Secure bonding and strong attachment can lead to less of a need to use corporal punishment but research reveals that spanking is not effective in the long-run because it can lead to increased aggression and poor self-control.
According to a study from the Columbia University School of Social Work published in the journal Pediatrics, “spanking at age 5, even at low levels, was associated with higher levels of child externalizing behavior at age 9, even after an array of risks and earlier child behavior were controlled for. Father’s high-frequency spanking at age 5 was associated with lower child receptive vocabulary scores at age 9.”
“We found there were impacts not just on the behavioral development that folks normally look at, but also on markers of cognitive development, like the verbal capacity of the child,” MacKenzie, an associate professor at the Columbia University School of Social Work in New York, told HealthDay. “These effects are long-lasting. They aren’t just short-term problems that wash out over time. And the effects were stronger for those who were spanked more than twice a week.”
Author Sarah Kovac found through research, spanking can actually lead to less gray matter in the brains of children who are spanked at least once a month for few years which actually leads to less self-control making it harder for children to self-regulate.
“Several other studies support these findings. A 2010 study published in Pediatrics found that frequent — more than twice in the previous month — spanking when a child was 3 was linked to an increased risk for higher levels of child aggression when the child was 5.
Another, from the Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment and Trauma, found that corporal punishment doled out from the mother was independently related to a decrease in cognitive ability relative to other children. Corporal punishment had the largest effect on children 5 to 9.”
