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LARZELERE & BAUMRIND 10/12/2010 11:54:42 AM
ARE SPANKING INJUNCTIONS
SCIENTIFICALLY SUPPORTED?
ROBERT E. LARZELERE*
D
IANA BAUMRIND**
I
I
NTRODUCTION
This special issue on corporal punishment addresses arguments for and
against prohibitions of the historically widespread practice of disciplinary
spanking by parents. A recent national survey estimated that ninety-four
percent of American parents of four- and five-year-olds spanked their children
at least occasionally.
1
Yet there is a growing trend for countries to ban corporal
punishment by parents through family law or criminal law.
2
This article
evaluates whether the current empirical evidence supports spanking
prohibitions.
Does the scientific evidence show that spanking is invariably detrimental
regardless of how it is used? Or can parents use spanking in nonharmful or
beneficial ways, at least under some conditions? Should all corporal punishment
be enjoined, or should a legal distinction be retained between spanking and
physical abuse? These crucial questions compare the validity of two scientific
perspectives, “anticorporal punishment” and “conditional corporal
punishment,”
3
both of which are represented in this issue.
4
In this article, we will
Copyright © 2010 by Robert E. Larzelere and Diana Baumrind.
This article is also available at http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/lcp.
* Department of Human Development and Family Science, Oklahoma State University.
** Institute of Human Development, University of California, Berkeley.
1. Murray A. Straus & Julie H. Stewart, Corporal Punishment by American Parents: National
Data on Prevalence, Chronicity, Severity, and Duration, in Relation to Child and Family Characteristics,
2 C
LINICAL CHILD & FAM. PSYCHOL. REV. 55, 59–60 (1999).
2. See Legal Reforms, C
ENTER FOR EFFECTIVE DISCIPLINE, http://www.stophitting.com/
index.php?page=laws-main (last visited January 6, 2010).
3. Corina Benjet & Alan E. Kazdin, Spanking Children: The Controversies, Findings, and New
Directions, 23 C
LINICAL PSYCHOL. REV. 197, 200–01 (2003). This article compared two recent
literature reviews representing those two perspectives, one by Elizabeth Thompson Gershoff, Corporal
Punishment by Parents and Associated Child Behaviors and Experiences: A Meta-Analytic and
Theoretical Review, 128 P
SYCHOL. BULL. 539 (2002), and the other by Robert E. Larzelere, Child
Outcomes of Nonabusive and Customary Physical Punishment by Parents: An Updated Literature
Review, 3 C
LINICAL CHILD & FAM. PSYCHOL. REV. 199 (2000).
4. Elizabeth T. Gershoff, More Harm Than Good: A Summary of Scientific Research on the
Intended and Unintended Effects of Corporal Punishment on Children, 73 L
AW & CONTEMP. PROBS. 57
(Spring 2010).
LARZELERE & BAUMRIND 10/12/2010 11:54:42 AM
58 LAW AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS [Vol. 73:57
use the terms spanking prohibition and conditional spanking to differentiate
these two positions. The conditional-spanking viewpoint holds that spanking
may be an appropriate disciplinary option under some conditions but not
others. The conditions under which spanking may be a viable disciplinary
method need to be investigated before applying a blanket prohibition. Because
advocates of both positions are opposed to overly severe and abusive corporal
punishment,
5
evidence about the effects of excessively severe punishment does
not differentiate the two positions and is not directly relevant to the desirability
of spanking prohibitions. Evidence about using corporal punishment too
severely would be indirectly relevant, however, if it could be shown that a
spanking prohibition and conditional spanking differ in their abilities to prevent
disciplinary actions from escalating to physical abuse, an issue addressed in
section V.
Spanking-prohibition and conditional-spanking positions differ, too, on
whether the use of disciplinary spanking is always or generally harmful in a
cost-benefit analysis. The spanking-prohibition viewpoint necessarily implies
that any nonharmful or beneficial subset of parental corporal punishment is so
small a proportion or so minor in its benefits that it is outweighed by the
detrimental effects of retaining any spanking option for parents.
To justify removing this option from parents, spanking prohibitionists first
need to show causal evidence that spanking is detrimental in situations where it
is considered most appropriate by parents, children, and psychologists.
6
Second,
prohibitionists need to compare the effects of spanking with the effects of
alternative disciplinary tactics available to parents in the same disciplinary
situations. Third, prohibitionists need evidence that parenting improves when
parents are prevented from using disciplinary spanking. Fourth, prohibitionists
need to show that adverse outcomes associated with spanking remain associated
with spanking after eliminating the influences of several prevalent confounding
variables, such as difficult child temperaments and socioeconomic
disadvantages. If these confounding factors together account for the
associations between spanking and adverse outcomes, those associations would
be spurious and therefore misinterpreted as causal influences of spanking.
It is well known that children thrive under authoritative parenting,
7
recently
confirmed by ten-year outcomes from Baumrind’s classic longitudinal data.
8
Authoritative parenting combines nurturance, give-and-take communication,
5. Benjet & Kazdin, supra note 3, at 202.
6. Thomas F. Catron & John C. Masters, Mothers’ and Children’s Conceptualizations of Corporal
Punishment, 64 C
HILD DEV. 1815, 1819 (1993); Mark W. Roberts & Scott W. Powers, Adjusting Chair
Timeout Enforcement Procedures for Oppositional Children, 21 B
EHAV. THERAPY 257, 262 (1990).
7. Ross D. Parke & Raymond Buriel, Socialization in the Family: Ethnic and Ecological
Perspectives, in 3 H
ANDBOOK OF CHILD PSYCHOLOGY: SOCIAL, EMOTIONAL, AND PERSONALITY
DEVELOPMENT 429, 436–37 (W. Damon et al. eds., 2006); Laurence Steinberg, We Know Some Things:
Parent-Adolescent Relationships in Retrospect and Prospect, 11 J.
RES. ON ADOLESCENCE 1, 1 (2001).
8. Diana Baumrind et al., Effects of Preschool Parents’ Power Assertive Patterns and Practices on
Adolescent Development, 10 P
ARENTING: SCI. & PRAC. 167 (2010).
LARZELERE & BAUMRIND 10/12/2010 11:54:42 AM
Spring 2010] ARE SPANKING INJUNCTIONS SCIENTIFICALLY SUPPORTED? 59
and support for age-appropriate independence with firm, confrontive discipline
and maturity demands. It is critically distinguishable from authoritarian
parenting, which is equally firm but shares none of the other aspects of
authoritative parenting and is characterized instead by the use of hostile verbal
discipline and severe corporal punishment. On average, authoritative parents
spanked just as much as the average of all other parents.
9
Undoubtedly, some
parents can be authoritative without using spanking, but we have no evidence
that all or even most parents can achieve authoritative parenting without an
occasional spank. A crucial question is whether spanking prohibitions would
undermine authoritative parenting for some parents. Would parents then use
nonphysical disciplinary tactics more effectively than if they retained the
spanking option? Or would parents enjoined from spanking become like
authoritarian parents in using more verbal hostility, which is more detrimental
than spanking,
10
or, like permissive parents, become less able to enforce
appropriate child cooperation? Permissive parents are nurturant and support
age-appropriate independence but tend to avoid disciplinary confrontations and
make few demands for mature responsibility and cooperation. Children of
authoritarian parents were far less competent ten years later compared to
children of authoritative parents, whereas children of permissive parents were
the second least-competent group.
11
This article summarizes the scientific evidence on child outcomes of
spanking, emphasizing causal evidence under conditions considered most
appropriate for its use by parents and psychologists. Section II discusses the
distinctions that must be made to answer crucial questions about the effects of
spanking under those conditions. With those distinctions in mind, section III
then contrasts two major literature reviews on corporal punishment. Section IV
starts by summarizing the few definitive studies that have made all of the
necessary distinctions outlined in section II and then summarizes and critiques
the strongest causal evidence against ordinary spanking. Section V addresses
other empirical issues, including the role of spanking in escalations of
disciplinary actions toward abuse, the aversiveness of spanking compared to
alternatives, and ethnic differences in the apparent outcomes of spanking.
Section VI presents our conclusions.
II
N
ECESSARY DISTINCTIONS
Scientific support for injunctions against parents’ use of disciplinary
spanking must document that nonabusive spanking is harmful or ineffective
when parents perceive the greatest need to use it—for example, when young
children are persistently defiant even after parents try other disciplinary actions.
9. Id. at 179, 187.
10. Id. at 157, 178–83.
11. Id. at 157, 172–76, 84.
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60 LAW AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS [Vol. 73:57
To be relevant for spanking prohibitions, empirical evidence must come
from studies that discriminate three crucial issues correctly: (1) Corporal
punishment must be implemented nonabusively (correct dosage), (2) it must be
used in an appropriate disciplinary situation (appropriate presenting problems),
and (3) the evidence must be causal, not correlational. Prohibitions of
corrective medical actions would not be considered unless evidence came from
studies making all three distinctions correctly. For example, a prohibition
against radiation treatment would first need to show causal evidence of harm
from appropriate dosages administered for appropriate presenting problems.
A. Appropriate Dosage
Any prohibition against spanking must likewise rely on evidence from
nonabusive implementation, rather than evidence based on lumping spanking
together with overly severe corporal punishment. The 1996 scientific-consensus
conference on The Short- and Long-Term Consequences of Corporal
Punishment defined corporal punishment as “bodily punishment of any kind as
a form of discipline”
12
and spanking as a kind of corporal punishment that is “a.
physically non-injurious; b. intended to modify behavior; and c. administered
with an opened hand to the extremities or buttocks.”
13
This article adopts this
definition of spanking, which limits it to nonabusive usage, differentiated from
severe corporal punishment.
To justify spanking prohibitions, research must first show the detrimental
causal effects of spanking and then that less extreme injunctions cannot
minimize those detrimental effects. Moreover, a cost-benefit analysis must
weigh any unavoidable detrimental effects against any beneficial effects found
for spanking. Radiation therapy has negative side effects, but it would not be
prohibited unless studies showed that alternative treatments produced
consistently better outcomes without increasing negative side effects, based on
causal evidence of appropriate applications of radiation. In this article we will
show that corporal punishment is associated with more-adverse outcomes than
alternative disciplinary tactics only for severe and predominant use of corporal
punishment.
B. Appropriate Presenting Problems
Just as radiation treatments are evaluated for specific types of cancer,
spanking needs to be evaluated for its most appropriate presenting problems.
Two kinds of evidence are relevant: situations in which parents are most likely
to spank and situations in which psychologists have trained parents of young
children when to spank appropriately. First, parents are most likely to spank
12. Stanford B. Friedman & S. Kenneth Schonberg, Consensus Statements, 98 PEDIATRICS 853, 853
(1996).
13. Id.
LARZELERE & BAUMRIND 10/12/2010 11:54:42 AM
Spring 2010] ARE SPANKING INJUNCTIONS SCIENTIFICALLY SUPPORTED? 61
one- to nine-year-olds
14
for defiance,
15
especially when their misbehavior hurts
someone else
16
or puts the children themselves in danger.
17
Second, from the late
1960s
18
until the middle 1990s, clinical psychologists trained parents to use
spanking
19
to enforce time-out compliance in behavioral parent training
programs for young children with disruptive-behavior diagnoses.
20
Two
prominent practitioners in that period explained, “While we basically are
opposed to physical punishment, we have found a mild spanking to be the most
feasible backup for the child leaving the [time-out] chair.”
21
These behavioral
parent training programs—which feature time-out currently enforced with an
alternative back-up—are currently recognized as some of the most effective
treatments for young children with attention deficit–hyperactivity disorder
(ADHD),
22
oppositional defiant disorder, and conduct disorder.
23
We will show
that the strongest causal evidence about spanking indicates that it is effective
for reducing defiance in the most defiant two- to six-year-olds, which is crucial
for their cooperation with time-out. The few other studies that focus on
defiance or dangerous behaviors also document better outcomes for spanking
than for most alternative tactics when dealing with defiance in young children.
C. Causal vs. Correlational Evidence
Corporal punishment is usually correlated with behavior problems such as
antisocial behavior and aggression.
24
But correlation does not equal causation.
What is open to dispute are the causal influences that explain those
correlations. Making valid causal conclusions from correlations involving
corrective actions is especially problematic, for correlations are biased against
14. Straus & Stewart, supra note 1, at 59.
15. Kathy L. Ritchie, Maternal Behaviors and Cognitions During Discipline Episodes: A
Comparison of Power Bouts and Single Acts of Noncompliance, 35 D
EVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOL. 580,
587 (1999).
16. George W. Holden et al., Why 3-Year-Old Children Get Spanked—Parent and Child
Determinants as Reported by College-Educated Mothers, 41 M
ERRILL-PALMER Q.: J.
DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOL. 431, 441 (1995).
17. Catron & Masters, supra note 6, at 1817, 1819–20; Ritchie, supra note 15, at 587.
18. T
ONI L. HEMBREE-KIGIN & CHERYL B. MCNEIL, PARENT–CHILD INTERACTION THERAPY 2
(1995).
19. Id. at 94–95; R
USSELL A. BARKLEY, DEFIANT CHILDREN: A CLINICIAN’S MANUAL FOR
PARENT TRAINING 117–18 (1987); EDWARD R. CHRISTOPHERSEN, LITTLE PEOPLE: GUIDELINES FOR
COMMON SENSE CHILD REARING 151 (3d ed. 1988); REX L. FOREHAND & ROBERT J. MCMAHON,
H
ELPING THE NONCOMPLIANT CHILD 79–80 (1981).
20. B
ARKLEY, supra note 19, at 2–3; CHRISTOPHERSEN, supra note 19, at 50, 152; FOREHAND &
MCMAHON, supra note 19, at ix; HEMBREE-KIGIN & MCNEIL, supra note 18, at 7.
21. F
OREHAND & MCMAHON, supra note19, at 80.
22. William E. Pelham, Jr. & Gregory A. Fabiano, Evidence-Based Psychosocial Treatments for
Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, 37 J.
CLINICAL CHILD & ADOLESCENT PSYCHOL. 184, 187
(2008).
23. Sheila M. Eyberg et al., Evidence-Based Psychosocial Treatments for Children and Adolescents
with Disruptive Behavior, 37 J.
CLINICAL CHILD & ADOLESCENT PSYCHOL. 215, 226–29 (2008).
24. This is so both cross-sectionally and longitudinally. Gershoff, supra note 3, at 539.
LARZELERE & BAUMRIND 10/12/2010 11:54:42 AM
62 LAW AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS [Vol. 73:57
corrective actions, a problem known as the intervention selection bias.
25
This
selection bias occurs because of the poorer prognosis of those selected for the
corrective action compared to the better prognosis of those not needing the
corrective action.
To illustrate this bias, Table 1 summarizes data from the largest study of
radiation treatment for Stage II endometrium cancer prior to 1992.
26
Women
who received radiation treatment had a higher probability of dying in the next
five years than did women of the same age in the general population. Either
type of radiation treatment was therefore correlated with a higher rate of dying
compared to women of the same age who did not receive radiation treatment.
Using the program employed by Gershoff
27
to calculate effect-size statistics, this
translates to large detrimental effect sizes of d = .61 and d = 1.80 for the two
treatments.
28
By comparison, Gershoff’s effect sizes for adverse outcomes of
physical punishment ranged from d = .09 to d = .69,
29
which therefore appear
less adverse than the radiation treatments in Table 1 when their effect size
statistics are based inappropriately on unadjusted correlations. This shows that
effect sizes based on longitudinal correlations are biased against all corrective
actions because the comparison group includes many who did not need any
corrective action. In the same way that having cancer causes women to be more
likely to receive radiation treatment, children’s oppositional behavior causes
parents to be more likely to use all disciplinary tactics more frequently, not just
spanking. Therefore the frequencies of all disciplinary tactics are correlated
with more disruptive-behavior problems twenty months later, an association not
distinctive of spanking.
30
25. Robert E. Larzelere et al., The Intervention Selection Bias: An Underrecognized Confound in
Intervention Research, 130 P
SYCHOL. BULL. 289, 289 (2004).
26. Perry W. Grigsby et al., Stage II Carcinoma of the Endometrium: Results of Therapy and
Prognostic Factors, 11 I
NT’L J. RADIATION ONCOLOGY BIOLOGY PHYSICS 1915, 1918 (1985).
27. Gershoff, supra note 3, at 544.
28. Effect sizes in d estimate the difference a treatment is expected to make in terms of standard
deviations of the outcome variable. In the social sciences, an effect size of d = .20 is considered small, d
= .50 medium, and d = .80 large. J
ACOB COHEN, STATISTICAL POWER ANALYSIS FOR THE
BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES 25–26 (2d ed. 1988).
29. Gershoff, supra note 3, at 547.
30. Larzelere, supra note 25, at 290–91; Robert E. Larzelere et al., Punishment Enhances
Reasoning’s Effectiveness as a Disciplinary Response to Toddlers, 60 J.
MARRIAGE & FAM. 388, 400
(1998).
LARZELERE & BAUMRIND 10/12/2010 11:54:42 AM
Spring 2010] ARE SPANKING INJUNCTIONS SCIENTIFICALLY SUPPORTED? 63
Table 1. Five-Year Survival Rates for Stage II Endometrial Carcinoma
a
Treatment (or
Comparison
Condition)
5-year Survival Rate 5-year Death Rate Equivalent
Effect Sizes
b
r d
Radiation plus surgery 78% 22% .29 .61
Radiation alone 48% 52% .67 1.81
Actuarial survival, 65-
year-old women
c
93% 7% -- --
a
Based on Grigsby et al.,
31
the largest study of Stage II Endometrial Cancer in Glassburn et al.
32
b
Compared to actuarial survival in 65-year-old American women, using the statistical program
33
used in Gershoff’s
34
meta-analysis to calculate effect sizes.
c
Based on 65-year-old American women, just above the median age of patients in Grigsby et al.
35
In summarizing the relevant empirical literature, then, it is important to
distinguish correlational evidence from causally definitive and causally relevant
results. Causally definitive results are those based on the kinds of randomized
clinical trials that are widely recognized in science as providing more conclusive
causal evidence than any other research strategy.
36
Because findings from
randomized clinical trials are recognized as causally definitive, they are required
by the Federal Drug Administration for new prescription drugs and by the
Society of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology
37
to identify “evidence-
based” psychosocial treatments for children and adolescents.
38
Causally relevant
refers to studies that provide stronger causal evidence than unadjusted
correlations yet do not use the randomization methods required for causally
definitive conclusions. The most relevant example involves studies in which
corporal punishment predicts a subsequent child outcome even after adjusting
statistically for preexisting differences in that outcome, a research strategy
31. Grigsby et al., supra note 26, at 1918.
32. J. R. Glassburn et al., Endometrium, in P
RINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF RADIATION
ONCOLOGY 1203, 1214–15 (C. A. Perez & L. W. Brady eds., 1992).
33. B
LAIR T. JOHNSON, DSTAT: SOFTWARE FOR THE META-ANALYTIC REVIEW OF RESEARCH
LITERATURE (1989).
34. Gershoff, supra note 3, at 544.
35. Grigsby et al., supra note 26, at 1916.
36. W
ILLIAM R. SHADISH, THOMAS D. COOK, & DONALD T. CAMPBELL, EXPERIMENTAL AND
QUASI-EXPERIMENTAL DESIGNS FOR GENERALIZED CAUSAL INFERENCE 13 (2002).
37. The Society of Clinical Child and Adolscent Psychology is the fifty-third division of the
American Psychological Association. See Divisions, A
M. PSYCHOL. ASS’N, (Sept. 6, 2010), http://
www.apa.org/about/division/index.aspx.
38. Wendy K. Silverman & Stephen P. Hinshaw, The Second Special Issue on Evidence-Based
Psychosocial Treatments for Children and Adolescents, 37 J.
CLINICAL CHILD & ADOLESCENT
PSYCHOL. 1, 5 (2008).
LARZELERE & BAUMRIND 10/12/2010 11:54:42 AM
64 LAW AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS [Vol. 73:57
known as net-effects regression.
39
Such statistical adjustments yield unbiased
estimates of causal effects only when the process of selecting recipients for a
corrective action is measured comprehensively
40
and without measurement
error.
41
Accordingly, epidemiologists recognize that residual confounding
remains when confounds are only partially controlled for statistically.
42
We will
show that residual confounding can easily account for the strongest causal
evidence against spanking.
D. Other Methodological Issues
Three other pervasive methodological issues warrant brief mention: (1)
same-source bias, (2) confounding ineffectiveness with spanking frequency, and
(3) the fact that very few studies have compared spanked children with never-
spanked children. First, same-source bias occurs when the same person (for
example, a parent) is the source of information for measures of spanking and of
the child outcome. A mother who just told an interviewer that she spanks her
son frequently might try to justify it later in the interview by exaggerating her
son’s belligerence. Accordingly, same-source bias is known to artificially
increase correlations of disciplinary tactics with adverse child outcomes, such as
aggression.
43
Second, the more effectively any disciplinary tactic is used, the less
need there will be to use it in the future. Therefore, frequency of a disciplinary
tactic is partly due to how ineffectively a parent has used it previously, with
more-effective implementations resulting in lower frequencies. This bias can
make any disciplinary tactic appear to be more detrimental than it is, when
based on measures of frequency of use.
Third, very few studies have actually compared a spanked group to a never-
spanked one; most studies contrast frequent spanking with infrequent spanking.
For example, the statistically controlled studies with the strongest causal
evidence against customary spanking are all based on spanking frequency in the
past week. Parents who spanked less than every other week would most likely
be lumped together with never-spankers in the no-spanking group for that
particular week.
39. A relevant example of net effects regression is the association between spanking at an initial
time and aggression a year later, after removing what can be predicted about that aggression a year
later from initial levels of aggression (that is, net of what can be predicted from initial aggression
levels). Stephen Turner, “Net Effects”: A Short History, in C
AUSALITY IN CRISIS? STATISTICAL
METHODS AND THE SEARCH FOR CAUSAL KNOWLEDGE IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 23–25 (Vaughn R.
McKim & Stephen P. Turner eds., 1997).
40. James J. Heckman, Sample Selection Bias as a Specification Error, 47 E
CONOMETRICA 153, 160
(1979).
41. D
ONALD T. CAMPBELL & DAVID A. KENNY, A PRIMER ON REGRESSION ARTIFACTS 155
(1999); David A. Freedman, Statistical Models and Shoe Leather, 21 S
OC. METHODOLOGY 291, 302–04
(1991).
42. K
ENNETH J. ROTHMAN & SANDER GREENLAND, MODERN EPIDEMIOLOGY 62, 255–59 (2d
ed. 1998).
43. M
ARIAN R. YARROW ET AL., CHILD REARING: AN INQUIRY INTO RESEARCH AND
METHODS 80 (1968).
LARZELERE & BAUMRIND 10/12/2010 11:54:42 AM
Spring 2010] ARE SPANKING INJUNCTIONS SCIENTIFICALLY SUPPORTED? 65
III
M
AJOR LITERATURE REVIEWS
Of the six reviews of studies of corporal punishment published between
1996 and 2005,
44
only Gershoff
45
supports a spanking prohibition. Paolucci and
Violato emphasized that the associations between corporal punishment and
affective, cognitive, or behavioral child outcomes were very small,
46
concluding
that the patterns of the causal evidence “seem to support Larzelere’s . . .
contention that it is premature to impose guilt on the majority of parents who
use ordinary spanking.”
47
Horn’s review of corporal punishment in African
American families concluded, “[I]t is possible that there are benefits to
nonabusive physical punishment for African-American children.”
48
The second Larzelere review and the Gershoff review were considered
sufficiently important to be compared by Alan Kazdin, a recent president of the
American Psychological Association, who called them both “exemplary in
terms of scope, comprehensiveness, and scholarship.”
49
Kazdin and one of his
colleagues said, “A top priority for research on spanking would seem to be a
comparison of spanking with alternative procedures,”
50
a comparison made by
Larzelere and Kuhn
51
in their most recent literature review. Therefore, the
discussion here will summarize this latest review and the contrasting one by
Gershoff.
52
Gershoff’s review is thorough and has been cited more often than the other
five reviews. But it fails to address the crucial question—should the use of
disciplinary spanking be enjoined—because most studies upon which her review
depended emphasized overly severe forms of corporal punishment and her
effect sizes were based on unadjusted correlations with child outcomes.
Although this problem was usually due to shortcomings of the original studies,
44. Gershoff, supra note 3, at 542; Ivor B. Horn et al., Nonabusive Physical Punishment and Child
Behavior Among African-American Children: A Systematic Review, 96 JAMA 1162, 1163 (2004);
Robert Larzelere, Child Outcomes of Nonabusive and Customary Physical Punishment by Parents: An
Updated Literature Review, 3 C
LINICAL CHILD & FAM. PSYCHOL. REV. 199, 200 (2000); Robert E.
Larzelere, A Review of the Outcomes of Parental Use of Nonabusive or Customary Physical
Punishment, 98 P
EDIATRICS 824, 824 (1996); Robert E. Larzelere & Brett R. Kuhn, Comparing Child
Outcomes of Physical Punishment and Alternative Disciplinary Tactics: A Meta-analysis, 8 C
LINICAL
CHILD & FAM. PSYCHOL. REV. 1, 4, 17 (2005); Elizabeth O. Paolucci & Claudio Violato, A Meta-
analysis of the Published Research on the Affective, Cognitive, and Behavioral Effects of Corporal
Punishment, 138 J.
PSYCHOL. 194, 208–10 (2004).
45. E
LIZABETH T. GERSHOFF, REPORT ON PHYSICAL PUNISHMENT IN THE UNITED STATES:
WHAT RESEARCH TELLS US ABOUT ITS EFFECTS ON CHILDREN 26 (2008), available at http://
nospank.net/gershoff.htm.
46. Paolucci & Violato, supra note 44, at 197.
47. Id. at 215.
48. Horn et al., supra note 44, at 1162.
49. Benjet & Kazdin, supra note 3, at 205.
50. Id. at 215.
51. Larzelere & Kuhn, supra note 44, at 17.
52. Gershoff, supra note 3.
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66 LAW AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS [Vol. 73:57
Gershoff based her effect sizes on correlations even from studies with stronger
causally relevant evidence.
To document one example, Gershoff based one effect size of d = .30 on
Gunnoe and Mariner’s
53
correlation of r = .15
54
between spanking and fighting.
By doing so, Gershoff ignored that, after adjusting statistically for initial
differences in bullying, spanking was associated with significantly lower
aggression five years later for African Americans, for four- to seven-year-olds,
and for girls, and higher aggression only for European Americans and for eight-
to eleven-year-olds.
55
Gershoff’s effect size thus indicated that spanking was
associated with higher aggression even though the original authors’ conclusion
stated that “[f]or most children, claims that spanking teaches aggression seem
unfounded.”
56
Conclusions based on unadjusted longitudinal correlations rather
than conflicting causal evidence would be like concluding that radiation
treatment is ineffective for Stage II endometrium cancer,
57
regardless of
stronger causal evidence to the contrary.
In her meta-analysis, Gershoff acknowledges the correlation problem,
stating,
[b]ecause these meta-analyses are based primarily on correlational studies, parental
corporal punishment cannot be identified definitively as the cause of these child
behaviors. . . . [I]t is conceivable that the causal direction is reversed from what might
be expected, such that children are driving the associations . . . [or] there might also be
a third variable that predicts both parents’ use of corporal punishment and child
behaviors, such as parents’ inconsistent style of discipline.
58
Notwithstanding her previous acknowledgement that “findings of
correlation do not prove causation,”
59
in a recent advocacy publication,
Gershoff treats the child correlates of corporal punishment as causal effects:
“Taken together, the findings from these research studies support a causal link
between parents’ use of physical punishment and increases in children’s future
aggression, over and above the propensity for disobedient and aggressive child
behavior to elicit parental physical punishment.”
60
As illustrated in Table 1, the longitudinal correlations of radiation treatment
appear detrimental because female recipients of radiation have a higher rate of
dying than the general population of American women of that age. If reliance
on correlations leads to the wrong causal conclusion about corrective medical
actions such as radiation treatment, what is the basis for concluding that
53. Marjorie L. Gunnoe & Carrie L. Mariner, Toward a Developmental-Contextual Model of the
Effects of Parental Spanking on Children’s Aggression, 151 A
RCHIVES PEDIATRICS & ADOLESCENT
MED. 768, 772 (1997).
54. Gershoff, supra note 3, at 545.
55. Gunnoe & Mariner, supra note 53, at 772–73.
56. Id. at 768.
57. See supra table 1.
58. Gershoff, supra note 3, at 550.
59. Id.
60. G
ERSHOFF, supra note 45, at 14.
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correlational evidence can lead to the correct causal conclusion about corrective
disciplinary actions by parents? In both cases, the longitudinal correlations are
biased against the corrective action because the group without the corrective
action had a lower incidence of the problems that required some corrective
action (cancer or oppositional behaviors). In assessing the child effects of
corporal punishment, reliance on correlational evidence creates a selection bias
due to child effects on parents. Nonetheless, Gershoff interprets the
correlations as though they reflect only parent effects on children.
In her recent publication, Gershoff responded to the causal issue by citing
three studies that show bidirectional longitudinal associations (child-to-parent
and parent-to-child).
61
But physical punishment was only one of five to nine
items in the punishment measures used in those studies. Gershoff also cited an
intervention study that she claimed showed that improvements in children’s
behavior were mediated by reductions in physical punishment. But physical
punishment was only one of six items in the measure of “harsh parenting” on
which she based her conclusions, and the composite harsh parenting was
actually associated with subsequent behavioral improvements.
62
Instead of
showing that causal effects of spanking are uniquely detrimental, Gershoff’s
examples confirm that most statistical analyses are biased against all corrective
disciplinary actions, even when controlling statistically for initial scores on the
child outcomes. In addition, the study she cites for her strongest causal evidence
actually found that the broad measure of harsh parenting was associated with
greater improvements in behavior subsequently.
In addition, Gershoff’s
63
meta-analysis consisted mostly of studies that not
only failed to exclude overly severe corporal punishment, but emphasized
severe usage in their measures. Out of fifty-two studies of broadly antisocial
outcomes, sixty-five percent emphasized overly severe corporal punishment,
ranging from spanking with an instrument to “beating with a stick,”
64
“hit[ting] . . . with a fist,”
65
or “slap[ping] in the face.”
66
When Benjet and Kazdin
compared Gershoff’s review with the second Larzelere review,
67
they noted,
“[b]ecause abusive behaviors are not excluded, the negative effects of severe
61. Id.
62. This is based on the negative predictive path coefficient (b) for DDI Harsh Parenting in Table 5
for path b in Figure 4 (Panel 3). Theodore P. Beauchaine et al., Mediators, Moderators, and Predictors
of 1-Year Outcomes Among Children Treated for Early-Onset Conduct Problems: A Latent Growth
Curve Analysis, 73 J.
CONSULTING & CLINICAL PSYCHOL. 371, 383–84 (2005).
63. Gershoff, supra note 3; Diana Baumrind et al., Ordinary Physical Punishment: Is it Harmful?
Comment on Gershoff (2002), 128 P
SYCHOL. BULL. 580, 581–82 (2002).
64. Anette Engfer & Klaus A. Schneewind, Causes and Consequences of Harsh Parental
Punishment: An Empirical Investigation in a Representative Sample of 570 German Families, 6 CHILD
ABUSE & NEGLECT 129, 133 (1982).
65. Robert T. Muller, Family Aggressiveness Factors in the Prediction of Corporal Punishment:
Reciprocal Effects and the Impact of Observer Perspective, 10 J.
FAM. PSYCHOL. 474, 477–78 (1996).
66. M. M. Lefkowitz et al., Punishment, Identification and Aggression, 9 M
ERRILL-PALMER Q. 159,
161 (1963); see also Baumrind et al., supra note 63, at 581.
67. Larzelere, supra note 3.
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68 LAW AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS [Vol. 73:57
corporal punishment may cloud the effects of mild corporal punishment such as
spanking.”
68
The latest review of the literature by Larzelere and Kuhn
69
improved on
Gershoff’s
70
meta-analysis method by distinguishing among four types of
corporal punishment and by obtaining causally relevant evidence rather than
correlational evidence. First, they distinguished among conditional, customary,
overly severe, and predominant use of corporal punishment as follows:
71
“Conditional spanking was defined as physical punishment that was used
primarily to back up milder disciplinary tactics (e.g., reasoning or time-out),
used for defiance, or used in a controlled manner.”
72
“Customary physical
punishment was defined as typical parental usage (e.g., usage or frequency),
without emphasizing its severity or predominance. . . . Overly severe physical
punishment was based on measures that gave extra points for the severity of
physical punishment . . . , [and] predominant usage of physical punishment
included studies investigating predominant disciplinary tactics.”
73
Second, Larzelere and Kuhn dealt with the correlational–causal issue in two
ways. First, they used the most causally relevant statistics from articles rather
than relying primarily on correlations.
74
Second, they compared the effect size of
each type of corporal punishment with effect sizes of alternative disciplinary
tactics from the same studies.
75
If corporal punishment has more detrimental
effects on children than alternative disciplinary tactics, this should be shown in
differences between their effect sizes in predicting an outcome such as antisocial
aggression. If, however, the apparently detrimental effects of corporal
punishment are due to behaviorally difficult children causing parents to use all
disciplinary punishments more frequently, then there should be no differences
in how strongly varying disciplinary tactics are associated with aggression.
Comparing the effect sizes of the two radiation treatments in Table 1 correctly
identifies the more effective treatment (their ds differ by 1.20), whereas
Gershoff’s method would conclude incorrectly that both radiation treatments
are harmful because they cause a higher rate of deaths than in the no-treatment
comparison group. Similar to the radiation-treatment example, comparing the
effect sizes of corporal punishment with an alternative disciplinary tactic
compares children who are similar in provoking corrective disciplinary actions.
In contrast, the usual longitudinal correlation compares oppositional children
who are spanked with a group of more-cooperative children who need few
disciplinary tactics of any kind.
68. Benjet & Kazdin, supra note 3, at 204.
69. Larzelere & Kuhn, supra note 44.
70. Gershoff, supra note 3.
71. Larzelere & Kuhn, supra note 44, at 17.
72. Id.
73. Id.
74. Id. at 3, 17.
75. Id. at 3–4.
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Comparing the effect sizes of corporal punishment with alternative
disciplinary tactics within the same study is also fairer because it makes other
factors equivalent. The comparisons of effect sizes are then based on the same
statistical analyses on the same families. To adopt this strategy, Larzelere and
Kuhn
76
included all twenty-six studies that appeared in either Larzelere’s
77
previous review or Gershoff’s
78
meta-analysis that investigated child outcomes
of at least one alternative disciplinary tactic in addition to physical punishment.
The outcomes of physical punishment compared unfavorably with
alternative, noncorporal disciplinary tactics only when it was the primary
disciplinary method or was too severe (such as beating up a child or striking the
face or head).
79
The outcomes of customary spanking were neither better nor
worse than for any alternative tactic, except for one study in which spanking
reduced drug abuse more than did nonphysical punishment.
80
Conditional
spanking led to less noncompliance or antisocial behavior than ten of thirteen
alternative disciplinary tactics and produced outcomes equivalent to those of
the remaining three tactics.
81
By definition, conditional spanking was used when
children responded defiantly to other disciplinary tactics such as time-out
(based on research on two- to six-year-olds).
IV
C
AUSAL EVIDENCE RELEVANT TO SPANKING PROHIBITIONS
Section II established that the empirical evidence most relevant to
spanking prohibitions is evidence about the causal effects of spanking in the
most appropriate disciplinary situations, for example, when young children
respond defiantly after parents have tried other disciplinary tactics. Subsection
A below next summarizes evidence from the four studies with the most causally
conclusive evidence of the use of spanking to enforce time-out in behavioral
parent training. This is followed by evidence from five other studies that
approximate the same type of spanking and provide outcome comparisons with
alternative disciplinary tactics. Subsection B then summarizes and critiques the
strongest causal evidence against spanking cited by spanking prohibitionists,
consisting of seven studies that use net-effects regression
82
to strengthen the
causal evidence beyond unadjusted correlations. That subsection concludes with
a second set of studies using net-effects regression to compare the outcomes of
customary spanking with outcomes of alternative disciplinary tactics. Finally,
subsection C briefly summarizes studies of overly severe or predominant use of
76. Id. at 4, 17.
77. Larzelere, supra note 3.
78. Gershoff, supra note 3.
79. Larzelere & Kuhn, supra note 44, at 1.
80. F. S. Tennant, Jr. et al., Some Childhood Antecedents of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, 102 A
M. J.
EPIDEMIOLOGY 377, 380, 382 (1975).
81. Larzelere & Kuhn, supra note 44, at 1.
82. Turner, supra note 39, at 23–25.
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70 LAW AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS [Vol. 73:57
corporal punishment, which are the only types of physical punishment clearly
associated with more detrimental effects than alternative disciplinary tactics.
A. Causal Effects of Conditional Spanking
Only four studies provide causally conclusive evidence about the effects of
spanking in a disciplinary situation considered appropriate by clinical
psychologists (that is, to back up time-out in a controlled manner with clinically
defiant two- to six-year-olds).
83
Both major reviews of the literature recognized
these studies as the only causally conclusive studies of corporal punishment.
84
These studies were part of Roberts’ research program to identify the necessary
components of behavioral parent training, which is recognized as one of the
most effective treatments for disruptive-behavior diagnoses in young children,
including oppositional defiant disorder, conduct disorder,
85
and ADHD.
86
1. Randomized Comparisons of Spank Back-Up for Time-Out Versus
Alternatives
Roberts’ four studies tested whether the traditional spank back-up for time-
out was necessary in the Forehand–McMahon
87
version of behavioral parent
training and what alternatives could be used instead of spanking to enforce
cooperation with the time-out chair in the clinic. Alternatives included a child-
determined release from time-out, a restraint procedure, and a brief, forced,
room isolation. When using the spank back-up, children cooperated
significantly more with time-out or parental commands than when using the
child-release or the restraint back-up, and children’s cooperation was the same
as when using the room isolation. Overall, clinically defiant children required
excessive repetitions of the enforcement procedure before cooperating with
time-out in only 12% of cases with the spank back-up, 17% with the room
isolation back-up, and 56% of cases with the restraint back-up.
88
Across all four
studies, compliance rates to parental commands increased from 23% to 70%
with the spank back-up, 21% to 72% with the room-isolation back-up, 18% to
83. Roberts & Powers, supra note 6; Mark W. Roberts, Enforcing Chair Timeouts with Room
Timeouts, 12 B
EHAV. MODIFICATION 353, 360 (1988); Arthur W. Bean & Mark W. Roberts, The Effect
of Time-Out Release Contingencies on Changes in Child Noncompliance, 9 J.
ABNORMAL CHILD
PSYCHOL. 95, 101 (1981); D. E. Day & M. W. Roberts, An Analysis of the Physical Punishment
Component of a Parent Training Program, 11 J.
ABNORMAL CHILD PSYCHOL. 141, 147 (1983).
84. Gershoff, supra note 3, at 550 (“Because these meta-analyses are based primarily on
correlational studies, parental corporal punishment cannot be identified definitively as the cause of
these child behaviors and experiences, with the exception of immediate compliance.” Three of Roberts’
studies are included with two other studies of immediate compliance at 545 and constitute three of the
four studies correctly identified in her Table 3 as using an experimental design (the other experimental
study used a loud noise as the measure of “corporal punishment”: J. C. LaVoie, Punishment and
Adolescent Self-Control, 8 D
EVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOL. 16, 18 (1973))); Larzelere & Kuhn, supra note
44, at 5 (“randomized clinical trials”), 17, 19.
85. Eyberg et al., supra note 23, at 226–29.
86. Pelham & Fabiano, supra note 22, at 187.
87. Forehand & McMahon, supra note 19.
88. Roberts & Powers, supra note 6, at 263.
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52% with the restraint back-up, and 24% to 57% with the child-release
procedure.
89
In contrast, children’s compliance decreased from 27% to 13% in a
control condition without any of the components of behavioral parent training.
90
Another benefit of effective enforcements for time-out is that the back-up
procedure gets phased out quickly as the child learns to cooperate with time-
out. The mean number of spanking or room-isolation back-ups decreased from
2.5 during the first implementation of time-out to 0.6 during its second
implementation in the clinic,
91
and from 0.7 during the first week at home to 0.15
in each of the third and fourth weeks after training in the clinic (the median
decreased from 0.5 to 0.0).
92
Skillful enforcement of time-out with spanking (or
room isolation, the only equivalently effective alternative) results in parents’
rapidly phasing out spanking, thereby moving into the low-spanking group.
In sum, training a child to cooperate with time-out is a crucial skill in
behavioral parent training for young children with disruptive-behavior
disorders. Roberts’ series of randomized studies demonstrated causally
conclusive evidence that this goal is achieved most effectively by the spank
back-up and by the room-isolation back-up, both of which were significantly
more effective than the restraint back-up or child-determined-release
conditions.
2. The Importance of Roberts’ Studies
Roberts’ four studies are especially important for determining the
advisability of spanking prohibitions for five reasons: they are the only studies
of spanking that (1) are causally conclusive, (2) specify a nonabusive
implementation of spanking in an appropriate disciplinary situation, (3) focus
on the most behaviorally difficult children, (4) show how spanking can enforce
preferred nonphysical tactics and then be phased out, and (5) show the benefit
of multiple disciplinary options.
First, these experimental, randomized trials are the only studies of corporal
punishment with causally conclusive results. In any other area, the results of
randomized trials would trump conclusions from less causally conclusive
studies.
93
For example, the Society of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology
considers only “good group-design experiments”
94
to determine the
effectiveness of psychosocial treatments. Studies with less-conclusive causal
evidence are not considered at all. That means that if spanking were being
89. Id. at 264; Roberts, supra note 83, at 361; Bean & Roberts, supra note 83, at 101; Day &
Roberts, supra note 83, at 148.
90. Bean & Roberts, supra note 83, at 101.
91. Roberts, supra note 83, at 363.
92. Roberts & Powers, supra note 6, at 266.
93. Samuel Shapiro, Meta-analysis/Shmeta-analysis, 140 A
M. J. EPIDEMIOLOGY 771, 771–77 (1994);
Samuel Shapiro, Is Meta-analysis a Valid Approach to the Evaluation of Small Effects in Observational
Studies?, 50 J.
CLINICAL EPIDEMIOLOGY 223, 223 (1997); James V. Lacey, Jr. et al., Menopausal
Hormone Replacement Therapy and Risk of Ovarian Cancer, 288 JAMA 334, 337 (2002).
94. Silverman & Hinshaw, supra note 38, at 5.
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72 LAW AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS [Vol. 73:57
evaluated for effectiveness by clinical child psychologist standards, only Mark
Roberts’ four studies would be considered at all; all of the studies cited for
adverse effects by prohibitionists would be disregarded as inconclusive because
of the inferiority of their methods for showing unbiased causal evidence.
Second, these are the only studies guaranteeing that the spanking is
nonabusive (two open-handed swats to the buttocks under the supervision of a
clinical psychologist) and that specify an appropriate disciplinary situation (to
enforce compliance with time-out in children of about two to six years of age).
Third, these studies demonstrate effectiveness for the most behaviorally
difficult young children. These children have the highest risk for delinquency
and crime due to the stability of antisocial behavior after ages two to eight.
95
If
spanking prohibitions were to undermine the effectiveness of parents’ authority
with behaviorally difficult children, a society would likely become more violent
when those at-risk children grew up.
Fourth, Roberts’ studies show that more-forceful tactics are often needed to
make preferred disciplinary tactics such as reasoning and time-out more
effective for behaviorally difficult young children. Few other studies show how
skillful sequencing of disciplinary tactics is crucial for enhancing the
effectiveness of preferred tactics. Larzelere and his colleagues showed that
reasoning becomes more effective by itself with two- and three-year-olds to the
extent that mothers back it up with nonphysical consequences at least ten
percent of the time.
96
Roberts’ series of studies extended that sequence by
documenting that time-out must be consistently enforced by a forceful tactic
such as a two-swat spanking or a room isolation to become effective in
maintaining normal levels of cooperation. What is not known is how often a
similar history of skillfully backing up nonphysical tactics with spanking is a
factor underlying the normal levels of cooperation in nonclinical children who
no longer need to be spanked.
Finally, Roberts and Powers showed the benefit for parents to have multiple
options for enforcing time-out because two effective options provide an
alternative if the first option is not sufficiently effective. First, the authors
showed that each of the two most effective back-ups worked for children when
the other back-up was slow in achieving compliance with time-out.
97
After seven
escapes from time-out or seven time-outs without meeting compliance goals,
the parent was switched to the other enforcement procedure. This adjustment
occurred for fifteen (42%) of thirty-six children, with three switching from the
95. Daniel S. Shaw, The Development of Aggression in Early Childhood, in 1 THE CRISIS IN
YOUTH MENTAL HEALTH: CRITICAL ISSUES AND EFFECTIVE PROGRAMS 183, 183–85 (Hiram E.
Fitzgerald et al. eds., 2006); Sylvana M. Cote et al., The Joint Development of Physical and Indirect
Aggression: Predictors of Continuity and Change During Childhood, 19 D
EV. & PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
37, 44–49 (2007); Dan Olweus, Stability of Aggressive Reaction Patterns in Males: A Review, 86
P
SYCHOL. BULL. 852, 863 (1979).
96. Larzelere et al., supra note 30, at 397–98.
97. Roberts & Powers, supra note 6, at 263–65.
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spank back-up to the room isolation, and the other twelve switching from one
of the other three back-up tactics to the spank back-up. The second back-up
procedure always produced the desired compliance with time-out and with
parental commands, which increased from 16% initially to 30% before
switching to a second back-up to 79% after that switch.
98
The equivalence of
these enforcement tactics also allowed parents to select the one they preferred
to use at home. Most parents chose the spank back-up (64%), whereas 14%
selected the room isolation, 9% selected the restraint procedure, and 14%
selected an individualized combination.
99
Just as having multiple effective
prescription drugs permits doctors and patients to work together to choose the
most desirable drug for their situation and preferences, multiple effective back-
up options for time-out likewise expand the effective options, including extra
options to choose when the first option fails to produce cooperation with time-
out.
3. Replies to Critiques of Roberts’ Studies
The relevance of Roberts’ studies has been criticized in several ways by
spanking-prohibition advocates. This section replies to those criticisms.
Gershoff
100
acknowledges that Roberts’ studies are the only causally
definitive studies of corporal punishment and that they show that spanking
reduces child noncompliance overall. Nonetheless, she has criticized the
importance of Roberts’ studies because their results (1) are limited to
“immediate compliance,” (2) show inconsistent effect sizes, and (3) Roberts
himself concluded that physical punishment is not necessary.
101
Gershoff’s
102
term immediate compliance suggests that spanking merely puts
an immediate stop to noncompliance, thereby ending the discipline incident.
When spanking had to be used in Roberts’ studies, however, it was always due
to noncompliance with both a parent command and time-out. Successful
compliance was measured in Roberts’ studies by compliance with parental
commands or cooperation with time-out, situations in which the spank back-up
never needed to be used.
103
Furthermore, compliance with time-out is essential
for a parent to restore and maintain acceptable levels of cooperation with these
behaviorally difficult children. Otherwise, continued defiance will keep the
child at high risk for developmental pathways of authority conflicts, antisocial
behavior, delinquency, and crime.
104
98. Id. at 265.
99. Id. at 266.
100. Gershoff, supra note 3, at 539, 550; Gershoff, supra note 45, at 13.
101. G
ERSHOFF, supra note 45, at 13.
102. Gershoff, supra note 3, at 539.
103. Roberts & Powers, supra note 6, at 261.
104. Rolf Loeber et al., Developmental Pathways in Disruptive Child Behavior, 5 D
EV. &
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 103, 111 (1993); Jennifer L. White et al., How Early Can We Tell? Predictors of
Childhood Conduct Disorder and Adolescent Delinquency, 28 C
RIMINOLOGY 507, 513 (1990).
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74 LAW AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS [Vol. 73:57
The inconsistency of Gershoff’s effect sizes from Roberts’ studies is due to
differences in what the spank back-up was compared with. When compared
with a no-treatment control group, behavioral parent training with the spank
back-up had an unusually large effect size of d = 3.39.
105
When comparing two
behavioral parent training protocols that differed only in whether they used the
spank back-up or not in Roberts’ original study, the effect size was also large (d
= 1.73).
106
When comparing otherwise-identical behavioral parent-training
protocols that differed only in using the room-isolation as opposed to the spank
back-up, Roberts and Powers found no significant differences, concluding that
the “Barrier and Spank procedures appeared equally effective, replicating prior
studies.”
107
This is a typical pattern for effective clinical treatments, showing
more effectiveness than a no-treatment control group but equivalent
effectiveness to another treatment. In fact, documenting outcomes equivalent to
an effective treatment is one of the criteria for evidence-based treatments in
clinical child psychology.
108
Finally, Gershoff quoted Day and Roberts as saying in 1983 that “there was
no support for the necessity of the physical punishment,”
109
which actually
meant that the traditional spank back-up was no longer the only maximally
effective back-up for time-out. Roberts was still using the spank back-up in 1990
and switched parents to it when their originally assigned back-up procedure was
not effective quickly enough (twelve (44%) of twenty-seven parents).
110
Granted, Roberts now prefers the room-isolation back-up and so no longer uses
the spank back-up. Given two equally effective enforcements for time-out,
therapist preference is a valid reason for choosing one over the other. Another
reason that most behavioral clinicians now use the room-isolation instead of the
spank back-up is concern about their reputation, which influences clinical
referrals. Neither Roberts’ current practice nor reputation considerations
negates the equivalent effectiveness of the spanking and room-isolation back-
ups for time-out or the advantages of having both available as parental options,
as shown by Roberts and Powers.
111
Clinics and families lacking an isolation
room need to retain the spanking option, or they would have to use alternative
back-ups for time-out that are either unproven or have been shown to be less
effective. The effectiveness of the room-isolation has never been compared with
the spank back-up for any setting other than the four- by-five-foot empty room
with a four-foot-high plywood barrier used in Roberts’ clinic.
112
105. Gershoff, supra note 3, at 545.
106. Larzelere & Kuhn, supra note 44, at 5; Bean & Roberts, supra note 83, at 102.
107. Gershoff, supra note 3, at 545; Roberts & Powers, supra note 6, at 257.
108. Silverman & Hinshaw, supra note 38, at 5.
109. G
ERSHOFF, supra note 45, at 13; Day & Roberts, supra note 83, at 150.
110. Roberts & Powers, supra note 6, at 257, 269.
111. Id. at 257.
112. Id. at 260.
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Roberts has also been criticized for using so many spanking repetitions, a
mean of 8.6 spankings before complying with time-out in one study.
113
This
shows the difficulty of getting cooperation with time-out from clinically defiant
young children who have learned to undermine all parental-control attempts, a
key coercive process in the development of antisocial behavior.
114
According to
Gerald Patterson, the leading expert on coercive process, the key for treating
this type of defiance is to teach parents “how to punish more effectively,”
115
referring primarily to time-out. Effective time-out punishment requires the
child to cooperate with it, which is accomplished by consistent use of the back-
up enforcement for noncompliance with time-out. Roberts later improved the
protocol by switching to either the spank back-up or the room-isolation back-up
after seven escapes from time-out.
116
So having multiple effective options
enhances the ability of parents to discover what will work for their child in a
particular situation, increasing the likelihood that the child will cooperate with
time-out and thereby decreasing the probability that the parents will escalate
the severity of their verbal or physical punishment.
4. Other Studies of Conditional Spanking
In their most recent meta-analysis on corporal punishment, Larzelere and
Kuhn
117
found five other studies that approximated conditional spanking on at
least one of its following components: (1) clearly nonabusive spanking for (2)
defiant refusal (3) to cooperate with other disciplinary tactics. Together with
Roberts’ studies, the nine studies together showed that conditional spanking
was associated with significantly less noncompliance or antisocial behavior than
ten of thirteen alternative disciplinary tactics investigated in these studies. Table
2 summarizes one of those studies, which was unusual in highlighting defiant
situations by asking mothers how they tried to get their child to cooperate when
dealing with “extreme” or dangerous misbehavior.
118
The extent to which they
would use physical punishment in those situations was marginally associated
with less aggression in preschool two months later, r = -.19 (p < .10 [which is
generally considered marginally significant in science]), an indication of
effectiveness matched only by privilege removal in that study. Both tactics
showed significantly greater effectiveness at reducing preschool aggression than
at least three of the other five disciplinary tactics (p < .05, the usual scientific
standard for significant, reliable results that were unlikely to be chance
occurrences). Other studies showed that conditional spanking was more
effective than some alternative tactics at putting an immediate stop to
113. Day & Roberts, supra note 83, at 148.
114. J
OHN REID ET AL., ANTISOCIAL BOYS 39–60 (1992).
115. G
ERALD R. PATTERSON, COERCIVE FAMILY PROCESS 111 (1982).
116. Roberts & Powers, supra note 6, at 259–60.
117. Larzelere & Kuhn, supra note 44, at 20–21.
118. Y
ARROW ET AL., supra note 43, at 75 (“NIMH Study”), 154–57, 171, 179.
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76 LAW AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS [Vol. 73:57
defiance
119
or noncompliance,
120
and at reducing antisocial behavior and
impulsivity.
121
Table 2
Effect Sizes Predicting Aggression in Preschool from Disciplinary Tactics
Used for “Extreme” or Dangerous Misbehaviors, from Yarrow et al. (1968)
122
Disciplinary Tactic Effect Sizes
r d
Difference from d for Physical
Punishment
Isolation .09 .18 .56*
Love withdrawal .12 .24 .62**
Reasoning .14
a
.28 .66**
Deprivation of privileges -.19
b
-.38
a
.00
Physical punishment -.19
b
-.38
a
n/a
Scolding .12 .24 .62**
Diverting attention .23
a*
.47* .85***
a
The sign was reversed from Yarrow et al., because their listed r is for the reverse-scored tactic.
b
p < .10.
*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.
In sum, the only four causally definitive studies of spanking for defiant
refusal to comply with other tactics have shown that a two-swat spank to the
buttocks is tied with one other enforcement tactic as the most effective tactic in
that situation with two- to six-year-olds. Having two equivalently effective
options is optimal for parents and therapists because each tactic works better
for some children than the other tactic. Further, each option has proven to be
effective when the other option was not effective in getting the child to
119. Ritchie, supra note 15, at 587; Robert E. Larzelere & Brett R. Kuhn, Immediate Effectiveness
of Disciplinary Tactics by Type of Noncompliance (A Reanalysis of Ritchie, 1999), Presentation at the
Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association (2005).
120. Michael Chapman & Carolyn Zahn-Waxler, Young Children’s Compliance and Noncompliance
to Parental Discipline in a Natural Setting, 5 I
NT’L J. BEHAV. DEV. 81, 86 (1982).
121. M. A. Straus & V. E. Mouradian, Impulsive Corporal Punishment by Mothers and Antisocial
Behavior and Impulsiveness of Children, 16 BEHAV. SCI. & L. 353, 362 (1998).
122. Y
ARROW ET AL., supra note 43, at 75 (“NIMH study”), 154–57, 171, 179. Aggression was rated
by preschool teachers two months after mothers described their disciplinary tactics with the following
open-ended questions: “How do you go about getting [your child] to act as you want him to? . . . Think
of some extreme things [your child] has done” and questions about “things that involve the total safety
of a child, such as playing with matches, running in the street.” Id. Effect sizes (ds) were estimated from
correlations with Dstat. J
OHNSON, supra note 33. Since d estimates the association of each disciplinary
tactic with aggression in standard deviations (SDs), the ds can be subtracted from each other to get
differences between two tactics in their associations with preschool aggression, also in SDs. Positive ds
indicate that the disciplinary tactic is associated with greater preschool aggression. Positive differences
from the d for physical punishment indicates that the tactic is associated with more preschool
aggression than is physical punishment.
LARZELERE & BAUMRIND 10/12/2010 11:54:42 AM
Spring 2010] ARE SPANKING INJUNCTIONS SCIENTIFICALLY SUPPORTED? 77
cooperate with time-out. Either back-up enforces compliance with time-out, so
that time-out can be relied upon more often, enabling parents to phase out the
back-up tactic used to enforce time-out. We do not know how many infrequent
spankers have gotten to that point by skillfully using spanking to enforce other
disciplinary tactics, which they now rely on. Four of the five other studies that
have at least one characteristic of this type of conditional spanking showed
significantly greater effectiveness for spanking than for most alternative tactics
in reducing defiance, noncompliance, or antisocial behavior.
123
B. Causally Relevant Evidence Against Spanking
The strongest causal evidence against spanking is from longitudinal studies
showing that spanking frequency at a given initial time predicts more antisocial
behavior problems one or two years later even after controlling statistically for
initial differences on the behavior problems.
124
We are calling these causally
relevant studies, because they have improved their causal evidence beyond that
provided by unadjusted correlations but do not provide the causally definitive
evidence required for evaluating clinical child treatments and new prescription
drugs.
Seven longitudinal studies investigated whether customary spanking of
children younger than thirteen predicted subsequent antisocial behavior or
aggression after controlling statistically for initial levels of those outcomes.
These studies showed nonsignificant,
125
small,
126
or mixed effects
127
of customary
spanking on subsequent antisocial behavior or aggression. The small, significant
effects were found mostly for non-Hispanic European Americans or in samples
dominated by that group, with effect sizes of β = .05,
128
.06,
129
and .07,
130
equivalent to d = .10, d = .12, and d = .12, respectively. The study with mixed
results was the only study that did not rely solely on parents’ reporting all of the
data.
131
Using a distinct source of information for the child-outcome variable
123. Larzelere & Kuhn, supra note 44, at 20–21.
124. M
URRAY A. STRAUS & VERA MOURADIAN, BEATING THE DEVIL OUT OF THEM: CORPORAL
PUNISHMENT IN AMERICAN FAMILIES AND ITS EFFECTS ON CHILDREN 196–205 (2d ed. 2001).
125. Mary K. Eamon, Poverty, Parenting, Peer, and Neighborhood Influences on Young Adolescent
Antisocial Behavior, 28 J.
SOC. SERVICE RES. 1, 10 (2001); Larzelere et al., supra note 30, at 399–400;
Mark F. Schmitz, Influences of Race and Family Environment on Child Hyperactivity and Antisocial
Behavior, 65 J.
MARRIAGE & FAM. 835, 841 (2003).
126. Lingxin Hao & Ross L. Matsueda, Family Dynamics Through Childhood: A Sibling Model of
Behavior Problems, 35 S
OC. SCI. RES. 500, 511 (2006); Matthew K. Mulvaney & Carolyn J. Mebert,
Parental Corporal Punishment Predicts Behavior Problems in Early Childhood, 21 J.
FAM. PSYCHOL.
389, 392 (2007); Murray A. Straus et al., Spanking by Parents and Subsequent Antisocial Behavior of
Children, 151 A
RCHIVES PEDIATRICS & ADOLESCENT MED. 761, 765 (1997).
127. Gunnoe & Mariner, supra note 53.
128. Hao & Matsueda, supra note 126, at 520 (lagged effects, effect size calculated from additional
information from authors).
129. Mulvaney & Mebert, supra note 126, at 395.
130. Straus et al., supra note 126, at 765.
131. Gunnoe & Mariner, supra note 53, at 770, 772–73.
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78 LAW AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS [Vol. 73:57
(that is, child reported aggression), it found that customary spanking
significantly reduced aggression in the following subgroups: all four- to seven-
year-olds, all African Americans aged four to eleven, and all girls aged four to
eleven.
132
That report also replicated the usual, small adverse effect of customary
spanking on antisocial behavior when all the information was obtained from the
parent.
None of these studies included a never-spanked contrast group, and their
small, apparently detrimental effects can easily be explained by substantive or
methodological shortcomings. All the studies with significant effects asked
parents how often they had spanked their child in the past week.
133
Parents who
spanked as often as twenty-five times annually were more likely than not to be
included in the no-spanking group for that week. Therefore, all these small
detrimental effects came from comparisons between less-frequent and more-
frequent spanking, rather than between never-spanking and some spanking,
which is necessary to support spanking prohibitions. The small detrimental
effects could also be due to substantive factors. Overly severe and abusive
parents were not excluded, so the small effects may be due entirely to them.
These studies do nothing to distinguish appropriate from inappropriate
situations in which to use spanking, such as limiting its use to dangerous
behaviors and defiance and to enforce other disciplinary tactics. The small
detrimental effects could also be due to parents who spank too frequently
because they use it for an overly wide range of disciplinary situations.
In addition, the small effects could easily be due to methodological artifacts.
Reliance solely on parental reports has been shown to inflate evidence against
disciplinary tactics.
134
The only statistically controlled study that relied on a
source of information in addition to parental reporting found that spanking
predicted reduced aggression more often than it predicted increased
aggression.
135
Also, these small effects could easily be caused by residual confounding.
136
Statistical controls eliminate all confounding and thus yield unbiased causal
evidence only when the process of selecting recipients for a corrective action is
measured comprehensively
137
and without measurement error.
138
For that reason,
when epidemiologists make conclusions from similar data, they recognize that
residual confounding remains after controlling statistically for fallible measures
of confounding variables.
139
For example, residual confounding explained why
132. Id.
133. E.g., Straus et al., supra note 126, at 762.
134. Y
ARROW ET AL., supra note 43, at 80.
135. Gunnoe & Mariner, supra note 53, at 772–73.
136. Residual confounding is the part of the influence of the confounding variable that is left after
being partially reduced. R
OTHMAN & GREENLAND, supra note 42.
137. Heckman, supra note 40.
138. C
AMPBELL & KENNY, supra note 41; Freedman, supra note 41.
139. R
OTHMAN & GREENLAND, supra note 42.
LARZELERE & BAUMRIND 10/12/2010 11:54:42 AM
Spring 2010] ARE SPANKING INJUNCTIONS SCIENTIFICALLY SUPPORTED? 79
the summer Head Start program appeared to be detrimental according to a
major, early-evaluation study using similar statistical controls.
140
None of these studies investigated alternative disciplinary tactics with the
same statistical analyses. If the association between the frequency of spanking
and subsequent antisocial behavior is due to residual confounding with
children’s initial oppositional behavior, it follows that all disciplinary
enforcements should show a similar association with antisocial behavior. This
result would be consistent with Larzelere and Kuhn’s meta-analysis, which
found no differences in child outcomes of customary spanking compared with
any alternative disciplinary tactic.
141
Larzelere and his colleagues
142
have recently implemented the first two
studies known to compare the apparent effects of customary spanking with
those of alternative tactics that parents could use instead. They replicated the
small, apparently detrimental effects of spanking on subsequent antisocial
behavior, controlling for preexisting differences. However, all kinds of
nonphysical punishment also predicted higher antisocial behavior with the same
controls. In their close replication of work by Straus et al.,
143
the first study
found the following standardized regression coefficients predicting antisocial
behavior from spanking and from alternative corrective actions when
substituted for spanking in the same analyses with the same sample, controlling
statistically for initial antisocial behavior: spanking: β = .10, p < .05; grounding: β
= .12, p < .01; privilege removal: β = .10, n.s.; sending children to their room: β =
.09, p < .10; psychotherapy during past year: β = .24, p < .05.
144
Using the
Canadian National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth, the second
replication found the following standardized regression coefficients predicting
antisocial behavior two years later after controlling statistically for initial scores
on antisocial behavior: physical punishment: β = .07, p < .01; nonphysical
punishment: β = .03, n.s.; scolding or yelling: β = .06, p < .05; psychotherapy: β =
.07, p < .01; and Ritalin: β = .07, p < .01.
145
In addition, Ritalin, nonphysical
140. WESTINGHOUSE LEARNING CORP. & OHIO UNIV., 1–2 THE IMPACT OF HEAD START: AN
EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTS OF HEAD START ON CHILDREN’S COGNITIVE AND AFFECTIVE
DEVELOPMENT 127 (1969) (report presented to the Office of Economic Opportunity Pursuant to
Contract of B89-4536); Donald T. Campbell & Robert F. Boruch, Making the Case for Randomized
Assignment to Treatments by Considering the Alternatives: Six Ways in Which Quasi-Experimental
Evaluations in Compensatory Education Tend to Underestimate Effects, in E
VALUATION AND
EXPERIMENT: SOME CRITICAL ISSUES IN ASSESSING SOCIAL PROGRAMS 195, 209 (Carl A. Bennett &
Arthur A. Lumsdaine eds., 1975).
141. Larzelere & Kuhn, supra note 44, at 1.
142. Robert E. Larzelere, Emilio Ferrer & et al., Differences in Causal Estimates from Longitudinal
Analyses of Residualized vs. Simple Gain Scores: Contrasting Controls for Selection and Regression
Artifacts, 34 I
NT’L J. BEHAV. DEV. 180 (2010); Robert E. Larzelere, Ronald B. Cox, Jr. & Gail L.
Smith, Do Nonphysical Punishments Reduce Antisocial Behavior More Than Spanking? A Comparison
Using the Strongest Previous Causal Evidence Against Spanking, 10:10 BMC
PEDIATRICS 1 (2010).
143. Straus et al., supra note 126.
144. Larzelere, Cox & Smith, supra note 142, at 8.
145. Larzelere, Ferrer & et al., supra note 142, at 185.
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80 LAW AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS [Vol. 73:57
punishment, and scolding or yelling all predicted significantly higher subsequent
hyperactivity, whereas physical punishment did not, β = .03, n.s. Therefore, the
strongest causal evidence against customary spanking is not unique to spanking,
but applies as much to most corrective actions, including most corrective
disciplinary actions by parents and corrective interventions by psychotherapists.
Other evidence from these two recent studies suggests that these small
detrimental effects are biased due to residual confounding. First, all of these
apparent effects became nonsignificant after improving the measure used to
adjust statistically for preexisting differences in children.
146
Second, after
reversing the bias by predicting simple changes in antisocial behavior during the
following two years, all significant findings showed small beneficial effects, that
is, in reducing antisocial behavior, albeit marginally for physical punishment
and nonsignificantly for the professional interventions.
147
Third, this
contradictory pattern of results was replicated in reversed time, that is, after
reversing the temporal sequence of the data.
148
These last results would be
expected from statistical artifacts,
149
not from actual causal effects, which can
operate only forward in time.
Another strategy for obtaining causally relevant evidence from correlational
studies is to compare the effect sizes of alternative disciplinary tactics with each
other within the same studies. Using that strategy, Larzelere and Kuhn’s meta-
analysis found no differences in outcomes of customary spanking compared to
any alternative disciplinary tactic studied except for one retrospective study
favoring spanking over non-contact punishment for reducing substance abuse.
150
Grogan-Kaylor
151
has claimed stronger causal evidence against customary
spanking by using a statistical method called fixed-effects regression.
152
However, his conclusions were based on associations between the frequency of
spanking in the past week and the frequency of antisocial behavior during the
past several months, and it is difficult to conclude that last week’s spankings
caused last month’s antisocial behavior. His results cannot discriminate child
effects on the parent from parent effects on the child. Accordingly, a replication
146. Larzelere, Cox & Smith, supra note 142, at 1, 8–16.
147. Larzelere, Ferrer & et al., supra note 142, at 180, 183–86.
148. Id. at 180, 185, 187.
149. C
AMPBELL & KENNY, supra note 41, at 158–63.
150. Larzelere & Kuhn, supra note 44; Tennant, Jr. et al., supra note 80.
151. Andrew Grogan-Kaylor, The Effect of Corporal Punishment on Antisocial Behavior in
Children, 28 S
OC. WORK RES. 153, 160–61 (2004).
152. When applied to longitudinal data, fixed-effects regression basically subtracts the mean of each
person’s score from his scores at each occasion and then implements the regression analysis. The
advantage of this method is that it eliminates the confounding influence of all between-subject
differences on the analyses. However, it fails to control for the extent to which confounding variables
vary across occasions for the same individual, unless explicitly in the regression analysis. Grogan-
Kaylor’s analyses reported associations between spanking and anti-social behavior during the same
time period. Id.
LARZELERE & BAUMRIND 10/12/2010 11:54:42 AM
Spring 2010] ARE SPANKING INJUNCTIONS SCIENTIFICALLY SUPPORTED? 81
of his analyses showed similar apparently detrimental “effects” for all types of
nonphysical punishment and for psychotherapy.
153
In sum, the strongest causally relevant evidence against customary spanking
yields small, apparently detrimental effects that can easily be due to a
combination of several substantive and methodological factors that bias the
results. Consistent with this, the first studies to use the same research methods
for alternative disciplinary tactics showed similar results for corrective actions
by both parents and professionals. In evaluating corrective actions by clinical
psychologists, this type of evidence would not even be considered and would
definitely not override the causally conclusive evidence that spanking can be
effective for enforcing nonphysical disciplinary tactics, even in the most
clinically defiant two- to six-year-olds.
154
C. Overly Severe and Predominant Use of Corporal Punishment
When comparing the outcomes of corporal punishment with outcomes of
alternative disciplinary tactics, Larzelere and Kuhn’s meta-analysis found that
the outcomes of physical discipline compared unfavorably with alternative
disciplinary tactics only when it was the primary disciplinary method or was too
severe (such as beating up a child or striking the face or head). Similarly,
causally relevant studies of overly severe corporal punishment have generally
found larger detrimental effects than have similar studies of customary
spanking.
155
This supports what all professionals agree with—that overly severe
corporal punishment is detrimental to children and should be avoided. Also,
corporal punishment should not be the main disciplinary tactic used by parents.
153. Robert E. Larzelere & Ketevan Danelia, Similarity of Antisocial Outcomes for Nonphysical
Punishment, Spanking, and Psychotherapy, Presentation at the Biennial Meeting of the Society for
Research in Child Development (2009).
154. Silverman & Hinshaw, supra note 38, at 5.
155. Mara Brendgen et al., Parent and Peer Effects on Delinquency-Related Violence and Dating
Violence: A Test of Two Mediational Models, 11 S
OC. DEV. 225, 232 (2002); Sarah E. Fine et al., Anger
Perception, Caregivers’ Use of Physical Discipline, and Aggression in Children at Risk, 13 S
OC. DEV.
213, 220 (2004); Jennifer E. Lansford et al., Friendship Quality, Peer Group Affiliation, and Peer
Antisocial Behavior as Moderators of the Link Between Negative Parenting and Later Adolescent
Externalizing Behavior, 13 J.
RES. ON ADOLESCENCE 161, 169 (2003); Jennifer E. Lansford et al.,
Ethnic Differences in the Link Between Physical Discipline and Later Adolescent Externalizing
Behaviors, 45 J.
CHILD PSYCHOL. & PSYCHIATRY 801, 804 (2004); Anna S. Lau et al., Factors Affecting
the Link Between Physical Discipline and Child Externalizing Problems in Black and White Families, 34
J.
COMMUNITY PSYCHOL. 89, 96 (2006); Liliana J. Lengua, Anxiousness, Frustration, and Effortful
Control as Moderators of the Relation Between Parenting and Adjustment in Middle-Childhood, 17 S
OC.
DEV. 554, 562 (2008); Dustin A. Pardini et al., The Development of Callous-Unemotional Traits and
Antisocial Behavior in Children: Are There Shared and/or Unique Predictors?, 36 J.
CLINICAL CHILD &
ADOLESCENT PSYCHOL. 319, 325 (2007).
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82 LAW AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS [Vol. 73:57
V
O
THER EMPIRICAL ISSUES
A. Does Spanking Increase the Risk of Physical Child Abuse?
An important concern raised by spanking prohibitionists is that spanking
might increase the risk of physical abuse. Most instances of physical abuse occur
in situations that parents later describe as attempts to discipline their children.
156
Gershoff showed a strong association between corporal punishment and
physical abuse,
157
but nine of the ten relevant studies in her meta-analysis were
cross-sectional and the other study used retrospective data for the same child
ages. Cross-sectional correlations do not prove causation.
Often, some version of the “stepping stone” argument is used to conclude
that spanking must cause abuse because it typically precedes abuse. Such causal
attribution from correlational evidence was shown to be specious when it was
used to conclude that marijuana use is causally related to heroin use.
158
Since
only a small proportion of the large majority of parents who spank their
children ever abuse them and the most successful parents (authoritative
parents) are average in their use of spanking, it is illogical to presume that
abusive corporal punishment can be discouraged only by completely enjoining
all spanking. To date, there has been no convincing evidence that spanking bans
reduce physical child abuse.
159
To prevent escalations in frustration and risk of abuse, parents need to be
able to get acceptable cooperation with nonabusive disciplinary tactics.
Behavioral parent training accomplishes that by training parents to use time-out
effectively, but it often requires an effective enforcement tactic. Four studies
have documented a decrease in spanking following behavioral parent training.
Two of the studies used the traditional spank back-up for time-out,
160
whereas
two used alternative back-ups.
161
Thus, the spank back-up and the room-
isolation back-up are the two most effective enforcements to enhance
compliance with time-out, which in turn prevents escalations toward abuse.
156. ALFRED KADUSHIN & JUDITH A. MARTIN, CHILD ABUSE: AN INTERACTIONAL EVENT 105
(1981).
157. G
ERSHOFF, supra note 45, at 17; Gershoff, supra note 3, at 546–47, 550.
158. Diana Baumrind, Specious Causal Attributions in the Social Sciences: The Reformulated
Stepping-Stone Theory of Heroin Use as Exemplar, 45 J.
PERSONALITY & SOC. PSYCHOL. 1289, 1296
(1983).
159. Robert E. Larzelere & Byron Johnson, Evaluation of the Effects of Sweden’s Spanking Ban on
Physical Child Abuse Rates: A Literature Review, 85 P
SYCHOL. REP. 381, 386 (1999).
160. M. W. Roberts, An Attempt to Reduce Timeout Resistance in Young Children, 15 B
EHAV.
THERAPY 210, 212 (1984); S. Eyberg, The Spank Back-Up in Time-Out with Preschool Children (1993)
(unpublished manuscript) (on file with the University of Florida).
161. Cheryl Bodiford McNeil et al., Assessment of a New Procedure to Prevent Timeout Escape in
Preschoolers, 16 C
HILD & FAM. BEHAV. THERAPY 27, 29–32 (1994); Carolyn Webster-Stratton,
Enhancing the Effectiveness of Self-Administered Videotape Parent Training for Families with Conduct-
Problem Children, 18 J.
ABNORMAL CHILD PSYCHOL. 479, 481–85 (1990).
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Spring 2010] ARE SPANKING INJUNCTIONS SCIENTIFICALLY SUPPORTED? 83
B. Is Spanking Necessarily More Aversive than Alternatives that Would
Replace It?
The assumption underlying a spanking injunction is that spanking is
necessarily more aversive than even the harshest alternative disciplinary tactic.
There is little data on the aversiveness of typical spankings compared to
alternatives that parents could use instead. The assumption that nonphysical
punishment, such as time-out and privilege removal, is less aversive than
customary spanking was not supported in a study of two- and three-year-olds.
162
When used in combination with reasoning, nonphysical and physical
punishments were tied as the most effective disciplinary responses at delaying
recurrences of disobedience and fighting.
163
When used with reasoning, physical
punishment resulted in a slightly higher level of child-distress intensity, but for a
shorter period of time (an average of 4.2 minutes) than was the case following
nonphysical punishment (an average of 5.2 minutes).
164
On average, preschoolers and fifth-graders considered a medium-to-hard
spanking appropriate for dangerous misbehaviors, such as playing with matches,
and moral transgressions, such as hitting or stealing.
165
On average, their
mothers considered a medium-to-hard spanking appropriate only for dangerous
behaviors by preschoolers and a light-to-medium spanking appropriate for
moral transgressions and for dangerous behaviors by fifth graders.
If spanking is prohibited, do parents then use more-effective and less-
aversive disciplinary tactics instead? Thirty years after Sweden passed the first
spanking ban, there is still little supporting evidence. One comparison found
that Swedish parents were less likely than American parents to use reasoning
and behavior modification techniques and more likely to use physical restraint
and “coercive verbal control.”
166
Support for disciplinary consequences has
continued to erode in Sweden until only 31% of ten- to twelve-year-olds
thought parents had the right to ground them and 53% thought parents had the
right to remove their allowance.
167
Similarly, therapists reported that Norwegian
parents showed “a surprisingly high prevalence of the permissive parenting
form of child coercion. In these families, the parents often seem to be
162. Robert E. Larzelere et al., Nonabusive Spanking: Parental Liberty or Child Abuse?, 17
C
HILDREN’S LEGAL RTS. J. 7, 12 (1997); Robert E. Larzelere & Jack A. Merenda, The Effectiveness of
Parental Discipline for Toddler Misbehavior at Different Levels of Child Distress, 43 F
AM. REL. 480, 483
(1994).
163. Robert E. Larzelere et al., The Effects of Discipline Responses in Delaying Toddler
Misbehavior Recurrences, 18 C
HILD & FAM. BEHAV. THERAPY 35, 43 (1996).
164. Larzelere et al., supra note 162, at 12.
165. Catron & Masters, supra note 6, at 1815, 1820.
166. K. Palmerus & S. Scarr, How Parents Discipline Young Children: Cultural Comparisons and
Individual Differences, Presentation at the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child
Development (1995), cited in Robert E. Larzelere, Combining Love and Limits in Authoritative
Parenting, in P
ARENTHOOD IN AMERICA 85 (Jack C. Westman ed., 2001).
167. Staffan Janson, Barn Och Misshandel: En Rapport Om Froppslig Bestraffning Och Annan
Misshandel i Sverige Vid Slutet Av 1900-Talet [Children and Physical Abuse: A Report About Corporal
Punishment and Other Physical Abuse in Sweden at the End of the 20th Century], SOU 18, 58 (2001).
LARZELERE & BAUMRIND 10/12/2010 11:54:42 AM
84 LAW AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS [Vol. 73:57
immobilized by unreasonable requests made by the child.”
168
A recent study in
Quebec found that the annual percentage of mothers using minor physical
discipline (usually spanking or slapping on the hand or arm) decreased from
48% to 43% from 1999 to 2004, but repeated psychological aggression increased
from 48% to 52%.
169
Psychological aggression consisted mostly of yelling or
screaming, but also included cursing at children or calling them “stupid.”
In sum, the available evidence suggests that spanking prohibitions may
increase the use of verbal hostility, which has been shown to be one of the most
detrimental forms of parental discipline,
170
with more detrimental effects than
even physical child abuse in several studies.
171
Spanking prohibitions may also
increase the number of parents who cannot control their children’s coercive
behavior, which puts those children at risk for delinquency and crime.
172
C. Ethnic Differences in Child Outcomes of Spanking
Another article in this special issue focuses on ethnic differences in the
association of spanking with antisocial behavior. Many studies have found that
spanking is more strongly associated with antisocial behavior and aggression in
European Americans than in African Americans, with several studies indicating
that spanking predicts significantly lower aggression in African Americans when
reported by someone other than the parent.
173
This suggests that the typical way
that African American parents use spanking produces better long-term
outcomes than the typical way it is used in European American families. Ethnic
differences in the apparent effectiveness of spanking may be due to its
normative support within each ethnic group. More needs to be understood
before imposing spanking prohibitions on ethnic groups that are under-
represented among social scientists and policy makers.
168. G. R. Patterson & P. A. Fisher, Recent Developments in Our Understanding of Parenting:
Bidirectional Effects, Causal Models, and the Search for Parsimony, in 5 H
ANDBOOK OF PARENTING:
PRACTICAL ISSUES IN PARENTING 59, 74 (M. H. Bornstein ed., 2002).
169. Marie-Eve E. Clement & Claire Chamberland, Physical Violence and Psychological Aggression
Towards Children: Five-Year Trends in Practices and Attitudes from Two Population Surveys, 31 C
HILD
ABUSE & NEGLECT 1001, 1006 (2007).
170. Baumrind et al., supra note 8, at 157, 178–83.
171. J. Douglas Bremner et al., Development and Preliminary Psychometric Properties of an
Instrument for the Measurement of Childhood Trauma: The Early Trauma Inventory, 12 D
EPRESSION &
ANXIETY 1, 6 (2000); Martin H. Teicher et al., Sticks, Stones, and Hurtful Words: Relative Effects of
Various Forms of Childhood Maltreatment, 163 A
M. J. PSYCHIATRY 993, 994 (2006); Yvonne M.
Vissing et al., Verbal Aggression by Parents and Psychosocial Problems of Children, 15 C
HILD ABUSE
& NEGLECT 223, 299 (1991).
172. R
EID ET AL., supra note 114, at 74.
173. Gunnoe & Mariner, supra note 53, at 768, 773; Lansford et al. (2004), supra note 155, at 801;
Jodi Polaha et al., Physical Discipline and Child Behavior Problems: A Study of Ethnic Group
Differences, 4 P
ARENTING: SCI. & PRACTICE 339, 348 (2004).
LARZELERE & BAUMRIND 10/12/2010 11:54:42 AM
Spring 2010] ARE SPANKING INJUNCTIONS SCIENTIFICALLY SUPPORTED? 85
VI
C
ONCLUSIONS
Spanking must be understood in the broader context of the appropriate
exercise of parental authority. Numerous studies have shown the superior
effectiveness of authoritative parenting, especially compared with the extremes
of authoritarian and permissive parenting.
174
We have recently extended that
evidence by documenting that ten-year child outcomes vary greatly by these
preschool parenting patterns.
175
Authoritative parents use their parental
authority to empower their children’s development. In contrast, authoritarian
parents misuse their parental authority and permissive parents abdicate their
parental authority. Authoritative parents combine nurturance, give-and-take
communication, support for age-appropriate independence and autonomy, and
firm confrontive discipline and maturity demands. Their use of confrontive
discipline and maturity demands distinguish them from permissive parents,
resulting in large differences in ten-year outcomes of those two parenting
patterns.
176
Authoritarian parents, on the other hand, have low nurturance and
use detrimental forms of power assertion, a combination associated with even
worse ten-year outcomes than permissive parenting. The use of normative
spanking did not distinguish authoritative parents from other parenting
patterns, although it was used more by authoritarian parents than by permissive
parents. We think that authoritative parenting can be implemented by some
parents without the use of any spanking, but we have no evidence of that from
our study, as all authoritative parents used spanking at least occasionally.
To support the firm control dimension of authoritative parenting, research
must be capable of discriminating between effective and counterproductive
corrective disciplinary actions. We suspect that how and when a disciplinary
tactic is used will determine its effectiveness at least as much as whether the
tactic is verbal, nonphysical, or physical. Multiple studies have shown that
spanking is associated with adverse outcomes only when children perceive their
parents as rejecting them.
177
In our study, the most detrimental forms of power assertion were verbal
hostility and psychological control, which accounted for adverse outcomes in
the full sample and were distinctive of authoritarian parents. Severe physical
punishment and arbitrary discipline were also used more often by authoritarian
parents and were associated with some long-term adverse outcomes, but did not
174. Steinberg, supra note 7.
175. Baumrind et al., supra note 8, at 157, 172–75.
176. Id. at 157, 172–76, 184.
177. Vonnie C. McLoyd & Julia Smith, Physical Discipline and Behavior Problems in African
American, European American, and Hispanic Children: Emotional Support as a Mediator, 64 J.
MARRIAGE & FAM. 40, 44 (2002); R. P. Rohner et al., Effects of Corporal Punishment, Perceived
Caretaker Warmth, and Cultural Beliefs on the Psychological Adjustment of Children in St. Kitts, West
Indies, 53 J.
MARRIAGE & FAM. 681, 685 (1991).
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86 LAW AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS [Vol. 73:57
predict those outcomes beyond what was accounted for by verbal hostility and
psychological control.
178
The available evidence indicates that disciplinary reasoning is a crucial
component of authoritative parenting and that children as young as two or
three cooperate with reasoning more when it is backed up with time-out or
privilege removal at least ten percent of the time.
179
Roberts’ studies showed
that even the most clinically defiant two- to six-year-olds will cooperate with
time-out if enforced when necessary with an effective back-up tactic, such as a
two-swat spank or room isolation. Skillful use of this sequence of increasingly
forceful tactics can then lead to phasing out the back-up tactic as children learn
to cooperate with time-out and pay more attention to their parents’ verbal
corrections. Therefore, some version of the sequencing used by Roberts’ and
other behavioral parent training programs could well be a process that produces
well-behaved children whose parents rely primarily on reasoning and verbal
correction.
180
To the extent this is the case, spanking prohibitions will
inadvertently restrict the back-up options needed by some parents to enforce
nonphysical tactics and reasoning. This may explain why some parents are at
risk for extremely permissive parenting or for increased verbal hostility when
they are prohibited from using spanking or equally effective back-up tactics.
181
In this article we do not claim or imply that parents must use spanking to obtain
compliance or that any kind of disciplinary punishment is necessary for all
children. Parents should, however, retain the option to use spanking
appropriately, unless they have abused that option. Current research indicates
that customary spanking is not associated with child outcomes that are any
more adverse than the outcomes of any other type of corrective discipline. The
most empirically supported use for a two-swat spanking is when two- to six-
year-olds respond defiantly to nonphysical disciplinary tactics, such as time-out,
or when imposed to stop dangerous misbehavior. Spanking should never be
used in an infant’s first twelve months of life and rarely, if at all, before eighteen
months of age. Parents should make sure their children know that any
corrective discipline, including spanking, is motivated by love and concern for
them. Parents must also be certain not to administer punishment too severely,
whether physical or nonphysical. Finally, all punishment should be used in such
a way that reduces the need to use it in the future. Every child is different, so
not all disciplinary tactics will work as well with every child—or for every
situation with the same child. Parents need to skillfully use a range of
178. Baumrind et al., supra note 8, at 157, 178–80.
179. Larzelere et al., supra note 30.
180. R
ICHARD Q. BELL & LAWRENCE V. HARPER, CHILD EFFECTS ON ADULTS (1977); Robert E.
Larzelere, Combining Love and Limits in Authoritative Parenting, in P
ARENTHOOD IN AMERICA 85
(Jack C. Westman ed., 2001).
181. Clement & Chamberland, supra note 169, at 1001, 1006; Patterson & Fisher, supra note 168, at
74.
LARZELERE & BAUMRIND 10/12/2010 11:54:42 AM
Spring 2010] ARE SPANKING INJUNCTIONS SCIENTIFICALLY SUPPORTED? 87
disciplinary options to help their children achieve their full potential, rather
than to have effective options restricted unnecessarily.
