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| Spanked kids do better later in life |
| Family |
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Flying in the face of conventional wisdom, a psychologist has concluded that preschoolers who were spanked by their parents are more likely to grow up happier and be more successful than kids who have never been spanked, the National Post reported. Dr. Marjorie Gunnoe, a professor of psychology at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, believes there is not enough evidence to prove that getting spanked harms most children. She presented her findings at a conference of the Society for Research in Child Development. “The claims that are made for not spanking children fail to hold up,” Gunnoe told the Daily Mail (UK). But neither does she advocate that parents resort to it indiscriminately. “I think of spanking as a dangerous tool,” she said, “but then there are times when there is a job big enough for a dangerous tool. You don’t use it for all your jobs.” Gunnoe based her findings on interviews with 2,600 people, including a core group of 179 teenagers. About one in four said they had never been spanked. She concluded that children who had been spanked before the age of six ended up being more successful in school, more optimistic about life, more likely to volunteer and more enthusiastic about going to university. Not surprisingly, the study has drawn widespread criticism. “There are better methods of parenting rather than hitting. . . . It’s not OK to hit children,” Grant Wilson, president of the Canadian Children’s Rights Council, told the National Post. But British psychologist Aric Sigman disagrees. “The idea [spanking] and violence are on a continuum is a bizarre and fetished view of what punishment is for most parents,” he told the Daily Mail. “If it’s done judiciously by a parent who is normally affectionate and sensitive to their child, our society should not be up in arms about that. Parents should be taught to distinguish this from a punch in the face.” |
