Ok, now I watched it. And I question this kind of studies. First, she did not do the study. She looked at results from several other studies that may have been studying something else. Researchers love this because its the cheap way to publish a result with lots of cases. But to really rely on the research you have to design a study and run it. She did not.
I have a few questions about the study that make me not trust the outcome. Firstly she is biased. She is a parent who believes strongly that kids should not be spanked. So when reading anecdotal evidence I would say she is going to interrupt it with a bias against spanking. Second, she can’t really correct for bad kids and bad parents. Had she done a study where kids with poor parents who spanked and poor parents who did not spank. Or do ineffective parents spank more than effective parents.
I recently saw a report that says that black parents spank far more than white parents. So how can you say that spanking alone explains the outcome of the child.
I do agree with some of their points. Structure and rules firmly held and consistently applied works best for most children. They also said that explaining works better than punishment when possible. I agree. But they also are firm believers in negotiation. I am not. In some cases I will accept a little. But when it comes to rules, I don’t bend. Or at least I don’t let it be known if I do bend.
And lastly, I do believe that they are right when it comes to escalation. Spanking is your last card. So it should be played rarely if at all. If you think that you spanked and it did not work so you need to spank harder. Than you have already lost. Spanking should be so rare that it shocks the child into thinking that something is very wrong and it can’t happen again.
Frankly, oftentimes there is not enough TIME for negotiations; particularly when one is dealing with more than one child at a time, let alone the corrosive effect that has on parental authority. I am teaching my child that not all negotiations are legitimate, and should not be entertained.
Women are particularly adept at steering negotiations into a non disprovable corner, and I have no intention of teaching my daughter that such manipulation constitutes a "win."
>They also said that explaining works better than punishment when possible. I agree.
I don’t. From my own experience kids generally know when they’re screwing up and if they don’t know, pain is a good motivator to learn the rule.
>But they also are firm believers in negotiation. I am not. In some cases I will accept a little. But when it comes to rules, I don’t bend. Or at least I don’t let it be known if I do bend.
I lawyer-ed my parents to death as a kid. Made me horribly undisciplined well into my 20s.
I can tell from watching the first five minutes of the video that a) Gershoff is trying to refute a rather simplistic view of corporal punishment applied by parents with no insight into the human condition, nor their children’s individual personalities. b) Her use of “weasel” words such as “linked” to tie together both strong and weak conclusions makes her more advocate that researcher.