Well you certainly live in the world that most others do, including physicians and psychologists. I decided to look up info and discovered an interesting discussion at BMJ.com, which if I gather correctly is the British Journal of Medicine?
An author wrote an article on the state of evidence regarding corporal punishment and argued that there should be a legal ban on corporal punishment. Letters came in questioning his evidence as well as his position.
From this page on Child Discipline...
In the only published review (in 1996) of child outcomes of non-abusive or customary physical punishment, only eight studies could disentangle the causal effects of smacking.3 All eight studies, including four randomised clinical trials, found that nonabusive smacking benefited children when it backed up milder disciplinary tactics with children aged 2 to 6 years...
Eighteen studies in the 1996 review investigated alternative disciplinary tactics as well as smacking.3 Only grounding was more effective than smacking, in two studies of older children. In contrast, nine alternatives were associated with more detrimental outcomes in children than was smacking.
Then another critic...
As a participant in the American Academy of Pediatrics consensus conference, I would like to clarify some of its findings. The group's goal was to develop consensus statements regarding the scientific evidence on the long term and short term effects of corporal punishment on children. Definitions were the first order of business for the group: corporal punishment was defined as "bodily punishment of any kind"; spanking was defined as "physically non-injurious, intended to modify behavior, and administered with the open hand to the buttocks or the extremities." Using strict definitions prevented the common mistake of mixing abusive physical punishment with non-injurious spanking. With these definitions, however, the committee could not reach any strong conclusions favouring or opposing a parent's use of disciplinary spanking for children aged 2-11 years.
Central to the conference was the exhaustive review of the literature on corporal punishment presented by clinical psychologist Robert Larzelere. He found stronger evidence of beneficial than detrimental effects of non-abusive spanking by parents with preschool children (aged 2 to 6 years). The conference chairpersons concluded: "Given a relatively `healthy' family life in a supportive environment, spanking in and of itself is not detrimental to a child or predictive of later problems . . . there is a lack of research related to the use of corporal punishment."2
Developmental research indicates that optimal outcomes in children result from an authoritative style of parenting that combines positive encouragement with consistent behavioural control of the young child.3 Waterston describes the process of encouragement well, but leaves parents shorthanded on techniques for behavioural control. Young children need correction and punishment, but this is often ignored by the opponents of physical punishment. Time out and disapproval are effective tools but are not sufficient to control all problem behaviour with all children. Disciplinary spanking, when properly applied, can augment nonphysical measures and optimise the process of behavioural control.
and another...
The evidence cited by Waterston has shown that smacking has adverse effects only when it is excessive. There is no evidence that occasional smacking is harmful, and indeed it would be astonishing if there were, given the trivial nature of the physical and psychological event. There are even theoretical reasons to suppose that smacking may be less harmful than some alternative strategies. It is, after all, quickly over and avoids protracted emotional withdrawal ("I won't love you if you're naughty") which, for many parents, is the alternative.
It can be inferred from Waterston's article that he acknowledges that a consistent and measured strategy of discipline that happens to include smacking is likely to benefit rather than to harm a child.
Indeed that last point is made when reading Waterston's response to his critics, but first...
Larzelere states that smacking has beneficial outcomes, on the evidence of his review published in 1996.1 These outcomes were short term only and in artificial situations. Of the eight studies he mentions that showed benefit of non-abusive smacking, five were laboratory studies by the same team,2 the children were in an extreme group for disordered behaviour, and only immediate outcomes were assessed. Parents were trained to give two spanks while being observed by a therapist, and it would not be wise to draw general conclusions in relation to the population of smacking parents. The authors state that spanking was not a superior method of discipline. A sixth study was on one extremely disordered child with no control subject,3 and in the remaining studies in which parents used structured diaries to observe the effects of their own management of their children within specific parameters, the authors stated that "to use this research as general evidence supporting punitive parenting or corporal punishment outside these parameters would be totally inappropriate."4
Unfortunately this is Waterston using appropriately caveated results as if that challenges the results found. Regardless of the above he is forced into an admission positive results of some kind can be found. Negative ones were not. The worst that could be said in one study is that it wasn't a superior method.
I agree with Hain that there is no evidence that occasional smacking is harmful, and that it provides a model to the child. Is the practice of violence by parents against a small child a good model to learn from?
Thus his forced admission is clear, his rebuttal is hollow rhetoric.
Why does he argue for a ban on everything...
A key part of the case against a ban on corporal punishment is the desire to distinguish between injurious and non-injurious smacking. In legal terms this is not possible, as a smack on any part of the body is potentially injurious, whatever the intention.
But this is to ignore what a critic states earlier...
So why does he oppose it so strongly? Perhaps because his experience is that for many parents smacking is not a measured or consistent strategy. Instead, it is a last resort when control is lost. It is this element of unpredictable, irrational, and potentially uncontrolled violence that is dangerous in smacking, rather than the smack itself.
By definition, this element will not be influenced by changing the law. In recommending legislation against smacking, Waterston ensures that chaotic, uncontrolled smacking will continue, and that only measured smacking, which does no harm and may even help a child understand discipline, will stop. In other words, he will have achieved the reverse of his intention.
I'd suggest people read the full link, and one can get to some additional material from that page.
I'm not trying to suggest this is definitive, but it is relatively recent (2000) and clearly people in the field were finding contrary results than what schraf suggests.
holmes
"What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away." (D.Bros)
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