I have one all-purpose truth for bringing up kids which I learned from my experience, it’s that moms who smother their sons—who turn them into Momma’s boys with all that implies—are the invisible abusers. They are emotionally crippling their sons, destroying their ability to be independent men, and they do it with enormous self-righteousness.
After all, who would want their kids to be less deviant than their friends?
if 90% of toddlers are spanked, how large would your sample size have to achieve a power to determine such how much such a vaguely described procedure would have on such a murky endpoint? It certainly would be likely that spanking was at least as universal, if not more so, in past generations, but there is some at least anecdotal perception that this kind of sexual activity is increasing. Maybe there are a lot of other, more important factors?
Greatest. Coffee. Ad. Ever.
I think the more pressing question is whether these folks have even taken (and mastered the contents of) a proper, rigorous probability and statistics course.
We were on a three ticket limit and then he goes into time out. (I never thought it would work. It does) We’ve now gone straight to timeout. If misbehavior continues it’s up to the room - and it may be a while. If boy mouths-off to Mom (big no-no) He goes to the woodshed for a talk. We employ the Andy Griffith method, lol.
Whenever psychically disciplined I would get the urge to beat up my little brothers. Maybe that’s just me.
Ping for later commentary
How much evidence do we need that this article is stupid? Do we just think it is, or do we have proof???
It’s in US News & World Report.
It is stupid.
My dad used to get a dozen different magazines when we were kids. I even got to read US Naval Institute Proceedings magazine. I avidly read Time, US News & World report.
Then they changed. They became EXTREMELY liberal, and you could see over time, the magazine got thinner and thinner.
They Jumped the Shark.
I think Barney Frank's problem is his mother didn't beat him enough.
17 years ago when I had my first child and 11 months later my second came along. My husband and I were on our own, we did not live near any family. While pregnant and just after the birth of my son I thought I would be the enlightned parent and read all the books and magazines. My boys were never going to be spanked and they would not watch violent shows like the Power Rangers Then came toddlerhood. Time out? For my oldest that was a joke. He’d do whatever he wanted and then put himself in time out. While they didn’t watch the Power Rangers, they were alway physical. As time went by, I quit listening and reading about what these “psychologist” and “parenting experts” had to say and just used common sense. Did I spank? I could NEVER beat a child but a few swats on the behind, heck yeah. They are now typical teenagers but by typical I mean that in a good way. They have great peer relationships, are polite and respectful to others, they are not morose and angry like I see some of the kids around. And we as a family have a great relationship, they’ve never rebelled in any “I’ll show you” way.
I hate that I went on and on about this but I think most of these studies are stupid and cast doubts in parents minds. As parents you need to be consistant and make the boundries pretty clear. Most people are not child abusers, these spanking article really don’t apply to them. They are in a class by themselves, with serious mental problems. These articles are aimed towards the good parents. Common sense is the best parenting approach. You know your kids better than anyone.
(I posted this in a related thread the other day.)
My mom used to use the belt when she administered corporal discipline. We were all sure that she would do it if she threatened, since we all thought her sanity hung by a thread anyway (six kids, all a year apart, father at sea for eight months at a time)
My father, when forced to discipline us by our mother (”Go to your room...you father will deal with you when he gets home...”) would use psychological warfare on us.
We could hear him come home...the adult voices talking downstairs, then...the long, slow footfalls up the stairs accompanied by the noisy unbuckling of the belt and the slooshing sound of it being withdrawn from the belt loops.
Then, for added effect, he would double the belt on itself and snap it. He would do this two or three times, it would emit a loud snap, not unlike that of either a belt hitting flesh, or a hangman’s trapdoor slamming open (in my juvenile mind).
He would come in, lecture us in a deep,threatening voice about the transgression, all the while advancing towards with the belt.
He would usually take about four or five swings as you squirmed around, mostly landing glancing blows. Rarely did he make real stinging contact. My mother was much more accurate and painful. She was very quick to anger, but very quick to cool as well.
But we feared my dad the most. It was not The Belt we feared, it was The Ring. He saved the ring for those times when the punishment was on the fly...when the transgression occured under his watch, usually after repeated warnings.
He would advance closely...speaking low and threateningly, sometimes with his hand pulled back as if he was going to backhand you, which he never did.
The discipline would go something like this...
DAD: “What did I tell you about hitting your sister...?” (advances slowly)
ME: “T..to not to...” (backing slowly)
DAD: “Did you hear what I told you, you dumb bunny...?) (Hand is now raised slightly facing you...clearly visible is the back of his hand and...the red stone on his Holy Cross Class Ring that he got when he graduated from his V12 program as a young ensign in the spring of 1945. That was The Ring.)
(Additional note: My dad very, VERY rarely swore at us...we laugh at the “Dumb Bunny” thing and we don’t understand it and it seems hilarious now, but...faced with the ring, it sounded like the Declaration of Doom.)
ME: “Yes...yes...”
DAD: “Yes WHAT?”
ME: “Yes SIR.”
DAD: “When I tell you what to do, you LISTEN to me.”
This was followed by two or three ineffectual and easily dodged cuffs by him that completely missed the mark. Then he would stand off to the side and allow you to pass while he stood still.
It was at this point when danger was highest. There was nothing you could do but walk by and not look back. You knew it was coming. Sometimes he didn’t do it, just to throw you off. But usually he got you with The Ring.
As you walked by and exposed the back of your head, he would whip out his hand in a light backhand motion and ping you on the back of the skull with the stone of that ring...and sometimes it really smarted.
My dad was a gentle man, and I know he loved us dearly. We were all petrified of him, of disappointing him or crossing him was something we all avoided at all costs. He was all bluster...we looked at my mom out of the corners of our eyes when she was on the warpath, but...we knew he would never deliberately hurt us. He just wanted to scare us.
When my dad passed away, I had custody of the ring. When we went down to Arlington National Cemetery to bury him, I wore that ring, just that once. In my grief, it must have slipped off of my finger. I lost it and never found it. I searched my house and belongings for a year, but never found it. I suppose someone down in Arlington will find a Holy Cross class ring with a red stone someday, and they will wonder about the man who wore it.
If I could have one thing, out of all the things that I have that were his, I wish I had not lost his ring.
I’d put money on these “researchers” not being spanked as a child.
Is there anything these people can’t twist into a sexual encounter?
Sometimes a train is just a train.
We used to give our 2 kids a swat on the bottom when they were younger. My children are in their teens now and they are honor students, great musicians, athletes and all around good kids. We have had many people comment on the good manners and behavior of our children. They are not angels and need adjustments now and again. But discipline now, means taking away priviledges (phone, ipod, video game). If you have your child under control by kindergarten, you have won half the battle.
What a load of bullsh*t!
Look at kids today, no discipline, no morals, no sense of responsibility.
And people wonder why this generation have more mental and emotional problems.
I am convinced pyschology is another strain of liberalism run rampant.
I worry about the underlying theory you espouse.
Children need to know there are rules and stucture. I will bet many of the children you work with would have loved to understood where the lines were drawn.
[Mr] T
“Who’s yer mama!?” *Smack* “Who’s yer mama!?” *Smack* “Who’s yer mama!?” *Smack*
I agree with you completely. This article does not prove that spanking causes deviant behavior later in life. It’s just another attempt by the so-called experts to take over the rights of parents.
The problem today is not that too many parents spank their children but that too many don’t. Parents who occasionally spank children when they are young will not have to use any kind of corporal punishment on them when they get older. Threatening a young child, who is being willfully disobedient, with a time-out does not work. And trying to bribe the child with some kind of reward just to distract him or get him to behave just encourages the child to misbehave. Spanking is a time-honored, traditional method of disciplining children that works, which is more than I can say for some of the methods that the experts recommend.
> ...said Murray Straus, a spanking expert
OK, my mind has now boggled. I have to wonder exactly what-the-devil is a “spanking expert”, how one goes about studying and practising that trade (or more to the point “why”?), and precisely what sort of kid would aspire to grow up to be one instead of, say, a fireman or an astronaut or even a rock star?
I dunno, but it all sounds rather dodgy and suspect to me...
Absolutely right—my son is a tougher case and we’ve yelled at him and spanked him on occasion. He’s the oldest by 2.5 years.
My daughter is a gentle child and has never been spanked and we’ve only slightly raised our voices to her a couple of times. She’s easy and very well behaved without being meek or mousy. She’s not “perfect” but responds well to talking and explaining why we want a certain behavior or procedure.
It’s all about what works for that particular child.
Of course, she’ll probably give us more trouble as a teen!!!
Total BS article.
My boys will do things to annoy the heck out of me. Just the everyday nonsense and I’ll get mad. They seem to shrug off my anger but the few times my husband and I have told them we were disappointed in their behavior, they just went to pieces. Though it is not politically correct, I believe in the boys will be boys mindset, they are going to do things and behave sometimes in ways a girl never will. I grew up with brothers so my boy tolerance is high. I think my boys would throw themselves under the bus than to outright disappoint us.
I would like to add one thing, my children know they are loved and they are blessed to have so many fine male role models involved in their lives, so I think that probably makes it easier. Unfortunately all of these super smart scientists now think that fathers and men are irrelevent.
I think most honest people will admit that there are some significant differences between boys and girls. Some are good, some not so good.
I say vive le difference...it is part of what makes us so interesting to each other.
According to Barney Frank, that's the whole point.
LOL..and I’ll bet you drink Chase & Sanborn coffee too...:)
But that pic sure looks like black on white abuse.
[Mr] T
13 Do not withhold correction from a child, For if you beat him with a rod, he will not die. 14 You shall beat him with a rod, And deliver his soul from hell. (Proverbs 23:13-14)
When our children were small, I thought about how different children were a hundred years ago compared to today - how the pathologies that kids have now just did not exist long ago and it occurred to me that the two major differences between then and now were that, for the most part, parents stayed together and did not divorce for frivolous reasons and parents disciplined their children from an early age, with spanking if necessary, and did not tolerate bad behavior and did not justify it.
All three of our kids were spanked when they were little, and it was only after willful disobedience and bad behavior. After the spanking, they were hugged and told that they were loved and were made to admit that the punishment was due to their own behavior so that, in their own minds, they could never assign blame to anyone but themselves.
My children are now grown. I have never had any problems with rebellion, my kids are leaders, not followers, they are emotionally and psychologically healthy and happy, are productive members of society, and suffer no ill-effects whatsoever from the fact that, at a young age, they were taught by people who love them that bad behavior brings bad consequences.
The problems that kids of today have are not because of spanking but because the parents of these kids do not have the sense of responsibility to their children and society it takes to raise their children to be decent people and respect others and authority. It's easy to just let your kids run wild, defy you as a parent, and do whatever they please. It's difficult and exhausting to take the time to shape and mold your children into civilized human beings.
I see, all the time, appalling displays of small children screaming at their parents, refusing to obey, demanding toys and candy at the store- and through it all, the parent baby-talks the child and ends up caving in to the tantrums and demands. This is the sort of irresponsibility on the part of parents that produces emotional and behavior problems in children- not discipline and not spanking.
Who would you rather run into in a alley late at night? A group of sixteen-year olds who have been spanked and taught right from wrong and who know that the universe does not revolve around them, or a group of sixteen-year-olds who have been indulged and never disciplined and given the message that they are special little angels who can never do any wrong?
Not sure that when spanking a child the child is supposed to think “Mommy/Daddy LOVES me.” He/she is supposed to think, “Yikes! I had better not do THAT again!” Because a parent is the first line of defense for society when it comes to their child behaving badly. Spanking teaches them what is right and what is wrong. Hopefully it is used sparingly and only when absolutely necessary. But a parent should always be willing to use corporal punishment if he/she deems it to be necessary.
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