New Study Reveals Concrete Effects of Spanking on Children’s Personalities

As a child of divorce, I can attest to both my own personal journeys, experiences and adult-style relationships in the midst of intentions toward 'healthy' - read peaceful - and a maturely and bravely honest and communicative marriage...but I so beseech the likes of Jodi Samuels and Slovie Youngreis-Wolff on the topic below.

Anyone over the age of 30 grew up in a post-WWII time as children - or children of those children - where 'traditional discipline' was the norm. And, every home and family experienced a different definition of that - and, sometimes we enjoyed the sensitivities and compassionately gentle teachings of that generation in our parents and grandparents, as well. Even today, and especially so in today's more educated yet more 'sophisticatedly' adult teenagers, the impact of physical punishment in the early years is being evaluated in today's news....


http://www.kidglue.com/2010/04/13/new-study-reveals-concrete-effect...
By Bridget Tyler on April 13th, 2010
There’s been a lot of debate about the merits of spanking over the last fifty years, but a new study is providing some hard data about the results of spanking on developing personalities. The study at
Tulane University observed the development of almost 2,500 children.
 Those who were spanked more frequently at age 3 proved to be much more
likely to be aggressive by age 5.

Though this isn’t the first study of the affects of corporal punishment on chil..., the Tulane study is the first to attempt to control and compensate for
many of the environmental variables that might muddy their attempt to
prove a causal link between spanking and development.  The study, led
by Catherine Taylor, accounted for things like neglect by the mother,
violence or aggression between the parents, maternal stress and
depression, maternal substance abuse and even whether the child’s
mother considered abortion while pregnant with the child being studied.

While all of those environmental factors contributed to the children’s aggressive behavior by the age of 5, the connection between
spanking and aggression remained strong, even after those factors had
been accounted for. “The odds of a child being more aggressive by age 5
if he had been spanked more than twice in the month before the study
began increased by 50%,” says Taylor.  Because her study was so
thorough in accounting for other variables, its results allow
researchers to confidently state that, “it’s not just that children who
are more aggressive are more likely to be spanked.”

This thoroughness gives the study real weight in what is often a very subjective and sensitive conversation.  ”I’m excited by the idea
that there is now some nice hard data that can back up clinicians when
they share their caution with parents against using corporal
punishment,” says Dr. Jayne Singer, clinical director of the child and
parent program at Children’s Hospital Boston, who was not involved in
the study.

Children in the study who were spanked proved to be more defiant, more easily frustrated and more demanding of instant satisfaction of
wants and needs.  Singer suggests that the reason for that may be that
spanking is effective because it installs fear, rather than
understanding of why a particular behavior shouldn’t continue.  It also
models aggression as a solution to problems.  Singer recommends time
outs as a good way to help children understand why a behavior is wrong
and eventually correct the behavior.  Explaining the reason for the
punishment, then forcing a little quiet time to calm down and reflect,
may take more repetition and energy in the short run, but in the long
run it produces more effective results.