I got this from the "Psychwatch" newsletter. It was prefaced
with the question "Sad news?"
Gotta love that scientific neutrality!
To view the entire article, go to
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/health/A58526-2001Aug24.html
New Study Gives Green Light to Occasional Spanking
SAN FRANCISCO #150; The occasional spanking does no long term-damage to
a child's emotional or social development, undercutting theories which say
any physical punishment of children is harmful, according to a study released on
Friday.
Psychologist Diana Baumrind surveyed more than 100 families and found that children
who are spanked occasionally can still grow up to be happy, well-adjusted adults.
"We found no evidence for unique detrimental effects of normative physical
punishment,"
Baumrind said in an address to the American Psychological Association annual meeting
in San Francisco.
"I am not an advocate of spanking," said Baumrind, "but a blanket injunction against
its
use is not warranted by the evidence. It is reliance on physical punishment, not
whether
or not it is used at all, that is associated with harm to the child."
Baumrind, who co-wrote the study with fellow University of California-Berkeley
psychologist
Elizabeth Owens, separated out parents who use spanking frequently and severely from
those
who who occasionally spank their children.
The study, which focused on spanking in middle-class, white families was undertaken
in response to anti-spanking advocates who have claimed that physical punishment,
by itself, has harmful psychological effects on children and hurts society as a whole.
Surveying extensive records on California families conducted by earlier studies
at Berkeley's Institute of Human Development, other archival material and independent
observations and interviews, the psychologists compiled a "Parent Disciplinary
Rating Scale" to assess various strategies of
parental discipline and their effects on children.
Only a small minority of parents, from 4 percent to 7 percent depending on the
time period, used physical punishment often and with some intensity.
While not legally abusive, these parents appeared to be overly severe and
impulsive when doling out physical punishment, according to Baumrind,
adding that punishment styles often include using a paddle or other
instrument to strike the child, or hit on the face or torso, or lifting, throwing,
or shaking the child.
'RED ZONE'
Baumrind said that when this "red zone" group of parents was removed from the
study sample, most of the correlations between spanking and long-term harm to children
also disappeared.
"Red zone parents are rejecting, exploitative and impulsive," Baumrind said. "They are
parents
who punish beyond the norm. You have very little to explain after you remove this
small group."
The children of less-determined spankers, classified as falling into orange, yellow
and green zones,
appeared to show no long-term harmful effects, she said.
"There were no significant differences between children of parents who spanked
seldom (green zone) and those who spanked moderately (yellow zone)," Baumrind said.
Verbal punishment, in which parents use words rather than physical action to
discipline
a child, appeared to yield similar results, with researchers saying severe verbal
punishment
could sometimes have a more serious long-term effect on a child than physical
punishment.
"What really matters is the child-rearing context. When parents are loving and firm
and
communicate well with the child the children are exceptionally competent
and well adjusted, whether or not their parents spanked them as
preschoolers."
------- End of forwarded message -------
************************************************************************
Jim Guinee, Ph.D.
Director of Training & Adjunct Professor
President, Arkansas College Counselor Association
University of Central Arkansas Counseling Center
313 Bernard Hall Conway, AR 72035 USA
(501) 450-3138 (office) (501) 450-3248 (fax)
"Almost every sect of Christianity is a perversion of its
essence, to accomodate it to the prejudices of the world."
-- William Hazlitt
**************************************************************************
